New MoI beta

General discussion about 3D DCC and other topics
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Mathaeus
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New MoI beta

Post by Mathaeus » 31 Mar 2014, 01:17

For existing users, there is new beta of Moment Of Inspiration. MoI is CAD, exclusive Nurbs modeler, having a very streamlined workflow. Interface is minimized as much as possible, it can do lofts directly from boundaries, there's basic non destructive creation. Creation relies on pretty much classic lofts, sweeps, revolutions, and blending between trimmed nurbs surfaces. There is no streamlined way for smooth stitching in tSplines style. This makes such approach easy for short blends between volumes defined by these classic methods , but very hard to do 'melted' volumes. Let's say, it's easy to get design of captain Kirk's Enterprise, very hard to get long blends of star ship Voyager.
But, exactly these longs blends are possible in SI or Maya, by smooth, seamless connections between multiple surfaces. Well so much stronger are Maya options. Here's how looks Softimage's Nurbs assembly and SCM, and blend in MoI on right side. Old school SI SCM thing works surprisingly well - at least when having a a bit destructive ICE construction for snapping a many NURBS surfaces to polygon mesh.
Yeah, new MoI features are variable radius fillet, sync points for more adjustable blends. Already it has options for let's say, more seamless blend or fillet curvature.

Image
Last edited by Mathaeus on 31 Mar 2014, 09:56, edited 1 time in total.

Bullit
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Bullit » 31 Mar 2014, 05:47

That is precisely what i think is still missing in modeling software today. No integrated modeler with benefit of nurbs, subdivsions and paint modeling(z-brush etc)

Dassault Catia V6 Imagine and Shape modeler has nurbs/subd Integration.

See Video
http://www.3ds.com/products-services/ca ... dd29a0dc7d




Of course this is higly expensive. I am not even sure they sell it standalone.

Something very useful is also be able to sketch in 3D over the surface, to mix modeling and conceptualization.



In Softimage for example i usually have a texture with small marks to where to draw in photoshop or other drawing software. Then every layer can be an iteration.

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ActionArt
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by ActionArt » 31 Mar 2014, 15:50

I love MoI. I've used it for years. Great tool set and a really nice mesh generator that gives you great control over the poly mesh when you export.

I've always wished MoI (or a toolset like it) would have been integrated with SI. It would have really given it a unique capability.

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Mathaeus
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Mathaeus » 31 Mar 2014, 21:01

ActionArt wrote:I love MoI. I've used it for years. Great tool set and a really nice mesh generator that gives you great control over the poly mesh when you export.
Yeah, it's my first update, and there is feeling that author somehow listened what I want, even I wouldn't be able to express what I want in my words :) Somehow forgotten feeling....

Bullit, thanks for links, nice to see all that Nurbs tools all around, but, as you said, some of them.. are a bit expensive....

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ActionArt
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by ActionArt » 31 Mar 2014, 21:11

There's a lot of them in the CAD world. Solidworks, Solid Edge, NX, Catia, Rhino, Creo and yes, Inventor are just a few that come to mind. Those are all major packages and way overkill for just some basic solid modeling where MoI fits in really well. Great price and great tool. Of course it would be way more useful for us if it were integrated somehow.

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Re: New MoI beta

Post by TwinSnakes007 » 31 Mar 2014, 22:55

Yeah, I've been on it since the first beta. Great little gem for the toolset. One of the best meshers for the price. The touch/multi-touch support is really nice too.

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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Bullit » 01 Apr 2014, 03:10

There's a lot of them in the CAD world. Solidworks, Solid Edge, NX, Catia, Rhino, Creo and yes, Inventor are just a few that come to mind. Those are all major packages and way overkill for just some basic solid modeling where MoI fits in really well. Great price and great tool. Of course it would be way more useful for us if it were integrated somehow.
You mixed somewhat different software. Solidworks, Solid Edge are the middle range Mechanical software. Catia , PTC Creo and NX are high range. I don't know NX well, i think it is now Siemens Suite , Catia is also suite that have application from hand drawing like i posted above to full management of a project usually with acronym PLM.
Rhino and Moi are just Nurbs modelers.

While each one of mechanical CAD above have some version of a "Solid" kernel with parametric capability. This kind of kernels makes possible to make booleans with mechanical precision, full history, relationships between objects, points etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel

Dassaut kernel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACIS

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Mathaeus
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Mathaeus » 22 Jun 2014, 13:09

hello,

Here's my progress in getting MoI and Nurbs modeling skills. Long time ago around 1997, played a lot with beta or Rhino. Now, just discovered how poor were my skills from 1997 - in my defense, can say that demands in these times, were.... smaller, and machines weren't that strong. Rhino wanted some time just to display the shaded mesh, today it's in real time. Back to Moi and 2014... intentionally tried to add details, that usually belongs to texture trickery in rendering, like small insets, fillets. Actually everything here has small fillet of few millimeters - compared to length of airplane of about 17 meters.

