To buy modo or not?

#10

Great responses - I am a LW user since the original toaster version so I’m very used to LW modeler :wink: I wish Lux had a demo version so I could just give it a whirl myself. And I think the price is a bit high - but in comparison to some other apps it’s not that bad I suppose. Ahh decisions decisions … :slight_smile:

#11

I know, I’m soo alone . . . touch me.

#12

all I am saying . . . . I gives peace a chance

#13

Lovisx…what age are you may I ask? :rolleyes:

Modo, certainly improved my workflow speed. The amount of action centers available and macro record features make some of the nightmare tasks form other modeling applications a breeze.

Cheers.

#14

I have several apps - LW, XSI, modo, Silo, Wings3d, Amapi Pro, C4d R9, Maya, Houdini apprentice …

modo is a very able app and has a lot of nice touches, it continues to grow on me. modo’s main weakness for me is a lack of some form of construction history. So, in that respect, it’s very much like LW.

For example, if I extrude a poly along a curve spline, I can’t adjust the spline and have the extruded object update, nor can I adjust the poly shape and have it update. I have to undo and readjust the spline and then extrude again. I know there’s some arguments against a construction history - but having a small subset is all that’s needed. Also trying to line up the poly to the end of the spline is a bit maddening for a modern app.

Again, if you’re coming from LW, then it’ll feel lightyears ahead of it’s predecessor and will be the easiest of transitions … but, if you use something like XSI, then it may not floor you as the be-all end-all of SubD modeleres. :slight_smile:

#15

okay, so I’m a troll, I’m immature, I need to get a brain, I don’t listen, and there are certain taboos that I should understand before ever posting anything.

one thing I am sure of though, is that with wings loosing its major support bjorn, I probably will have to eventually save up for modo, as it kind of has a monopoly on high end modelers. But for now I will put on my wings and fly away. Mind you with modo’s current price I couldn’t afford it even if I wanted it.

I remember hearing upgrades for modo were free, is this ture. If upgrades were always free, then for sure I’d buy modo

#16

yeah, I came from a maya background and found modo to be very counter intuitive… coming from a maya background

#17

Service upgrades are free…but a major upgrade that includes new features will cost us.

I didnt mean to imply anything regarding yourself…just that no one has bad mouthed Wings and slammed others choices, so I dont think its that welcomed here.

Cheers.

#18

i come from all background, CAD/DCC. Using modo and jumping to Maya 6.5 was counter intuitive for me. IMO if you use any one software for a long period of time, you’ll find that jumping to another software “counter intuitive”, in that sense its a very subjective matter.

wings is ok, but i prefer Mirai :smiley:

as for waether to buy Modo or not, i’d say wait for the next major release, 1.02 added a host of improvements(and its only a .01 update), however that aside, there still alot of customization that you cant do to the GUI, mouse button. But if you dont really care about the things i mention…go ahead and buy it, in the end its your money.

#19

lovisx, I dont make a point of personally attacking people but both of the last 2 threads I read of yours seemed counter productive considering this is a modo forum :smiley:

Have you checked out silo, for $109 its pretty damned good, though I like wings as well, silo is a tad cheaper than modo for the moment.

Cheers

MunCH

#20

Really? You should try giving “proper grammar” a chance! :slight_smile:

j/p

harlan

#21

I’ve never used Mirai, I’d love to try it. I hear it’s starting to be developed again. Are there any demos by chance out there?

sorry, sometimes I think one thing and type another, it’s almost like a dislexia (I can’t spell either)

#22

lol… no worries mate, it was just funny.

ciao

#23

max users dont adapt to modo so easily, i wish they made a configuration like they did for maya and lw. scene navigating takes a while to get used to everytime i start max. anyone know how to change the mappings for pan, rotate zoom. and if modo is an advanced modeller wat is lw?

#24

i get the feeling modo is very lightwave centric…in its concept and workflow…then as an after thought maya users have been considered.

just wonder what c4d/xsi users would find as an incentive to purchasing modo? you’d expect to see major benefits otherwise you’d just tend to model native in those apps.

it does look yummie…but as no demo unable to tell whether it is a workflow that would suit.
i don’t have any lightwave experience so wonder how non lightwave users would get to grips/up to speed with its method of doing things.

any comments/info

cheers.:thumbsup:

#25

one thing that is interesting, look at the bios on the luxology homepage for the senior programmers/staff from luxology. Almost every single one of them worked for lightwave some for the entire life of the company. So that’s why modo is so lightwave centered. The people who designed it practically invented lightwave :-P. Well I guess maybe not but the guy who ported it individually on his own to the mac did that soyeah.

