Modo Painting

#1

I’ve been using Modo for a few years now, since early after 301 and now with 401.
One thing that really impressed me with 301 was the sculpting and painting. Not that I was blown away by the sculpting, which is still pretty rudimentary compared to ZBrush and Mudbox, but the painting impressed me in that I could finally paint in symmetry.

And I could forget about Deep Paint 3D forever, which is what I had been using, since 2001 or thereabouts.

So along came Modo 401 and I was really kind of dismayed to see that the painting hadn't received any love. Far as I can tell, nothing had been improved.
So I've been blissfully ignoring its glaring deficiencies when compared to certain other programs and still continuing to work with it, to occasionally fight with it too.

Then I tried Mudbox. Uh-oh... symmetry? Yes. Great brushes and great brush controls? Yes. Awesome OpenGL hardware acceleration? Yes. Easy to customize and use and quick response? Yes and yes....
Umm, it also doesn't do wacky things like make my polys look like they're floating or warping or moving when they're being painted on. Modo's OpenGL is almost always doing something weird when I try to paint and sometimes it gets really distracting.

And of course being able to go into projection or paint 2D on the map in an instant is a huge plus for Mudbox…

Alright so is Luxology planning on doing anything with the paint tools?
One thing I've loved about Modo is that I've been able to do almost everything with it that I need to do. I don't do CA, so that's not an issue. I use ZBrush for some sculpting with Modo, but generally I use ZBrush by itself and not for Modo scenes if you know what I mean.

It's been great to be able to model, map, paint and render all in one program, but suddenly I'm thinking I'm going to have to add Mudbox to my pipeline. And that kinda pisses me off because I really can't afford it, or rather, it wasn't in my plan to have to. I'm also thinking I can't afford NOT to.

So is Lux planning on giving the paint some love or have they done as much with it as they're going to do? I love Modo sincerely in all other respects and I hate to say it, but its painting can't even remotely compete with Mudbox as it is right now.
#2

I understand your frustrations with Modo texturing at the moment, it could use some improvements in terms of speed and quality but let’s hope Lux has that in store for 501. There has not yet been any word about any texturepainting related fixes and additions in 501 so i cannot answer that.

However you say you have Zbrush, well if you are running release 4 then you could utilize GoZ with Modo 401 and simply paint your textures nicely and smoothly in Zbrush, transfer them back to Modo and so on. It works like a charm until Lux delivers their improved tools and workflows for their texturepainting tools.

/ Magnus

#3

I really do hope they have painting improvements in store for Modo 501, but as you say, I haven’t heard anything about that.
Far as painting with ZBrush, I love it, but for poly painting only. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but whenever I convert a high res poly paint to an image map for a lower res model, it bleeds. I think this is because ZBrush is really only using vertex points to interpolate when it does the conversion, so the detail isn’t that great. Modo does a much better job of painting an actual UV mapped model IMO.
Yeah, I’m running ZB 4, but I haven’t yet really looked into GoZ because I haven’t had the time to devote to messing with it yet. I thought it was for normal and displacement maps, never thought about regular textures.
At any rate I’ve read about alot of problems with Modo and GoZ on the Pixo forum, enough to make me think I need to wait until I have the time to learn it. As it is, it’s not crucial to what I’m doing at the moment.
I pretty much view ZB as something I do separately though. I love ZBrush to the bone in a huge way, but I’ve never used ZB in my workflow before, in conjunction with other programs. What happens in ZBrush stays in ZBrush. :wink:

Well here’s to hoping for painting improvements in Modo 501 anyway. :smiley:

It’s funny though, now that I’ve had a taste of painting in Mudbox, it almost pains me to do it with Modo. Not like Modo’s painting is bad, just that Mudbox’s is so much better.

#4

GoZ works a charm with Modo and Zbrush 4 on my system, no problems at all.

If you’re really considering buying Mudbox for painting alone (you already have Zbrush), maybe you should look at Mari, it’s a little cheaper and probably even better for texture painting.

#5

I love Modo, but the painting tools really need some serious rework. Can’t even tell how many times I have cursed the program when I tried to paint or sculpt on an object and simply nothing happened when I dragged over the object.

You are right, as good as the new spotlight features work in Zbrush, converting the polypaint to a texture that can be used in other programs can be a hassle sometimes. Also, I don’t really like the entire concept of painting details being dependent on poly count.

As frog said above, you might want to give Mari a try. I will get it myself as soon as the Windows version is released later this year.

#6

Mari does look very cool, but I too would have to wait for the Windows version.
I think I would in fact prefer that over Mudbox for painting, but I have to wait and see until the Windows version is available. Not that I’m opposed to Linux, but I don’t have Linux and don’t have the time to install and learn a new OS, not to mention having to install all Linux drivers for my hardware too.

I’m pretty sure that what happens in Zbrush is that since you’re not really painting on a 2D texture like you are “in the background” in Modo or Mudbox, when ZB goes to transfer your Polypaint to a UV map, it only looks at the vertex points on the model and compares them to the vertex points on the UV map, then interpolates the brush strokes in between in order to generate the map. So in a lower resolution model, you get too much stretching and bleeding on the polygon faces that won’t happen when you do it in 2D or in a specialized 3D UV painting environment. For as awesome as ZBrush is for sculpting and poly painting (and now overall modeling too!), it’s not much for creating 2D textures for use in other apps.
Strangely enough, it seems to do a better job of creating normal and displacement maps than texture maps though. shrug

Well, I still love Modo! I use Softimage too, but in so many ways Modo blows SI away, especially when it comes to modeling. I couldn’t imagine not having Modo for modeling - it would depress me to the point where I’d have to find something else to do for a living. :wink:
I might end up having to go with Mudbox or Mari for 3D painting in general, but I do hope that Lux can give Modo’s painting some love. :slight_smile:

I think Modo’s strongest point that it has going for it is that it is already an app some people can use for the entire process, from modeling to mapping to painting to detailing through normal maps and displacements, to rendering and some animating… fur… it’s virtually a self-contained 3D factory and getting better all the time, so it stands to reason they should want to improve it ALL to keep it that way.

I worry though that they added sculpting and painting back in 301 as a way to try to capture some of the Zbrush/Silo/Mudbox user’s interest and never had any intention of taking it any further. I was genuinely surprised to see virtually no improvement or added features for either in Modo 401.

#7

Actually, Mari is more expensive than Mudbox. You can’t buy it without maintenance. It’s $900 vs. $745 for Mudbox (although this doesn’t include maintenance). Also, that’s the list price for Mudbox, you can usually get it cheaper than that. For instance, it’s $636 on Amazon.

#8

Sorry, I was basing this on UK pricing, where Mari sells for £600 + VAT including maintenance, and Mudbox is £700 + VAT.

Of course in the US the pricing is different, Mudbox is cheaper.

#9

I didn’t even notice. I haven’t even priced Mari, haven’t even paid any attention to it at all yet, being that it’s not on Windows yet, so I just assumed it would be cheaper than Mudbox anyway being that all it does is paint.

Mudbox though IMO is way overpriced anyway. Well I guess that stands to reason being that it’s an Autodesk product. :wink:
If Pixologic can sell ZBrush for less than Mudbox AND give out free updates (not just service releases either), then I would think Autodesk could drop a couple hundred off Mudbox’s price. Not like I expect that any time soon. :wink:
I haven’t paid for ZBrush since I bought 3.0, something like 3 years ago, and got 3.1, 3.5 and now 4.0 for free. That’s unheard of.
And Mudbox can’t do half of what ZBrush can do… although its texture painting is far superior.

#10

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