Few, very personal findings

Only DCC app, able to import and render this thing as NurbS, seems to be Maya. SI and Max, the same thing. IGES is recognized, but import takes minutes, with crash at the end. I believe the number of allowed trims per surface is limited in these apps. Form what I heard, Houdini seems to be somewhere in range of SI or Max, when it comes to complex trimmed NurbS structure.

So, polygons are rendered, huge meshes, having an old school 'user normal' property. Hopefully 3Delight's path tracer, which rendered this, supports the user normal thing, too.

Theoretically, all this could be done in Maya, but MoI's workflow is totally addictive, things like RMB for enter key in executing session, or repeat the last command out the executing session, a lot of streamlined procedures, navigation relies only on mouse, so on and so on. While Maya workflow when it comes to NurbS modeling, well I don't know what this is, yet. To be fair, 3d app, focused only to Nurbs modeling, could afford the streamlining. For example, no dealing with object's SRT, as modeling app has no object based SRT.

First and last screenshot is SI, the rest is MoI. As I mentioned, pics were rendered with 3delight's path tracer, a bit more than half of hour per frame, on home Quad Core machine.

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Bullit
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Bullit » 23 Jun 2014, 11:45

Nice one., now show a zebra to see how surface is done.

In Nurbs the less isoparms you have the better.

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Mathaeus
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Mathaeus » 23 Jun 2014, 14:35

Bullit wrote:Nice one., now show a zebra to see how surface is done.

In Nurbs the less isoparms you have the better.
Well I don't see any of these options in MoI, could you tell me where to find them :)
Well , OK, if zebra thing still means the environment reflection of stripes - should be fine. But, even I'll do one, honestly you shouldn't believe me. I know you know, zebra reflects the tessellated mesh, plastered with custom shading normals, even in view-port of NurbS modeler. Not that much related to original NURBS ( which, actually could not be 'shaded'). Also, once the mesh is in SI, exposed to ICE trickery, no big deal to smooth out these normals, even more. So final, let's say, allowed angle tolerance, in DCC app, belongs to renderer and author, in this case, 3delight and.... me. But again, it should be fine :)

Moi doesn't display isoparms, only edges are displayed. Anyway, if we take 1 row of points = 1 isoparm (which should not be the rule but anyway), I've noticed tendency to add a lot of them, even with simple operations like offset or like, but it keeps near the same density during all operations later. It was somehow shocking to me, when I figured out that tweaking of surfaces, by moving points, is 'not desired ' - but somehow I've accepted that, let's call it, cultural difference of MoI.

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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Bullit » 23 Jun 2014, 16:47

Moi if it is a "professional" nurbs modeler should have viewport mode/ or shade mode to show the zebra analysis since that is a very common surface analysis.

A video that explains it.


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Mathaeus
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Mathaeus » 23 Jun 2014, 19:34

yes it is reflection from environment map, most likely cylindrical environment map, nothing else. Piece of cake to implement, by the way. Perhaps there is no enough of interest.

Back to topic, here's tutorial on 3d Total, talking about model with sharp reflections, created with MoI. Personally I feel sick of rendered moving cars, glass of any kind and similar glossy things, no chance from mu side to to deal with sharp reflections in free time.

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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Bullit » 24 Jun 2014, 14:01

:)

And now try to put some dirt.

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Mathaeus
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Mathaeus » 28 Jun 2014, 21:33

Bullit wrote::)

And now try to put some dirt.
Well, shiny things, that's what I have to do in everyday life. By the way, I believed it should be visible from screenshot, why it can't display the unpleasant hard edge, anywhere. Critical areas like corners of 5 or 6 surfaces, or at least critical for old Softimage SCM fixer but not for T-spline or like, are intentionally placed on almost planar areas of model. Blends are smoother G2, but there is no that much of long blends. But it seems I become too addicted to this NurBS stuff, to the level where I'm expecting too much to be noticed.

Anyway, new MoI beta is on the road. More about, here.

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Re: New MoI beta

Post by Bullit » 29 Jun 2014, 15:47

Haha sometimes i would like change for something more calm like car renderings and such. You do stills or animated?

There are nice stuff Sketchup ease of use like in this beta.

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FXDude
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Re: New MoI beta

Post by FXDude » 30 Jun 2014, 05:55

Hum the wireframe almost looks like line drawings lol. How does Mol handle adding detail without doing so the entire U or V length ? it looks like it does so seemlessly.

Very intriguing way of doing things, and very nice result!
J

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