How is rigging/animation for game art in Modo?

JRay

I've been wanting to add to my skills and learn/relearn some rigging and animation. I have some experience with rigging and animation from school in C4D but it's been some time since then and I've probably forgotten most of what I learned. I currently use Modo indie for a lot of my workflow and I was wondering if it would be worth learning how to rig and animate in that or if I should just learn it in blender or some other software. I'm not really looking to make super complicated rigs to share with other people but I'm looking to make rigs for my characters to pose and make simple animations.

JRay

I'm also looking into akeytsu for that stuff so if anyone has any input on that let me know!

Mark Dygert

For most games with bipedal characters it has pretty much everything you need. Maya and 3dsmax are still better and more feature complete especially if you want to work with motion capture, animation layers and blending, but Modo isn't a slouch.

Since I really like it's modeling tools I've thought about using only it on several contracts especially since it was what the other artists where using but there where a few rigs that would have been difficult to do in Modo so I backed off. But Modo has a lot of really great tools that I wish where in other apps and since they've built it from the ground up after looking at how the other apps have evolved it doesn't have 200 layers of duct tape and glue holding it's bits together.

This covers everything you need to know about rigging in Modo:
https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/training-videos/character-rigging-course/

JRay

Hey thanks for your input! Just curious though, what kind of things were you thinking would be difficult to do in modo?

NBLM

This tutorial gives you a nice general overview about rigging in Modo(learned a lot from this one):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5359K46xUo

There are also free tutorials about animation in Modo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bimfxNz7bmU&index=3&list=PLi2GhhsPL-Rr4DJY_tJWcsz5R8-_kgZ1_

Mark Dygert

JRay said:

Hey thanks for your input! Just curious though, what kind of things were you thinking would be difficult to do in modo?

• Curve filtering
• Key reduction
• Key baking
• Animation Layers 
• Skin binding options like Geo desic voxel skinning
• Inserting joints into a skinned hierarchy
• Rigging automation (HIK, CAT, Biped)
• Full Body IK
• Working with Morphs / Blendshapes
• Working with poses and "actors"
• Animating UVs, materials and morphs 
• Baking Normal maps

I'm not saying Modo is lacking these things, on paper Modo checks most of the boxes and supports most of those things in one way or another. We could probably unpack each thing into a separate thread and spend days talking about the differences. But to sum them all up, Modo is just missing some of the functionality the other apps have been forced to build in due to the production demands of wider audience. 

Modo is capable of customization, but often that takes place on a much deeper level than most people are capable of going. So what normally happens is, you throw a list of requests at the developers who shrug and go work on other things. With other apps they have several layers to scripting and customization so a lot of issues and tweaks can be generated by users with low technical knowledge. This allows them to see the needs of their users and understand them a little better rather than just see a list of complaints and not really know how to go about addressing them.

With other apps, the chances are greater that someone already solved that problem and has a plug-in or script available. It keeps you moving without slowing you down. With modo you're either stuck taking the long way around, using it's standard tools as is, or you stop and develop something on your own, if you can even do that. 

Can I tweak XYZ workflow to do ABC or is there a faster way?
Maya/Max : More than likey.
Modo : Not likely, good luck.

With that said there are a lot of things that Modo does really well that the other apps should take notice of:

• Joint placement with center mesh snap, it snaps the joints to the center of the mesh, in the area you clicked. 
• Joint symmetry, other apps have mirroring which is usually an action you run and it flips joints one way or the other. Joint Symmetry is a smoother and more fluid workflow.
• Organize schematic nodes into groups, this lets you compartmentalize systems in efficient ways. Other apps you have to sort, filter, hide and cluster nodes together. It can actually eat up a bunch of time keeping it all organized and readable for other users.
• A ton of tiny tweaks I can't think of because I don't currently have it installed... heh.

JRay

NBLM: Thanks for the links, I checked them out quick and they seem like they'll be really helpful!

Mark: Thank you so much for taking the time to write that up, it's very helpful. With those points in mind I think I might be better off just learning rigging in Maya. I was somewhat hoping to be able to limit the number of programs in my pipeline but I guess you have to use what will get quality results the quickest

Zack Maxwell

JRay said:

NBLM: Thanks for the links, I checked them out quick and they seem like they'll be really helpful!

Mark: Thank you so much for taking the time to write that up, it's very helpful. With those points in mind I think I might be better off just learning rigging in Maya. I was somewhat hoping to be able to limit the number of programs in my pipeline but I guess you have to use what will get quality results the quickest

Keep in mind that you can't export a highpoly model from Modo Indie. That makes it difficult to use with multiple 3D modelers like that.
Also, I don't know if you're thinking about Maya LT as the other to combine with, but a lot of those benefits he listed are actually gone from it, you'd need to go Maya full to really benefit. And if you were to use Modo Indie with Maya full, I'd honestly say you'd be better off just going with 3DS Max. Comparable modeling effectiveness (though a bit slower), with all the rigging/animation you'll really need for game dev, plus full access to scripts and plugins.

Also, are you working primarily on characters, or props/environments?
If you're working on characters, you should probably be doing 90% of it in ZBrush anyway, so you won't benefit much from including Modo at all. If you're doing primarily props/environments, then I don't think Modo's weaker rigging/animating will hold you back enough to be worth using multiple programs. Most of those lacking features he mentioned come into play with more complex character rigs or long / large numbers of animations.

JRay

Ah right, that would complicate things. I'm mostly wanting to know how to rig for characters. I had been posing all my characters in Zbrush but lately I've been wanting to actually rig and animate them for use in unity or possibly unreal. I'm not looking to switch my focus from characters to rigging, I'd just like to know the character pipeline all the way through.

Mark Dygert

If you're looking to go into Unreal I highly suggest Maya. Epic uses Maya and has released the Animation and Rigging Toolkit for Maya.

https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/animation-and-rigging-toolkit-arrives-on-the-marketplace

It will drastically streamline your rigging process. Its a fantastic tool, I really like using it. Plus it will enable you to use all of the animations that are available in the marketplace and you can post/sell any animations you make.