Going from Modo to Blender
polycounter lvl 10
After more than 2 years with Modo I'm starting to look at other packages. Right now I'm consumed by studying Zbrush but I'm thinking about switching my main 3d app as well.
3d Max is out of my financial reach so I'm thinking about Blender because it's free and uses modifiers. So any fellow Modo users who switched to Blender or use it occasionally - can you elaborate on differences?
What about selections in Blender? Is it smart like Modo? Can it select polygons by angle? (Modo does it with scripts)
What about vertex normals? Can I control them and export smoothing groups in FBX?
What your general likes/dislikes about Blender? How your workflow has changed?
3d Max is out of my financial reach so I'm thinking about Blender because it's free and uses modifiers. So any fellow Modo users who switched to Blender or use it occasionally - can you elaborate on differences?
What about selections in Blender? Is it smart like Modo? Can it select polygons by angle? (Modo does it with scripts)
What about vertex normals? Can I control them and export smoothing groups in FBX?
What your general likes/dislikes about Blender? How your workflow has changed?
Replies
for me blender modeling workflow to slow Blender for sculpting riggind and anmation there is better choice like maya, zbrush, 3dcoat etc
but blender ofc viable for most of part ur work but which woth it is
if for concept modeling then better use modo mesh fusion, 3dmax, zbrush for rigging, animation Maya for texturing 3dcoat Substance
Blender is Blender you can make everything, all in package
just my tought
There's also the "select similar" operator, which can select stuff by how coplanar it is to a particular face.
This selection started out by selecting the four big triangles in the final selection. There are useful select similar options for all selection modes. If that doesn't cut the mustard for some reason, there's also Select Linked Flat Faces. You can also limit the more general select linked operator by edge attributes like UV seams, sharp edges, or material ID. There's also select shortest path (Ctrl+select mouse) which can be quite handy, and of course there are box select and circle select (which is like painting selection in Modo, not the silly circle select that Max has.) Overall I'm pretty happy with the options I have for selecting stuff in Blender.
Vertex normal editing is pretty good in Blender and there are lots of ways to get it done. If you need to tweak individual vertex normals the Blend4Web addon has a normal editor that can do that, although it's awfully destructive so it's a good idea to finalize topology and shape and such first. For stuff with a realistic art direction you can set up two instances of your mesh, one with modifiers on it and one without. Then you can use the bevel and data transfer modifiers to easily get fake rounded corners in a nondestructive fashion.
To get an edge to be beveled in the final mesh you need to have it marked as a sharp edge and have it marked with a nonzero bevel weight. Unfortunately you have to make a single user and apply all the modifiers before you can do UV unwrapping, but it's totally nondestructive during the editing phase. And, if you need a particular bevel to be narrower than the others, you can just decrease the bevel weight on that particular edge or set of edges.
Normal editing with a proxy mesh for nonphotorealistic rendering should be totally doable with the data transfer modifier, although I haven't tried it myself much. You can also use vertex groups to limit the effects of the modifier, so you can for example use different proxy meshes for a character's shirt and his manly, hairy chest. It's also quite possible to make a NPR shader for the viewport using the node editor and the solidify modifier which can then be manually ported to Unity.
There's also a Normal Edit modifier which is useful for editing foliage normals. You can bump down the mix factor a bit to make a tree's leaves look more detailed, although it's important not to go overboard with it.
All custom normals are exported with the FBX format. The only thing to keep in mind about the FBX exporter is that if you want to export morph targets you have to turn off "Apply Modifiers." This is in the tooltip but it's easy to miss. The exporter also has good support for batch exporting modular pieces, which is really nice.
Generally I really like Blender and I feel like it meets the majority of my game art needs. Mostly, I just wish that it had a better baker. The hotkey setup could be better out of the box but Wazou's pie menus go a long way towards rectifying that. Once you get used to the interface you can get stuff done quite quickly.
The user experience has definitely been a downgraded one for me. I mean Blender versions are easier to learn now and no question you can reach hi quality work like in other apps but after many attempts I still prefer the ease and flow of using Modo.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=154788
@JedTheKrampus thanks a lot for your detailed reply and tutorials, it's good to hear that the issue with custom normals is finally solved.
