What is it about Modo?

#1

Why is it that I see a lot of artists using Maya(or other apps that clearly have modeling tools built in) and Modo in their pipleline. What does Modo’s modeling tools have that Maya’s does not?

#2

As best as I can say, Maya and many of the others paved the way to what we are seeing in modo. The people @ modo have been in the industry a long time, and 3d has been affordable for quite awhile now,(more people using it, more people commenting on it, both new users as well as experienced users, so it is easier to get a fresh look at what it is we are trying to accomplish. I imagine this will happen several times in the near future, it is a bit of a snowball effect.

My 2 cents.

-Jim

#3

Well, obviously I am going to be kind of biased (check my profile info under my avatar), but here is a fairly long answer to why I love modo. Note that Maya was my app of choice for 3 years before modo, and Rhino before that.

Before you read my giant post, let me say the conclusion first so you can decide whether my fanboyishness is worth going over ;)… download the trial of modo. If you’re really a NURBS guy like I used to be, you will probably be annoyed at the lack of NURBS and the way things are done in polys/subds. But once you get over that methodology difference, you realize how awesomely modo does what it does. Anyway, on to my rant.

The best thing about modo is really how intuitive it is. Nothing seems overly complicated, and after picking up the basics I’ve found that you rarely need help on figuring out how to use features or do something. It’s about as close to the “make art” button as I think any software has come. It’s amazing how something like global illumination is really basically just checking a box in the render settings. Of course it has all the options to tweak it to perfection (well, okay, the GI engine actually needs some work for archviz interior shots, but that work is being done for 301), but it requires no setup and all the settings are in one place. I used GI as an example because it’s easy to explain, but the same applies to the modeling. The best way to say it is that everything works as you expect it to.

The next major reason is the kind of three modeling “innovations” that modo uses: workplanes, falloffs, and action centers. I put innovations in quotes because it’s not the first app to implement any of them (actually, I don’t know about workplanes), but I feel that it’s the first to get them all right and to integrate them as solidly as they are. It’s difficult to explain them in detail, but the idea is that workplanes can fluidly change the axes tools operate on, action centers are the “pivot” points that tools operate on, and falloffs define how the tools, well, fall off. I suggest looking it up, because even the similar tools in other apps really don’t operate as well.

The third thing, which is highly understated, is the dynamic UI. All the windows/viewports etc. are all very easily customizable, to the point where you eventually just start instinctively changing the interface as you model.

The final thing, that isn’t really modo per se, is the community. Take a look over at the luxology.com forums, and you’ll see that they bustle with the level of involvement higher than most, if not all, of much larger userbase applications’ forums. People there spend enormous amounts of time helping each other and making contributions. I don’t know of any modo users who contribute on any forums, that don’t contribute the most on the Lux site.

That said, even as Lux’s intern I do feel that modo has some definite drawbacks, and really is best in conjunction to an app like Maya. For instance, there really are a lot of things that NURBS can do a lot better than polys or subD’s. And while modo is amazingly awesome at what it does, it hasn’t been around long enough to have the gigantic feature-set of Maya.

#4

Thank you very much for your feedback guys. Modo’s lack of nurbs features Will not discourage me. I’m not very fond of them. Stitching can be a real pain. I’m going to go ahead and download the trail of modo 203. Sounds like a nice piece of software. I look forward to playing around with it.

#5

I only wish there was something like Maxwell/Fry Renderer even at the expense of longer render time in Modo. Options are a good thing :wink:

I was disappointed to see the “physically accurate” implementating of Modo renderer, i was expecting Maxwell/Fry style implementation.

Hopefully, Allen can address this in the future…?

#6

I don’t think modo will ever have an unbiased renderer integrated, as almost no 3D app uses them natively, but I assure you that Allen is working hard on bringing up the interior quality, especially dealing with the “corner problem”. Whether it is “good enough”, well, you’ll see when 301 is released, if not earlier ;).

#7

Not sure if your definition of unbiased is correct. See Allen’s notes on modo and unbiased rendering:

"With the right settings, modo is capable of unbiased physically based rendering. Or you can use it more like a traditional RenderMan-style renderer. By default, it acts as a kind of hybrid between those two extremes.

I’ve been meaning to write up a document about using modo for quantitatively accurate lighting simulations. This would include restrictions on settings, such as keeping the Direct Illum Multiplier and Indirect Illum Multiplier at 100%, and keeping the shadow color of each light black. Material settings must also be plausible, for example the specular color and amount of each material should be the same as its reflection color and amount, since those actually refer to the same real world phenomena (it’s just CG tradition to divide them into direct and indirect components).

Irradiance caching is slightly biased, although the professional lighting simulator Radiance is based on it so it can’t be too bad, and of course it can always be turned off. One might think that the Ray Threshold feature is biased, but actually it’s not – those rays which are not terminated are strengthened by the right amount so that the overall expected value remains correct. Using it too heavily will increase noise though."

#8

First, sorry Cig74 for getting off topic…

Anyway, yeah… I totally mixed that statement into two different things. Shows how good I am at writing forum posts :D.

The first part was that modo’s renderer can’t just be set to physically accurate with a single checkbox (as was sort of advertised leading up to 201). It does, as you (and Allen) said, require the right settings, there is no “automatic” unbiased renderer.

The second part was entirely different regarding irradiance caching quality. I really don’t know why I brought that up… haha, I guess when I hear other renderers mentioned it’s just force of habit.

Anyway, point is that you can basically disregard whatever I say ;).

#9

First, sorry Cig74 for getting off topic…

No apology needed. Every post in this thread has in one way or another helped me understand Modo a little bit more. Messed around with it a bit over the weekend. Although I still have much to learn about the program, I was very impressed with what it is capable of. Look forward to playing with it more when I get home.

#10

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