Adding NURBS to your 3D arsenal… How to run Moi on Mac OSX off your USB drive.
Posted by samuraijkm in 
I primarily use Modo for all my 3D modeling and rendering. However, some shapes are very difficult to model using traditional sub division or polygon based modeling methods. So I recently decided to journey in the world of NURBS (Non-uniform rational B-spline) based modeling to fill in the gaps, and hopefully speed up my workflow. I am currently beta testing the Mac OSX version of Moi (Moment of Inspiration) software. I am excited at the modeling potential this program offers, and hope to add it to my pipeline in the future.
I decided to add Moi to my mobile 3D app USB drive that I currently run Modo off of daily. This way I can work at home and at the office and keep my current config updated and with me at all times. Moi, it self, is a portable application and can be run anywhere. However, it boots it’s preferences off of a config file (moi.ini) that is located on your local machine in the user directory located here:
~/Library/Application Support/Moi/moi.ini
In order to keep my config file with me, I would have to boot this directly from my USB drive instead.
I saw a setup for moving the config file on Moi’s web site by passing the path of your moi.ini config file to the application on startup, but it was basically applicable to the Windows .EXE version of the application. I emailed Michael Gibson from Moi and asked if there was a solution for OSX. Here is what I found out…
You can indeed pass this information to Moi on Mac OSX, but you need to jump through a couple of hoops first:
Right click on the MoI .app file and choose “Show package contents”,
and inside of the contents there is a Wineskin.app program – double click that to run it.
Click the “Advanced” button and on the settings panel that comes up fill in the “EXE flags” field with the full path to the moi.ini file that you want to use, including the moi.ini filename at the end. So for example, if I wanted to make MoI use a moi.ini config file on a USB thumb drive, type in this:
/Volumes/<strong><em>[USBDriveName]</em></strong>/moi.ini
- put whatever full directory you want in that field. (If there are any spaces in the path you should put double-quote ” ” characters around it).
Copy the default moi.ini file which has your current settings in it from your home directory over to the new location on your USB drive.
Lastly, select the options tab and toggle the below setting on to enable the ability to use the ALT key for shortcut commands in the moi interface.
That’s all there is to it. Now Moi will startup from the config file you placed on the USB drive instead of from the user home directory on the local machine. Running Moi off of the same USB drive now allows you to work on multiple machines, while retaining all of your shortcuts and config preferences.
It’s always good practice to make a backup of your thumb drive at home with carbon copy cloner, super duper or the OSX disk utility every once and awhile for safe keeping.
The Life of a 3D Nomad… How to run Modo on Mac OSX from a USB thumb drive.
Recently, I found myself in the situation where my work machine surpassed my personal macbook pro’s processor power and speed. I really didn’t want to leave my precious Modo 501 personal license on my work machine when I left in the evenings, so I had a dilemma… either work on my old mackbook pro for all my modeling and render at snail speed, or get my 8 core mac at work running Modo.
My dilemma was further complicated since I wanted to keep my modified configs, key mappings, plugins, scripts, and assets wherever I used Modo, whether at home or work. After a little research on the Luxology forums and through search engines, I came up with the solution. I decided to buy an 8GB USB thumb drive and lift the desktop strings from my Modo Software.
There were a lot of tutorials on how to do this as a server setup using python scripts and also as a USB thumb drive, but only in the Windows environment. The Mac OSX platform did not allow environment variables to be defined in the target path of an alias which meant that I had to find a different way to achieve the same result. Below is the process that I used in order to accomplish this task using the powerful unix shell that Mac OSX is built on.
Before starting to create the script, you need to set up the file directories on your USB thumb drive to house the Modo Application and supporting files. I set up my directory tree as follows:
(Please note: My shell script is designed for this file tree hierarchy. You will have to edit the script if you want a different file tree system)
USB Thumbdrive Root/
Luxology/
Applications/
AppSupport/
Configs/
Plugins/
Scripts/
Content/
Assets/
Samples/
System/
dblog/
license/
main/
preferences/
Once you have the directories in place, copy over your modo501 app into the Applications folder, along with your assets, plugins, scripts, license file, etc. Now it’s time that we can start building our script that will launch Modo from the USB stick. The process is pretty simple, see below:
1) Open a terminal and navigate to the root level of your USB thumb drive.
cd /Volumes/[USBdriveName]/
2) Create the modo Launcher shell script file.
touch modoLauncher
3) Open your favorite terminal editor and paste in the script. I used Pico.
pico modoLauncher
4) Copy and paste the script below: (NOTE: You will need to edit the thumb drive name with that of your USB thumb drive. You will also need to edit the temp directory path. I place my temp folder on my desktop since I don’t want my USB stick to fill up with large quantities of temp files as I render.)
