EIAS & Modo 201

#1

As some of you may know, the much hyped Modo 201 has been released a few weeks ago. Modo has become my main modeler, so all the new features in 201 got me excited. Now I used it for a while I wanted to share a few of my observations.

• It still is a fine Sub-D modeler, a few new modeling tools, some bugs are gone, and some new bugs introduced.
• UV mapping is pretty good, but has a few quirks now, especially when exporting.
• Painting is pretty cool, this is the first version with this functionality so not very refined yet.
• Rendering speed is not very impressive.
• Yes, Modo can render a lot of polygons, but it renders it’s own geometry better than imported million poly models.
• The Material system/Render Tree is weird, but very efficient, materials are easy to create, example: creating SSS effect is very straightforward and with great results.
• The handeling of large image maps is a joke.
• Texture baking could be very useful for us EIAS users.

Baked object rendered in EIAS: http://homepage.mac.com/groothuis/modo/cube_web.mov

Realtime ‘GI’ preview in EIAS: http://homepage.mac.com/groothuis/modo/baked_interior_web.mov :wink:

Cheers

Hans

#2

That is some really cool stuff. I am delving into the training movies right now. I mainly do arch viz so this could really make it worthwhile for texture baking. What file format are you using to get the project into EI?

#3

I have Modo 201 for a few days now, and it is really cool. I use OBJ as exchange format this has limitations, but is at least compatible with EIAS (ond Maya and, and, and). I have not tsted on OBJs from EI yet, but I have brought some models from Poser to Modo and via O2F into the EIAS. Occlusion baking is really easy to set up and together with the UV tools the most important feature for me. This worked really very well on my Poser character and I will definately also check with other formats. Cool is, that parts of the geometry from Poser was too lowres, but with a single subdivision of the mesh Modo makes really smooth highres meshes from it (I guess same would be true for Encage, but I have not tested).

Modo 103 did not make it for me, but this new version is great. I think its gonna be my default Poly modeler (always found Wings an other Modelers too limited).

Jens

#4

Well, here is my impression so far:

modelling is great, not as simple as Silo, but once you accept the few extra clicks to get the same thing done, you gain a lot more control. Models that started to become unwieldy in Silo are much more manageable in 201. Of course, Silo 2 promises layers and a completely redesigned interface, so this may soon become a moot point.

I can only compare the UV tools with Hexagon’s. So of course they’re going to look good to me.

Workflow at the moment is not as good as it could be, but with Modo being as customisable as it is, you should be able to improve it. But it does feel a bit like you’re doing Luxologies job for them.

The iView window is a really cool way of trying out material and lighting settings. People have reported it’s not as responsive as fPrime, so there’s probably a lot of room for improvement and optimisation. Even so, it’s a fantastic workflow that has to be experienced to be fully appreciated.

The material-system is great. Especially the fact that you can mask anything with anything, put any image-source (imported bitmap, noise-generator, gradient…) into any channel (diffuse, specular, displacement…). EIAS’ much more restrictive material system could take a few pointers here.

So far I haven’t had much luck getting stuff from Modo to EIAS. OBJ’s are seriously flawed. My guess is that you’ll need OBJ2FACT. Modo’s FBX files crash EI (and Max, I’ve been told) I even seem to remember Maya has some problems reading them. Despite all the talk about fitting in your pipeline, Modo’s file-export is seriously lacklustre.

#5

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