To MODO or not to MODO...: MODO VS the Rest... (MODO users needed!)
polycounter lvl 8
hey all,
So, it has been quite some months since I last did 3D Modeling. I remembered that there was quite the MODO Buzz (meshfusion, nice booleans etc.) when I was still active and are now wondering if MODO is being more widely used and accepted by users and if they are glad they switched programs.
So for all MODO users;
So, it has been quite some months since I last did 3D Modeling. I remembered that there was quite the MODO Buzz (meshfusion, nice booleans etc.) when I was still active and are now wondering if MODO is being more widely used and accepted by users and if they are glad they switched programs.
So for all MODO users;
- Has the switch to MODO been worth it (financial and time investment) ?
- Has MODO changed your workflow ? (faster/slower)
- Would you advice MODO for 3DART students ?
- What are some of the things you do NOT like about MODO ?
Replies
I recently made the switch from Maya to Max and I'm really disappointed - especially about the lies of faster modelling and more robust history (modifier stack). I have a friend who whines a lot about Maya and is considering switching to Modo, so this thread might be a nice read for him as well.
Meshfusion is only occasionally useful IMO compared to regular old booleans because the performance degrades very quickly after a few booleans. It can really save the day every once in a while but a lot of times regular old subd modeling is a better choice.
I'm definitely a lot faster at modeling in Modo than any Maya variant but only a little faster than I am in Blender. But, then again, I've been using Blender for about ten years and Modo for only around one. I'd advise giving both programs a try taking at least one simple asset all the way through the pipeline and see which one feels better to you.
Modeling certainly feels better, as I dont have to worry about polygons optimisation so much. I can have as many N-gons as I want till very last moment. Maya would crash or break shading most of the time. And just in general its much more intuitive / streamlined. Add insane modo customisation and you have a mix for success
Baking is WAY better too.
Better renderer.
Mesh Fusion.
Cheaper.
Less random crashes.
And so on.
As of students learning Modo first, not sure. They still need to know Maya / Max probably. As these 2 are still core 3D applications in game dev.
Also I believe in 901 you can have topology based mirror now too.
In Maya as far as I know you would have to do this with the Create EP Curve tool which means that you might have to make another curve and loft between the two, then convert the NURBS surface to geometry. And this is all time when you don't have access to mesh modeling tools that you might want to use like edge collapse, so you have to use the curve tools for everything. It's a very indirect and unwieldy way to work for me compared to the strategy of using geometry directly.
Second, in Blender and Modo the bridge tools almost always work well with sort of arbitrary selections. Modo's is a little more finicky than Blender's which can bridge just about anything, but in any non-artificial situation it still does the job. I don't even know how many times I've tried to bridge something in Maya that should be bridgeable and it just won't work at all unless I do the bridge two edges at a time bit. Also, if you bridge two regions of faces in Maya and there aren't the same number of faces it will just delete them without bridging anything. Blender can do that bridge no problem.
Third, Maya seems to crash a lot and do a lot of weird stuff. Despite Maya's restrictions on mesh geometry, I still find that my typical modeling methods always lead to something fucky eventually, and the mesh cleanup tool in Maya never seems to be able to clean it up--once a mesh is messed up in Maya, I usually can't seem to fix it, whereas with Modo and Blender I can usually figure out what's going on if the usual steps fail me (remove doubles, make normals consistent, and select non-manifold in Blender, and mesh cleanup in Modo) and get back to something usable. I delete my history lots in Maya and it never quite seemed to help, same thing with merging the mesh to a cube.
Fourth, I really, really dislike Maya's selection. I like to select stuff by clicking on it with a tablet, but with the default selection setup if you move your mouse just a little bit during the click it assumes you wanted to select with a box and selects stuff on the other side of the model. If you increase the size of the click dead space in the selection preferences it's still difficult to impossible to select an edge loop or face loop using the fast path in Maya (which is double-clicking on the next component while holding Shift.) Instead Maya will select all of the other faces besides the one you're clicking on to make the loop. Also, the select shortest path tool is really finicky in Maya because you have to click right on the vertices. In Blender it just selects the shortest path to the vertex that's closest in screen space, which makes it a lot easier to mark UV seams.
Fifth, there's a delay before marking menus open. I prefer that marking and radial menus open instantly and I really don't appreciate having to wait for half a second to start getting to something that's in a second tier like edge collapse or having to wait for half a second to get to an entry that I don't remember. It's a small thing but it really annoys me.
Sixth, I really like Modo's baker. It's pretty good for normals and AO and it's OK for lightmaps. It's got one of the best rounded corners shaders around, has solid antialiasing, and handles floaters pretty well. Blender's bakers are bad compared to Maya (no AA and slow) and it's one of the areas where I hope to see some improvement but don't quite know enough to make the situation better.
There are more things that I don't like about Maya but I feel like this post is wearing on a bit so I'll wrap it up.
Maybe Maya genuinely has a bunch of usability and stability problems, but it's also possible that since I've been using Blender for so long I'm just not used to doing things the Maya way. I hear a lot of the same stuff from people coming from 3ds Max to Blender. The thing about Blender and Maya is that there are lots of pitfalls and gotchas you have to watch out for, and while I know just about all of them for Blender I just know a few for Maya (like, always delete history before doing rigging and animation, and the combine with a sphere trick.) Maya has great pipeline integration and animation tools, so I can understand why it's the industry standard, but I feel justified when I say that I don't like the way it does a lot of things.
As for Modo symmetry, I find mirrored instances to be pretty reliable. Mostly I try to avoid the builtin symmetry except for very simple stuff.