#!/bin/sh
open /Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/Applications/modo501.app/ --args "-dblog:/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/System/dblog/ModoDebugOut.txt" "-debug:verbose" "-license:/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/System/license" "-config:/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/System/main/temp.cfg" "-path:prefs=/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/System/preferences" "-path:temp=/Users/[YourUserName]/Desktop/AutoSave" "-path:user=/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/AppSupport/" "-path:content=/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/Content/" "-path:asset=/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/Content/Assets"
5) When finished editing the script, writeout the lines on exit and save the script. Next, you need to make the script an executable file.
chmod a+x modoLauncher
From now on in order to launch Modo from the USB thumbdrive, simply double click the modoLauncher shell script on the root level of your thumbdrive. The terminal should open and execute the open command on the modo app passing the argument parameters through changing all your paths to launch modo from the USB stick.
Enjoy your Mac OSX version of Modo on the go!
Unlock the Magic of Taddo Promo
- Unlock the magic of Taddo Promotional Cover Art
Project parameters were to create a compelling promotional piece that can be mailed to corporations highlighting Todd Kupper’s (A.K.A. Taddo) magic for business events and trade shows.
I originally put together five concepts, but in the end, the “Unlocking the Magic” key plate was what the client associated his corporate identity with. However, at that point the concept was in it’s infancy, and only the visual of a keyhole was sketched.
Seeing how Taddo’s existing logo’s font style was very circular in it’s character’s geometric forms, I started to conceptualize the key plate with his logo and fitting the keyhole in one of the letters.
I got to work in Adobe Illustrator drawing out vectors trying to match the curves of several key plates that found my fancy. Once I was happy with the original form, I tried to fit the logo and the keyhole within it. I ended up realizing that the hole had to be in the center of the plate and thus the letters had to be slid slightly to adjust the fit.
I then built the model in 3D using Luxology’s Modo 401. I created my UV maps, and then imported them into Photoshop to create my diffuse color, reflection, bump, and spec maps. All other material properties were defined in modo with procederals, gradients, and an AO pass render that I baked out via the UVs.
Final rendered key plate was layered onto a wood door texture image with minor coloration and sharpness tweaks done in Photoshop.
I did all the 2D design and type setting in Adobe Indesign. The final promotional card was printed by KVL printing along with a standard envelope printed with a 1 color logo and return address.
- Taddo Promo – Inside 2 page spread
Foldover Promo card:
4/4, 120# satin cover bright white, 14 x 5 score & fold to 7 x 5
A7 envelope:
1/0, PMS, 24# cougar white
3d Engine Designs for Virtual Globes
(Book Cover Illustration)
Recently I designed the 3D cover artwork (Globes and Space imagery) for a new Virtual Globe developer’s book authored by Patrick Cozzi and Kevin Ring.
The textures were obtained from NASA Blue Marble Next Generation w/ Topography and Bathymetry imagery set via the NASA Visible Earth website. I rendered the 3D earth completely in Luxology 3D modeling software, Modo 401. Minor post processing was done in Photoshop CS5. The 2D layout design was done by Francis X. Kelly in Adobe Indesign CS3. The book can be purchased through Amazon, and will be printed summer of 2011.
My imagery was also highlighted on Luxology’s online user gallery as a portfolio highlight image I titled “Gaia” after the primal Greek goddess personifying the Earth.
AGI Home Page Video Web Banner
This project was a great collaborative effort on the part of the whole AGI production team.
AGI presented my colleagues and I with the problem of trying to visually represent all of what the company does in a quick, precise, and easy-to-understand video for the AGI home page on the internet. The goal was to help potential customers to see the value in the software from a business solution perspective and how it can apply to their unique fields of expertise. We needed to target the messaging to everyone from the engineer using the software, to the business acquisition officer purchasing it, to the four star general in the military deploying it. We also needed to target the Space, Defense, and Intelligence communities respectively.
This was a daunting task at best. However we rose to the challenge wholeheartedly! We had very little in the way of material to help us, and a very limited budget. We even had to build our own green screen studio and lighting rigs from scratch in true Do-It-Yourself (DIY) fashion.
In the end, we were very proud of our final product:
Conceptualization and story boards were done by Glenn Warrington, Fran Kelly, and Jason Martin.
Video production was done by Kel Elkins and Branden Coker.
Coreography was done by Kel Elkins, Fran Kelly, and Jason Martin.
Acting/modeling was done by Callie Snow from MeetCallie.com.
Visual elements both 2D (such as the GUIs and Text) and the 3D animation (earth, UAV, facility, satellite) were modeled, textured, and animated by Jason Martin using Luxology Modo and Adobe Photoshop / Ilustrator.
Final video composting, time line creation, and green screen keying was done by Branden Coker via Adobe Premiere / After Effects.
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