Man. I keep hearing good thigns about modo, and it seems that for most people character rigging and animation was the last big piece missing.

Question for the modo users: how well integrated are modo's sculpting and painting tools, does it work as seamlessly as the pr suggests? do you use them?

having all those things united in a single program is an exciting prospect.

Yeah, I have the same question as cptSwing. Is it possible to model something rough using regular polygon modelling, and then work on it at high subdivision levels using simple native Modo sculpting brushes ? Add, Smooth, Grab, Pinch, Flatten and Mask would be enough. Silo can somehow do that but it is way too unstable to be useful.

I wouldn't necessarily need to be able to adjust the supporting flow of lvl 0, but that would be a huge plus too.

[edit] Wait a minute ... they have a "try Modo" page but no trial download available ?? Way to shoot oneself in the foot ...

I used Modo 501 at my last studio job and I really wanted to love it, I really did. But it was missing a few key things that I use in Maya that took a lot of messing around to get to work in Modo (I would bitch to Pedro Amorim about this A LOT).
The modeling tools were really nice and it was easy to get the hang of. I'll have to give 601 a go.

Modo is quite good for subdivision modelling (just that), but as many of you already know, it hasn't got all the features we can find in max, such as the great amount of modifiers and tools (example: path deform).

For sculpting like Zbrush the answer in a NO NO, and for painting, 501 sucks a lot, its tools are very very primitive and it gives me too many problems.

Another thing is how modo handles the uvs. We have linear a smoothed uvs (included borders). Max and the other apps does not have this, and with the imported displacement maps from mudbox or Zbrush, all it's a headache.

It's renderer it's fast and simple, and it CAN'T be compared with Vray or Mental Ray.

One of the big points is that you can model with the sculpting tools and it makes the workflow faster than in any other software. You can work with a high detailed subdiv model like in Zbrush or Mudbox.

I still use 302, i tried 401 & 501, and the perfomance in viewports fell down a lot. 301 offers the double of perfomance in viewports than 302 and i still don't understand that. I only hope to see that the new features don't bloat the app, making its load time slower and its perfomance more crappy than with 501.

Like all apps, it has too many flaws, but for subdiv modelling it's the best app, and you don't need a quadro like with Max, in order to work well with subdivs with millions of polygons.

I'm sure there will be a trial version soon

cptSwing and pior: Yes, they are fully integrated, great for just busting up and putting dents in hardsurface models. Stuff like just bringing up sculpting and then slightly smooth out a hard edge to get some varying hardness is great. The performance is not the best though, its not like zbrush, but yeah, for me it has removed zbrush from my workflow in many, many cases. Its also pretty nice because you can still use the regular modellingtools even if you are sculpting on something, for example if you realize you want more resolution in one particular spot you can just cut a few extra lines there and its done. I use the sculpting alot at work.

modo is like a super hot teenage girl where you cannot wait till she turns 18.

Blaizer : would you say that with 301, I could block in a mesh (500 tris), sculpt some stuff in at high resolution (simple brushing or grap to shape a cheekbone or a rough ear), then go back to the low and redirect my flow accordingly ? And leter on, go back to the high and refine (very roughly) with sculpting tools ?

Pior, it sounds more than anything like a solid version of Silo when it comes to the sculpting and traditional model editing workflow when combining the two on the go.

Pior, with modo we have a similar way to sculpt like in Zbrush, you put more levels in the subdiv, and you can add more detail, and then go to the lower level. But its perfomance it's pretty bad, and the worse, you see the patches...

I use to model from a very basic low poly (boxes extruded), i adjust with the scultp tools, i subdivide, and then.. i refine the mesh adding loops, more bevels and some cuts. And i don't need more tools, all is done with some shortcuts.

Something like this, that can be done really fast, then you subdivide and you can use the pinch tool, smooth brush, etc.

On the left the level 0 with the subdivision turned off, and at the right the model subdivided x1 and edited a bit with the scultp tools.

Yeah, thats exactly the kind of quality I am looking for. I guess the question would be, how easy is it to redirect topology once a shape is established with the sculpt tool (I'd love to be able to start from a sphere, push and pull stuff around, and then "retopo" the base level accordingly). I'll just have to try it If anything, your workflow seems very good too.

Can't wait to try it all again, I'll try 301 while waiting for the 601 demo eventually. I am really looking forward to finding a nice unified way to spit out sculpted blockouts really fast. If Max had simple sculpting tool it would be all I need but I don't think Autodesk programs will ever go in this direction now that they are pushing forward with the Mudbox bridge connection instead (great for asset production but not so unified)

Exciting!

