Interesting read. A particular roadblock I hit with Modo to UE4 was foliage. The vertex normal tools are finally there in Modo, but they're not good. It was wholly impossible for me to get a clean result out of it, so I ended up handling that in Blender (whose vertex normal tools are also very new, but still better). The Unreal shader also doesn't seem accurate enough to be worth using, from my experience. Otherwise, I do love it. Hard surface stuff in particular is crazy good in Modo.
Iam hitting a roadblock right now just exporting to UE4. It has some insanely amazing features in terms of modelling and texturing, especially considering it costs roughly the same as 10 Months of Maya subscription.
Already annoying the people over at the UE4 forum with that hopefully we can find the solution. But the problem is, that upon exporting UE4 doesn't take the center i adjusted with Hotkey 7 as Pivot but the Origin of the whole scene. I really want to keep the scene the way it is and not zero out all the meshes since iam still working on them in size relation to each other. But maybe someone there can help me (sounds like one person iam talking to is with The Foundry)
I've not found anything indicating that's possible to do. I've seen others use a script as a workaround that centers all the objects to 0,0,0 upon export. Farfarer provided such a script in this thread, but I don't know if it works in newer versions of Modo.
The thing is, that when i export the whole Porject through File => Export As and import it into UE4 through "import into level" it will take the center as pivot just effing up the orientation (since Mode is Y up and UE4 is Z up). I always thought (and thought i understood Warren Marshall's video Exporting From Modo to UE4/Unity that way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qctJOFpLqIw (starting at 3:28)) that that's the point of the moveable center.
The thing is, that when i export the whole Porject through File => Export As and import it into UE4 through "import into level" it will take the center as pivot just effing up the orientation (since Mode is Y up and UE4 is Z up). I always thought (and thought i understood Warren Marshall's video Exporting From Modo to UE4/Unity that way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qctJOFpLqIw (starting at 3:28)) that that's the point of the moveable center.
Are you using an older version of the engine? I tested the information found in those links, and it seems to only work if you have a new enough version of UE4 that it includes the "Transform Vertex to Absolute" import option, and you turn it off on import. The option seems to be on by default as far as I can tell, and the newer engine versions simply expose the option to disable it.
Yeah using UE4 4.14, just have never seen that there is a rollout (where this information was hidden). Ofcourse now something broke in Modo and the Export selected layer features won't work because the scene is incompaible....hooooray. Eventhough not even a simple block from a brand new file won't export. ahhh this software is killing me
/Edit: Cleaned the system of modo with fire and reinstalled and now a clean modo does what it's supposed to. Pivot is where i wanted it to be (so i can snap) and it imports the right way around. Now just slowly reintroducing the plugins.
Ok after gotten some stuff done i can say: it's really pleasent to learn Modo for UE4. Things are rather easy, atleast when you have someinformations. I mean Warren Marshalls and Peter Stammbach, who go over some neat stuff with regards to Modo for UE4 (export, Normal map, collison, Vertex normals and stuff) helped me a lot and once i understand certain things (Parenting) it changed everything. I love how fast it is to rebind keys, add plugins, create menus, Pie menus and such for them. The align modes are amazing, selection is great, the deep intergration of Pixar SubD is amazing. After solving my issue, the whole Y-Up, Z-Up drama turned into just a different letter. Pnly really really annoying thing is, that the Baking Wizard is broken and it takes a moment to get to terms with how baking through the modo render goes. But once you get it, it becomes second nature quickly. Honestly when i tried to go back to Max....i almost lost it how clanky and packed the menus are.
By all means, hijack this thread! I'm also going MODO > UE4.
Exporting FBX from the Game Tools layout is the "official" way to do it. Pull down the Export Type list in the FBX Preset Settings and select "Export Selection with Hierarchy". Then select your Mesh Items for export and press the Export button.
"Export Selected Layers" from the Items tab is a deprecated method, from what I understand. I wish the MODO Dev Team would continue to support it; it's fewer clicks to export, and I prefer the simplicity.
Substance Painter's baking by name functionality lets me skip the clunky part of MODO's game art pipeline and makes what used to be a tedious process painless.
Man, how do the rest of you get around issues with the vertex normals? I'm finding myself struggling now just to properly assign hard and soft edges. The weight tool no longer seems to work, and the new tools always affect the entirety of every object in the scene, let alone my selection.
@Grimwolf I'm just using Farfarer's Vertex Toolkit, it's working perfectly fine. Maybe a bit more in-depth description of what's going wrong when you try and use it? Like, steps you're following to assign hard / soft edges, version you're on etc..
I'm on 10.2, using the integrated vertex toolkit. When I use any of the harden/soften edge tools, it behaves as if I have no selection most of the time. It seems I was mistaken about the tools affecting inactive objects in the scene. But Soften will affect the entire object, Harden does nothing at all, and Harden selection while softening all others just softens the whole thing. Harden sharper than angle ignores the angle and just softens everything, etc. Basically none of the vertex tools do what they should, and generally default to fully smoothing everything. They seem to work to a limited extent if I have only a single face or edge selected, but not if I have multiple selections. Even then, the results never look particularly good. Smooth surfaces in particular acquire ugly and unnatural shadows from warped normals.