Anyways it’s nice to see you in here flingster I recently bit the bullet and bought the student version :-P. It’s a good little app but i don’t have cinema nine. That’s one reason I got it cinema nine has got some awesome tools n-gons etc. but this is far cheaper for me, 99 vs. 299 for a new copy of c4d. Anyways that was my reasoning but i haven’t used cinema nine much :-/. I do really like modo’s tools and speed. One thing though that makes modo so powerful is the fact that you have an ENTIRE keyboard layout only for modelling. As opposed to a “full funcition” app like cinmea in which case alot of your keyboard shorts won’t be necessarily just for modeling.

modo is a damn good app, has a few stability issues but once you get it working like you want it to work it is quite stable. Not as stabile as cinmea 7 or 8 but then again I doubt any program is THAT stable. Stability is modo’s only weak point the rest is highly efficent stream lined modeling :-).

#26

thanks jiii.
i appreciate the info…i knew a lot of the devs from lightwave had moved over…but seems very marketed to lightwavers which is by no means a bad thing…just thought it was curious do develop a modeller and then tailor it so much to only one part of the marketplace. i’ve seen the odd max user say the transition wasn’t as easy as they’d expected…obviously sounds like lightwavers are having no trouble which is to be expected.

stability is v important to me really even more so if i pay good money for an app at this price point…to be fair though, this is a first release so some of this sort of thing is to be expected…its more important to see how luxology respond to this in my eyes.

modo seems to have some nice features in truth but its whether the core functions of its workflow and modelling toolset are enough to draw users from modelling direct in apps like max/xsi/c4d etc? from the articles in the press i’ve read seems to be showing off workflow ability…eg i can model or i can model quicker in modo. coming from a c4d background where its interface is configurable…i can really appreciate this as a selling point…its one of those. until you have it you don’t realise how important it is …and once you have it you don’t want to go back to the old ways…then there is the speed of how things are done…is its workflow faster than the rest…dunno would need to try a demo i guess.
my general feeling is its expensive…BUT if its that good then i’m not surprised at cost…its just being able to see the benefits to me as a customer.

why would i use modo to model rather than c4d or xsi?

how do i know c4d/xsi/max users are being catered for and focus is not only for lightwave/maya people? meaning what does the future hold for users from other apps…continued support and broadening…or continued focus for lightwave/max users?

#27

Well you’d use Modo for C4D & XSI in the same manner you’d use it for LW & Maya. It’s a great subdivision surface & polygon modeler that offers a very intuitive, unique, and user friendly workflow. It takes a day or two to learn it’s conventions, and you can really set it up to your style of working (including custom interfaces, scripts, etc…).

The only thing in Modo that caters specifically to the LW & Maya crowds is the native file I/O support and the inclusion of pre-built keyboard & mouse shortcuts that are either LW or Maya centric. Other than that, it works great for any app that supports OBJ files. There are even some 3rd party I/O options for Modo right now as well (rib & ASE). You could even code your own I/O plugin if you were so inclined to do so.

DV magazine (I think it was DV) did a write up about Modo and showed how well the Modo Sub-D’s export over to C4D perfectly.

I can certainly understand the minor learning curve involved when coming from Max or another app, but in Modo, the gains certainly outweigh the costs.

#28

I’ve started learning modo again so as not to be a complete ass, but I still find it’s workflow to be no faster then any other app. Really this program sells because of user preference or curiosity, or because the interface is eye candy. It faults something truly revolutionary though. Perhaps more tools like zbrush, which has done so much for modeling. It needs to perhaps build on it’s macro tools, which are on the brink of being revolutionary. But at this point they’re just one step up from what you can already do in other apps with a little programming knowledge.

I like the idea of modo, a continually evolutioning edge loop modeling program. Perhaps it’s not worth the price right now, but in a year or too, with the money that’s going into it. And with the user input that’s going into it, it will become much better. It aught to have updates more often.

so let the lovisx bashing begin, as he once again posts his opinion.

#29

Nah, we won’t bash ya but I will say this. If you buy a 1.** app you can pretty much expect that. I don’t mean a renamed power animator but a NEW app. The stability issues are really only present during UI customization after that it’s quite smoth sailing. Myself I find modo alot faster. Of course i had to heavily modify the keyboard short cuts for that seeing as I use the mouse on the lefthand side of my keyboard but now I have it worked out so that I can do pretty much anything and with quite improved speed over most apps.

Yes the macro tools are on the brink of revolutionary, the fact is this IS a 1.** app and you get what you pay for. In this instance you paid for a 1.** app. End of story imho.

Personally I think that Luxology will respond well to the stability issues, at least I hope they do. A company that can’t respond well to stability issues shudder. Let’s just say if they DON’T respond well I may just switch back to being a Cinema man. I simply don’t like it when companies don’t respond to those isssues like stability which should, quite frankly, embarass them as programmers. I mean non-stable app is like a head full of tri’s during animation.

I don’t mean to bash luxology in any way I just assume that professional pride, if anything, will get these stability issues worked out. But as I said in a previous post, it’s been a full day since modo crashed and burned on me which is a new personal record :-). Once the app gets used to customized settings it seems to run like a charm, as advertised.

Just my thoughts and don’t forget it’s 1.** app. Any cinema users out there remember MOCCA 1.**? shudder lol.