Thursday, January 14th, 2021 Posted by Jim Thacker

Michael Gibson releases MoI 4

MoI in action in a teaser for the Gnomon Workshop training video Visual Development for Environments (skip to 00:35 to see it). Developer Michael Gibson has just released version 4 of the NURBS modeller.


Originally posted on 14 November 2017. Scroll down for news of the commercial release.

Developer Michael Gibson has unveiled MoI 4 (Moment of Inspiration 4), the first update to his intuitive, lightweight NURBS and Boolean modelling software in three years.

The release, which is currently in closed beta for users of MoI 3, makes the software a 64-bit application, improving performance on complex assets.

The update also makes MoI a native Mac application, rather than relying on porting utilities.

And that’s essentially all the information so far: to judge from the announcement thread on the MoI forums, development work is still at a fairly early stage.



A subdivision surface converted to NURBS in Modo (left) and the latest beta of MoI 4 (right). MoI’s new SubD-to-NURBS conversion option when importing OBJ files should preserve G2 continuity in most models.


Updated 22 October 2018: Michael Gibson has released a new beta build of MoI 4 adding the option to convert Sub-D surfaces to NURBS.

In most cases, the conversion should generate a NURBS surface with G2 continuity or greater: there’s an interesting comparison with tools like 3ds Max and Modo in this thread on the MoI forum.

The conversion is currently performed automatically when importing OBJ files, but Gibson says that he aims to make it possible to apply it to any Sub-D surface.

Since we last wrote about the beta, there have also been a number of performance improvements, particularly when importing large STEP, IGES, SAT or 3DM files.



Updated 14 January 2021: MoI 4 is now officially shipping after over three years in beta.

Many of the changes since we last updated this story have been bugfixes, but subsequent beta builds have also assed a new extended Object Properties interface panel.

As well as providing extra information about the curve, surface, edge or face selected, it can calculate measurements such as the length of curves, or the surface area or volume of a surface or solid.

It can also be used to add annotations to models, automatically generating linear and angular dimensions for documentation: the results can be exported in formats including AI, DXF and PDF.

Pricing and availability
MoI 4 is available for Windows and macOS. It costs $295.


Visit the Moment of Inspiration product website

Read a list of new features in MoI 4 on the product wiki