Feature requests for modo

#221

1 Modo shares with Lw something in its workflow - for example when nothing is selected , all is selected way of working with geometry, and the concept of using and dropping tools, and things like endomorph, and more. but all these things are like what Lw offers but on steroids, and into a more integrated environment.
Modo creators are the same of original Lw.
Now , Newtek has a brand new team to develop Lw further.

@andrespalma as for tools :

i dunno about lattice deformation usefulness in terms of only modelling. but however :
maybe it will be introduced when animation will be added. plus, even if i didn’t try that, i’ve seen time ago a vid showing some kind of geometry parenting allowing deformation of the child object. incidentally i never saw that vid again, so maybe it was something you’ll have to setup in some way.

as a suggestion : try soft move tool. its nifty, even if it doesn’t gives you a cage to manipulate. its more brush like deforming tool :slight_smile:

smooth tool : u can combine it with airbrush falloff, so that you can paint it.(you can combine every tool with whatever falloff ) u can also regulate its strenght and iterations into a more subtle way , so that it should be way more manageable as a tool to fix your meshes. sorry if i missed the point with your suggestions.

connect : try the polygon slice tool. (alt +c) you can select as an option to slice only what you selected so that you could slice only an area instead of a complete poly loop.
however : i do like the connect workflow too. it could be a great add on.

totally agree about history. Modo seriously needs a construction history.

#222

it actually wouldnt drop performance THAT much if its added in properly. xsi doesnt slow down that quickly and that option is there. it usually takes about 20-30 minutes of constant adding of operations before its slow. so every 30 minutes, freezing a model once, thats not so bad. plus toward the end of the modelling process you are mainly making tweaks to the surface anyway, and thats a minor hit, compared to bevel operations and what not.

i just cant believe that modo doesnt have this in there. well, ive gotten used to it now and dont mind it much, but when it was first released, and being advertized as a “next gen” modeller, without history. almost seemed like an inside joke, where a patch would be released. its definitely gotten a lot better since 101, but i still believe its got too many of lightwaves short commings in there.

#223

totally agree about that.
Modo is better than Lw modeler and adds painting, rendering preview, rendering engine, and baking. but even if its better than what Lw offers in these areas, is not so far from it to be highly innovative, both in its philosophy and workflow.

Also, Lw + f prime beats in speed Modo and Iview, and so, for common tasks you get better feedback there.

I hope that, since as time passes Modo gets better and better, Lux will add things like history, a nodal shading syetem, and naturally great CA tools. the current modelling tools will surely improve too, and maybe new ones will be added.

I think its more a question of time and Modo becoming a mature app.

#224

Hello!

Thanks for the very thoughtful answers Nemoid and Ambient-Whisper.
I hope I didn’t come off as if I’m bashing the app, I really love it. I just miss some of my tools from previous software I’d worked with.

@Nemoid:

  • Lattice deformation has been a huge time saver in terms of modelling in my experience. I like the soft move tool a lot. In fact, generally speaking, the sheer range of falloff options available to Modo puts to shame most apps I’ve worked with in that regard. I do however think a lattice deformer would be great for general reshaping. Maybe it’s just me though.

  • The smooth tool is pretty nifty, and I generally use it with the airbrush falloff set to mutiply which has given me rather nice results, but it still doesn’t even come close to XSI’s Relax tool IMO. It’s hard to explain the difference between them unless you actually use them (I hunted down some vids at softimage’s website but couldn’t find any). The results with the relax tool are flawless nearly all the time. I wish I knew more about the way it acheives them so I could explain better the process involved.

  • About the slice tool: that tool is wonderful and I could never do without, but it was my understanding from watching the vid that this new tool would place the resulting edge loop not smack down in the middle of the polygon but instead make it follow the curve that would result from subdividing the object. I’m not sure if that’s the way it works, but it would be terrific for organic modeling, where adding an edge loop usually means having to go back and push those edges allong their normals to make them confrom to the curvature of the mesh instead of flattening that specific area.

@Ambient-Whisper:

Hey, I recognize you from Tweak! It’s nice running into you here as well. Thank you for pointing out to me that a construction history wouldn’t bog down Modo. That’s good news to hear and I really hope they incorporate it into a new release. It would be definite plus for me.