On a side note, what about the tool shown at 3:20 here ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=zZal9aMnrO4#

This seems great to add quick, low fidelity details to a blockout. Any of you guys used it ?

OMG. The new features on this looks awesummeee! Modo completely sold me with there superior modeling tools. Glad to see they have beefed it up!

pior: that tool at 3.20 is just the same sculpting tools. You can have alphas, pinching, carving, different kind of brushes etc just like in zbrush, but not at quite the same performancelevel. And I think in modo 301 they didnt have all the sculpting in yet?

Originally Posted by Snefer

cptSwing and pior: Yes, they are fully integrated, great for just busting up and putting dents in hardsurface models. Stuff like just bringing up sculpting and then slightly smooth out a hard edge to get some varying hardness is great. The performance is not the best though, its not like zbrush, but yeah, for me it has removed zbrush from my workflow in many, many cases. Its also pretty nice because you can still use the regular modellingtools even if you are sculpting on something, for example if you realize you want more resolution in one particular spot you can just cut a few extra lines there and its done. I use the sculpting alot at work.

That sounds pretty like i'd be happy with modo, then. definitely not a heavy user of sculpting apps, so cutting the 'middle man' out would be great ;)

the viewport painting, any good?

cptSwing, the painting is very generic, but it can be handy sometimes.

i personally would love to hear the opinion from experts in other fields than modeling/texturing.
how is the modo renderer? am i able to produce the same quality images as max or maya etc? are any other renderers supporting modo, like vray?
are the animation tools good enough yet to compete or will i still need additional software to get good results?
hows the particle system, cloth simulation etc. for vfx?

This is all modo for example:

RUIN: Teaser Trailer - YouTube

I dont think there are other renderers that support modo, no, but the renderer is very capable. its very easy to use, but it lacks some of the custom things you would like to have, though. As for animation, I have no clue yet : D And cloth sim and volumetric particles were just added, so no idea there either : D

Hmm, that looks awesome, but, I just looked that up and found:

"While that shot was done in Modo, I found it just wasn’t able to handle a scene this complex. So it was off to my old friend Lightwave."

http://www.oddballanimation.com/archives/914

Originally Posted by pior

[edit] Wait a minute ... they have a "try Modo" page but no trial download available ?? Way to shoot oneself in the foot ...

The trial page disappeared when 601 released. I downloaded the previous trial just minutes before :o

Trial downloads were temporarily disabled upon upgrade releases in the past to allow the customer base to grab their paid for upgrades first. Lux couldn't handle the server demand on new releases, which is also why they would release torrents as well. Not sure if this is still the case, but I would expect the trial for 601 to be available very soon. I upgraded mostly for the long awaited animation tools. Using bones in modo feels like a neat little mix of blender and messiah.

Been putting 501 through its paces last few days while waiting on the 601 demo to be released. It's better then I thought it would be in some ways, and worse in others. A few points of interest for those looking at it as a replacement for Max or Maya

The default UV tools are not nearly as efficient as those found in Max 2012, but better then the defaults in earlier versions of Max.
Component sliding is really bad if you have more then one vertex/edge selected at a time, unless they are selected as a closed loop.
Splines are closer to those found in Maya (or Lightwave I guess) then Max.
There is no FFD for modeling or cage support for baking.
Convert Selection between component types requires an entire component to be encompassed before it will be selected (so if you wanted to select a face all of the verts it was made up of would need to be selected, not just one).
Has the same problem as in Maya where you'll sometimes get double-edges.
paint has stencils and stamps, but no proper layers (you can use separate maps stacked on each other however to emulate layers with no blending modes) or projection painting via an app link.

From what I've read none of that has been changed in 601.

One neat feature is the file browser used for kit bashing (Layout tab). You can just drag/drop meshes from it directly on to the surface of others in the scene.

Modo is quite good for subdivision modelling (just that), but as many of you already know, it hasn't got all the features we can find in max, such as the great amount of modifiers and tools (example: path deform).

I've never used max's path deform for a real job, ever. So I'm good I guess!

Still, the only reason I might not like modo 601, is if it turns out buggy as shyt! We'll see...

Good info Rabbid_Cheeze. Thanks.

i also read on the luxology forums that rendering is like up to 20% slower in this release.
not that it would affect me much as a game artist, but for everyone this is a big issue.
might just be something that'll get fixed soon, tho

For me the rendering is not slower at all. And i dont know, its pretty fast to begin with, I almost never render anything that takes longer than five minutes though : D Sometimes 10-20 if i go with 128 AA or so when rendering DOF.

Import/Export have some bad scale issues with obj, and there don't seem to be any settings related to that. FBX works fine, but apps like ZBrush wont accept other formats. How are the regular Modo users here getting around that? I can't even find a way to export selected