I'd say get the trial and try to make something simple using the same process as you would in any other program. If you come across any roadblocks due to missing or insufficient tools and you absolutely can't work around them then maybe consider using something else. Otherwise stick to it, because it can really can be a great program in certain aspects.
At the end tho I perfer to render my things in Maya due to its many selection of plug-ins. Renderman, Arnold, V-ray, Redshift3D to name a few.
I've been using MODO since 101. It's hard to nail down exactly what it is about it that feels good... partly it's that the majority of tools and features all work together across all the things (sculpt tools work on sculpts, but also regular geometry, and on UVs) all the falloffs and action centres work in 3D and UV space, as do the transform and modelling tools, etc... there's not 3 versions of the same functionality depending on what you're doing.
The scripting and customisation is also (although tricky at times) really powerful.
I will say up front that I found the switch from Max > Maya far easier then the switch to Maya to Modo - Modo just kind of works "different" and I found it took a bit of time to adjust my work flow in my head.
My second point is that Modo, out of the box, is not massively optimized for creating game art. It takes a bit of time to understand that new workflow as I said before, what tools are useful etc and then customize your own UI / Interface. This is pretty easy to do in Modo but it does take some time and patience.
But I've now been on it since 701 and once you got this bad boy set up, get a few must have scripts + plugs in installed its an absolute work horse.
The modeling tools are really good, pile on top of this the upgraded snapping tools from 801, the work plane and action centers you have a stunning package that allows you to model really complex shapes really quick.
Then you got the UV tools! Now this is a massive time saver for me, the "unwrap" tool, relax tools and packing tools have serisoly saved me months of dev time since starting out. MASSIVELY useful with light mapping UV's and I've recently discovered Farfarers align and texel density tools which again, saving masses + masses of time.
Few other bits I love...
Baking outputs alow you to setup all your bakes and burn out everything in one click! Very useful.
Duplication tools are mega simple, again once you combine them with action centers and snapping these are so powerful and easy to use...
Copy + Paste, this is so simple but its so awesome... you can just Ctrl C + Ctrl V any verts, edges, polys, meshes from once mesh to another or into new scenes + objects... it sounds simple but its so damn handy!
these are just a few useful bits really but to sum it up! It takes a bit of getting use to but once it clicks its a stunning all round package and for a pricetag of 900£ its a bargin. I'll be pretty surprised if modo is not a much bigger player in the games indy in the next 5-10 years for sure.
Maya is really behind in making selections. In several instances you have to click everything you want to select while in Modo I can use smart selections and the built-in paint selection. Also, the way Modo separates Backface Selections by using Middle Click or Right Click is far superior than having to check a toogle option.
I will probably continue to use Modo as my modelling app and Maya for everything else. Watching Tor Frick is also a huge motivation for me to continue to customize the heck out of Modo and become as fast as he is.
This is the key to modo once you know how to model with it
Though I would love some of the Maya UV-tools and I would def love some better vertex normal tools, even though the Vertex Normal Toolkit is amazing, it's still lacking some things.
How true is it? Does Modo have a decent market share, or is it pretty niche? I would love to pick it up, we've got a few floating copies at work so I've been slowly learning it, but I still need to use Max as my primary modeler. Is it worth spending the money and time on it if I'll only be using it at home? Should I just stick with Max(I'm actually very happy with Max, Max & Blender are my primary modeling tools).
Not a Modo user, but I think the license is flexible so that it allows you to use your personal license at work.
https://vimeo.com/richardyot/videos
I bought my own license and use it every day. No hassle of asking the employer, its fairly cheap anyway especially during discounted periods. Some people use blender this isnt any different. I use Max / Maya only for final steps of the workflow.
@echofourpapa Unfortunately Modos market share still seems to be a tiny fraction of Maya's/Max's. I think it might be smaller then Blenders too. Like others have said though, the license is flexible, so if you're employer is OK with it you can use your own license at work instead of them having to foot the bill.
My PC is actually horribly outdated but it still manages to run MODO alright. I cannot use OPENGL/ADVANCED OPENGL but I do not even know it's benefits (something to do with HDRR?).
What troubles me the most as a 3d student is that there are basically no Game Art tutorials available for MODO. Sure there are some modeling tutorials worth watching but real lowpoly/smoothing groups/baking/texturing I have yet to find. Maybe some of you can be superduper awesome and make a relatively simple asset from start to finish using MODO.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDmOobbSOonY66M6fsJO7GQ
https://www.youtube.com/user/patcran/featured
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ2NYo3MqqKi96TqQyl5_jQ
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0eInZakuzX4sEGcMO4c5w
Also, The Foundry is going to have a series of webinars:
http://polycount.com/discussion/161767/modo-mari-games-webinar-series#latest
You can also find great ones on Gumroad. I recommend Tor Frick and Vaughan Ling. And if you're interested in offline rendering, Richard Yot got you covered with a series of training on shader setups, materials etc on Vimeo.
Only downside I can see in Modo vs Maya is the lack of support from third party applications / lack of plugins. Apart from that, love every bit of it.
The thing is that the techniques are the same, it's just the software that changes. So, why do you even bother about game specific tutorials when you can achieve the same things (specificaly Subdiv) in most of the software you can find. I think that your perception of being good at something is dependant of the tools you use, but that's not true. Personnaly, i would suggest you to learn how to model first, then after, if you think that a software will make you go faster, find the one that fits most of your needs. It's like buying a car...
@ STORMYBA, I think it would still be useful regardless of the customized interface you have. Additional plugins or scripts or more important since they allow operations the main program cannot do.
I hope you
Mind = blown! So glad Tor decided to do some tutorials. Thanks a bunch for pointing this out.