#225

thanx for elaborating andrespalma
about slicing,
with loop slice tool (alt+c) you can slice only selected polygons and not only In the middle, but you can decide the number of slices it does, if they’re uniform or free, place em where you want.

as for following the curve the shape would have once subdivided you don’t have that, basically because subpatches aren’t nurbs and an edgeloop is not like an isoparm unfortunately. what you’re actually cutting is a loop of polygons 8you can see this activating the cage when working in subpatch or toggling from subpatch to polygons and vice versa)

instead , when slicing in Modo you can set depth amount (which is kinda an innovation compared to lightwave 3d bandsaw tool) so that ou can get something similar to what you ask for, but not the same. :frowning:

it surely would be nifty to have such a feature tho.

#226

modo (as well as many other 3D apps, like Lightwave, 3dsMax, XSI…) seems to have some problems to import OBJs files with n-gons.
Here’s the same OBJ file imported in modo and then in C4D, wich imports OBJs perfectly.

Thanks!

#227

Hmmm … I find C4D to be greatly lacking with obj support. I usually have better luck with any other app, that was until the new RipTide plugin was updated, now it is perfect in C4d.

-Jim

#228

Blender seems to do it pretty well too. It’s a shame I’m having problems to export to LWO (Phyton error messages)… I’ll keep trying.
–EDIT: it reads the n-gons OBJ ok, and it’s shown in the viewport with no problems, but
it seems to triangulate everything to do that… so…–
modo is supposed to be the “…most advanced polygonal and subdivision surface 3D modeling environment available”. It should import OBJs correctly, I guess… :rolleyes:

Thanks!

#229

Does it render like that? If not, go into preferences then opengl and disable VBO. That should stop that happening.

#230

Hi,

Unfortunately it renders like that. It’s not an OpenGL problem, it’s just modo seems to have some problems importing OBJs. It seems like it doesn’t triangulate internally complex n-gons properly. If you reduce the n-gons size, it gets better, but still gives some problems.
Another thing is, it’s like it doesn’t read the normals smoothig information from the OBJ.

It would be great if one of the new 301 features was a better OBJ importer, like Maya or Cinema 4D have.

Thanks!

#231

if you add animation engine, why not dynamics engine ?

#232

Because that’s a completely different story.

#233

Wings had this great way of handling material presets. New materials could be imported as a part of a seperate scene and would appear in the scene graph where they cold be applied b right clicking.

It would be good to see somehting like this in modo.

#234

Whoa!

Huge thread here…

Some great posts and suggestions for features.

I recently switched over to modo and im loving it! I’ve never picked up a 3D program so quickly and Im loving its power and ease of use and I know I’ve only scratched the surface.

Off the top of my head here are a few things that I think Modo should have more of:

  1. RIGGING!

It be cool to see some FK/IK and stuff like that for character modelers. But I would also love to see some rigging tools designed specifically for motion graphics artists. The morph targets already work pretty good for some basic things. I would love to see some mograph features. I feel that is a slightly untapped market in the 3D biz (of coarse i have been out of it for awhile).
By mograph rigging features I would love to see easy set up for stuff like growing objects (vines, trees) and flourishes.
But like I said I am new to modo so some functions for stuff like that might already be there and I just havent found them yet.

  1. PARTICLES/DYNAMICS

:smiley:

those 2 things would make me 2x happy with modo and would also mean we could move away from the lightwave/max combo we use at the studio here and go 100% modo.

#235

Somebody please could tell me where can i find Modo movies about Action Centers, which can be found at
C:/Program Files/Luxology/modo 302/help/pages/video/ActionCenters/ActionCenters-01.mp4
etc but i don’t have any…

#236

Hey gang, checkout:

http://moderator.appspot.com/#e%3Dagltb2RlcmF0b3JyDQsSBlNlcmllcxjvXww

#237

LINUX SUPPORT!!!

#238

IK / FK rigging and movement for true bipedal animation.

Particles and physics (especially gravity).

Nodal based materials editor.

Those are the big three for me.

#239

The three linux users that showed an interest wasn’t offestting the work it takes to support it. This is a dead horse.

#240

I would LOVE to see a simple import feature built-in for importing Daz/Poser figures inside Modo. Something that just points to a “.pz3” scene or character and will place it in, adjust materials, size etc. all with ease. Personally, I use the Daz characters because I do hi-res renders and those figures have tons of clothing, hair and such.

The other feature I would like is the ability to fully pose the figures and use the “morph dials” channels just like in Poser but with Modo too. That way I can setup the seen fully inside Modo without having to pose them first or use a program like Poser. All the work could be done in Modo.

Thanks.