Iam planning to model a few characters in modo so that i can use them in my rigging reel as Iam not getting the desired model. I want to know how good is modo in importing and exporting models in and out of Maya. Does it imports both and NURBS and Poly’s in and out from Maya?
How good is modo in organic character modelling since I have only seen modo used for inorganic models in all the tuts i have seen so far. I haven’t seen anyone model a kickass organic model so far from modo. Is worth the effort and the time to learn modelling or should i stick to maya inbuilt modelling system?
The main idea is here is to get good models as fast as possible so that I can concentrate on rigging that i want to get in. But i was just thinking maybe modo modelling is faster than what it is in maya as maya’s tools r a little outdated and need plugins to work faster.
So pls understand my needs and guide me accordingly. 
Maya import and export
For your first question, about importing/exporting, modo does a pretty good job importing Maya files. modo only has a super small NURBS portion, which is really just an extension of the poly/subd modeling, so it can’t import any NURBS, but it’ll get poly models just fine.
Concerning character modeling, modo is actually used quite a lot for the not super-detailed models. A pretty common workflow is to make the base mesh in modo, bring it into Zbrush or Mudbox for sculpting, and then render in modo.
Go through the gallery on the Lux website (http://www.luxology.com), and there should be quite a few. I’ll pick three artists in particular who stand out, and all of them use modo for base meshes.
Khalid Muharraqi’s character work: http://www.muharraqi-studios.com/muharraqi_gallery.php?cat=CHARACTORS
Rick Baker: http://www.luxology.com/community/profiles/rbaker/
and Jacques Defontaine, who usually models in modo, sculpts in ZB or MB, and then renders in modo: http://jacquesd.cgsociety.org/gallery/
and also http://content.luxology.com/gallery/2b903eae187cd3acda2f9dd7e6da9fb3.jpg
From personal experience, I used Maya for about 3 years before modo. I’ve found that I can model considerably faster in modo now, but it was hard to learn. For some tasks, I would favor the concept of NURBS (I used to use Rhino, also), but some of modo’s innovations speed up modeling way more than enough to make up for that - particularly the workplane, action centers, and falloffs.
How good is it at making organic models? that’s a funny question. It’s a Sub-D modeling environment which many might argue is not up to the take of mechanical modeling in general. 
Seriously though, Modo was made for organic modeling from the start. It just so happens that Arch/Vis people need a modeler and a high quality render (no animation) so modo suits those people very well (301 will change this in a big way). It’s being built from the ground up to become a full-fledged 3d behemoth though. I would be hard pressed to recommend another product that could do a better job. Modeling tools aside, the renderer is outstanding. It’s the only one that can give Vray a run for the money (they both cost about the same and modo comes with modeling tools ;D ). Anyway, I just have to ask but, what do you consider “Kick ass” organic models? do you have any examples?
As far as Maya is concerned, there is a really great feature that modo has where you can make morph shapes in it (with the best interface for doing it in my opinion) and export a maya ascii file that will load up into maya as blend shapes, all set and ready to animate. Very cool! I have come upon a few troubles now and then. Maya doesn’t seem to like the sub-Ds sometimes so you just have to turn them off before export (just hit the <TAB> key) and some of the materials don’t come across all the time. but that’s no show stopper for me. One thing I’m really looking forward to is animating in Maya and exporting an mdd file (animated point cache) and then bringing that back into Modo for output in it’s higher quality renderer.
Have you used this? As an intern I tested this recently and it didn’t work, but I was using the Maya PLE. Or maybe it was a version compatibility issue (i.e. Maya 8.5 doesn’t work, but other versions of Maya files do)?
Yep. It works very well. I’ve been doing it for the past week. Works Much better then the rest of the imported data actually. 
And, I’m using 8.5 so I would guess that it’s maybe a limitation of the PLE version?
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