1 thing I don't like however is how you need to assign different hotkeys to do the same thing for different components. For example, extrude is not just a single extrude; you have extrude vertex, extrude edge, extrude face. This isn't a bad thing if Blender is smart enough to switch to the appropriate one depending on your selection or current mode. Instead you need 3 different keys to do that exact same thing. This applies to almost every thing in Blender, combine that with the way Blender hot key works by default, you're going to have a hell of a time trying to set up keys you use often and not break something else.
You basically have to switch the mode of your brain. You need to think in a total different way. Once you're pass that transition, it's a solid.
My personal opinion is to switch to XSI instead if you only want to model. It's dead but still 1 of the most capable modeler out there.
Softimage has not modifier stack, it is like Maya. You have history, but if you keep it, the scene get heavy.
may i recommend mirai then, that was clearly the most innovative.
This isn't acceptable for me. I need to check it myself to be sure. Are you sure it's the way it is because...
The default input/keymap in Blender is still extremely difficult to learn though. It isn't designed how any artist would probably design it. It's planned to change, but progress on it is really slow. As it is, if you do want to use Blender, you generally have to be pretty patient with it at first. If you stick with it, it will probably surprise you at what all it does though.
one thing made me go nuts is the way it handles loop and ring selects. it's too hard to add extra edges when you already have a few selected loops/rings. modo handles them a lot smarter. Would be nice if blender is able to select loops with double clicking.
I still dont know why so many modeling feature needed in Blender, modo
when for most part of modeling just need 3 of them extrude face, cut and insert loops
highly specialized programs are better than one
Lies! I use it all the time when creating a character from scratch. It's so nice spinning around a viewport while edge or vert extruding and then F'ing the gaps. It feels like a virtual papier mache and I have more control where my edgeloops are going this way
I don't know what kind of Blender experience you have, because I extrude edges and vertex all-the-time..
While Blender is a bit unique in that approach, I wouldnt say its any better than other methods..rather its more dependent upon the features that make use of them.
I am sure those who get used to extruding verts with Blenders workflow find it hard to adapt to other applications which get the same end results though with different means.
On core subject of moving to Blender from Modo, I would only recommend if you need or want to save money or just want something different. You will lose some stuff and gain some stuff in such a switch. If money isnt an issue though I highly recommend sticking with Modo as the feature set is a lot smarter at is core.
Extrude a vertex > split the resulting edge in two > move the resulting vertex to the desired location > bevel that vertex to get a perfect, evenly divided arc in space.
And of course that's just one out of many other uses of that feature. Very cool stuff, and it's certainly one of those things that someone wouldn't expect to need until one actually tries it.
That might be true for Extrude, but I can confirm that this kind of behavior doesn't happen naturally when assigning hotkeys. For instance, if you assign a custom shortcut to Edge Bevel (from the Change Shortcut/Remove Shortcut popup), and then assign the same shortcut to Vertex bevel, it won't work in both cases. That's definitely a limitation of the shortcut system. I think this is caused by the need for "Vertex only" to be ticked in the Bevel tool for the operation to work on vertices (similarly to how the delete component tool needs to be manually set to "edges only" each time in order to effectively delete edges).
So if someone knows how to create/assign a global Bevel shortcut as well as a global Delete shortcut, please let me know !
Sorry for the slight derail btw ! But I suppose that this is relevant anyways, as it is an example of one of the odd things the OP will run into during the transition.
the result of beveling a vertex and an edge is not really the same, so i could see why
edit :
iam also pretty sure there was a version where you could bevel edges and verts with one shortcut
not sure which version it was though
Anyways - at the end of the day I am fine with the way it works, but it is definitely not as unified as it seems at first glance
did someone notice that with ALT+E you can choose the extrusion method?
I used both Max and Maya before Blender in some University Classes, I ended up abandoning them for Blender as I started learning the interface. I find Blender to be faster and easier when it comes to manipulating the mesh. Now I am trying to learn MODO and actually found this thread looking for a way to customise the hotkeys so MODO can feel more like Blenders selection and manipulation experience.
A job I am trying to land has MODO, Rhino5 and ZBrush as requisites of hire, this is the only reason I am considering using software other than Blender. I done forgot everything I knew about Maya and Max from that 4 month course and have not done so well finding jobs that accept 4 years of modeling in Blender as a skill set. Sooo...... moving on......