@Grimwolf, when this happens to me, the "Recalculate Vertex Normals" button usually helps to fix things. I'm not having the issues you're having with harden and soften on multiple face or edge selections. The integrated Vertex Normal Toolkit has been fine for me. It's other operations breaking the smoothing that I find annoying. I sometimes have to reapply smoothing on faces when that happens.
@Grimwolf That's very strange, I'd try to re-install the kit, maybe download it directly from Farfarer's website and give that a go.
@gauravcm Component mode operations will break the normals, even transform operations, in say.. polygon mode, break the normals. But it's really an easy 1 click fix using the kit. If you want to avoid that, you can transform your mesh in item mode (I don't do that, I always forget haha)
By all means, hijack this thread! I'm also going MODO > UE4.
Exporting FBX from the Game Tools layout is the "official" way to do it. Pull down the Export Type list in the FBX Preset Settings and select "Export Selection with Hierarchy". Then select your Mesh Items for export and press the Export button.
"Export Selected Layers" from the Items tab is a deprecated method, from what I understand. I wish the MODO Dev Team would continue to support it; it's fewer clicks to export, and I prefer the simplicity.
Substance Painter's baking by name functionality lets me skip the clunky part of MODO's game art pipeline and makes what used to be a tedious process painless.
So I actually did an export once, then I selected the export in the command history and hotkey'd it. So now I just select what ever it is that I'm exporting and Ctrl-Shift E it to where it needs to go, it's sped me up a lot
Replies
A particular roadblock I hit with Modo to UE4 was foliage. The vertex normal tools are finally there in Modo, but they're not good. It was wholly impossible for me to get a clean result out of it, so I ended up handling that in Blender (whose vertex normal tools are also very new, but still better).
The Unreal shader also doesn't seem accurate enough to be worth using, from my experience.
Otherwise, I do love it. Hard surface stuff in particular is crazy good in Modo.
It has some insanely amazing features in terms of modelling and texturing, especially considering it costs roughly the same as 10 Months of Maya subscription.
But the problem is, that upon exporting UE4 doesn't take the center i adjusted with Hotkey 7 as Pivot but the Origin of the whole scene. I really want to keep the scene the way it is and not zero out all the meshes since iam still working on them in size relation to each other. But maybe someone there can help me (sounds like one person iam talking to is with The Foundry)
I've seen others use a script as a workaround that centers all the objects to 0,0,0 upon export.
Farfarer provided such a script in this thread, but I don't know if it works in newer versions of Modo.
I always thought (and thought i understood Warren Marshall's video Exporting From Modo to UE4/Unity that way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qctJOFpLqIw (starting at 3:28)) that that's the point of the moveable center.
//Edit: googling it a bit further, it seems like a new standard feature in UE4 causing this ("Transform Vertex to Absolute").
https://www.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?f=83&t=124605
Sorry didn't want to hijack the thread
The option seems to be on by default as far as I can tell, and the newer engine versions simply expose the option to disable it.
Ofcourse now something broke in Modo and the Export selected layer features won't work because the scene is incompaible....hooooray. Eventhough not even a simple block from a brand new file won't export. ahhh this software is killing me
/Edit: Cleaned the system of modo with fire and reinstalled and now a clean modo does what it's supposed to. Pivot is where i wanted it to be (so i can snap) and it imports the right way around. Now just slowly reintroducing the plugins.
I love how fast it is to rebind keys, add plugins, create menus, Pie menus and such for them. The align modes are amazing, selection is great, the deep intergration of Pixar SubD is amazing. After solving my issue, the whole Y-Up, Z-Up drama turned into just a different letter.
Pnly really really annoying thing is, that the Baking Wizard is broken and it takes a moment to get to terms with how baking through the modo render goes. But once you get it, it becomes second nature quickly.
Honestly when i tried to go back to Max....i almost lost it how clanky and packed the menus are.
Exporting FBX from the Game Tools layout is the "official" way to do it. Pull down the Export Type list in the FBX Preset Settings and select "Export Selection with Hierarchy". Then select your Mesh Items for export and press the Export button.
"Export Selected Layers" from the Items tab is a deprecated method, from what I understand. I wish the MODO Dev Team would continue to support it; it's fewer clicks to export, and I prefer the simplicity.
Substance Painter's baking by name functionality lets me skip the clunky part of MODO's game art pipeline and makes what used to be a tedious process painless.
It seems I was mistaken about the tools affecting inactive objects in the scene.
But Soften will affect the entire object, Harden does nothing at all, and Harden selection while softening all others just softens the whole thing.
Harden sharper than angle ignores the angle and just softens everything, etc.
Basically none of the vertex tools do what they should, and generally default to fully smoothing everything.
They seem to work to a limited extent if I have only a single face or edge selected, but not if I have multiple selections. Even then, the results never look particularly good. Smooth surfaces in particular acquire ugly and unnatural shadows from warped normals.
@gauravcm Component mode operations will break the normals, even transform operations, in say.. polygon mode, break the normals. But it's really an easy 1 click fix using the kit. If you want to avoid that, you can transform your mesh in item mode (I don't do that, I always forget haha)