Where all the Modo users?
polycounter lvl 14
I'm considering giving Modo a try after giving Max and Maya a chance. There's quite a few users over at GameArtisans who use it so I figure there has to be a few over here at PC.
How do you like it compared to the other major packages as far as modeling goes? What/how do you use it in your workflow, and do you have any tips or helpful links for us looking to give it a shot?
Right now I'm mainly doing Max -> Zbrush -> Max. But with GoZ supporting Modo I've been thinking of converting for all my modeling needs (maybe rendering?)
How do you like it compared to the other major packages as far as modeling goes? What/how do you use it in your workflow, and do you have any tips or helpful links for us looking to give it a shot?
Right now I'm mainly doing Max -> Zbrush -> Max. But with GoZ supporting Modo I've been thinking of converting for all my modeling needs (maybe rendering?)
Replies
Heres one such thread: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?p=961533
Some would say they miss the modifier stack from Max or the construction history from Maya but I never really made much use of those things so it's no big deal to me.
I haven't touched the UV editor much yet but it looks ok.
Everything really picked up speed after I redid all the hotkeys to my liking but that's the same for all 3D apps.
Be sure to check out the action center tutorial and scripts that I linked to on the first page of the thread EarthQuake pointed out.
GoZ along with Zbrush's apparent value for the money really makes me want to check it out but for now I'm a Mudbox user so I can't really comment on that aspect of your post.
As for rendering Modo is supposed to be fairly capable, not as good as a dedicated renderer like VRay, Maxwell, or Fry. Though if you're not doing any hardcore photoreal Archviz type renders then you should be fine.
The UV tools in Modo kick serious ass. They're much easier to use than any others I've played with. Sometimes the automatic unwraps behave a bit strangely, but overall the toolset is simply awesome. You can use pretty much all the same mesh editing tools you'd use for modeling in the UV window.
silo is a good cheap modeller but it doesnt work perfectly on everyones computer, my silo crashes quite often even doing ordinary tasks
also the developers have basically promised to slow down development of fixes and updates while they work on other projects so that sucks a bit.
That's good news!, I'll be uving some stuff really soon and was hoping to be able to do it all in Modo. On the other hand renderhjs made his amazing uvToolbox for Max and it's been tempting me to go back and use Max to uv things, maybe we can get him to translate his scripts to Modo
I was tempted not so long ago porting stuff to modo. There was a company I was interested in that used modo for the modeling pipeline, but they ditched me in the end so my future is without modo for now and instead more maya/ max again.
There are some usere here though that wrote some UV stcripts like align and some others for modo. Just like max Modo has some kind of macro recorder that traces commands of actions you perform. You can copy paste those and put them into a perl script (their used syntax).
A great modo community site is:
http://www.vertexmonkey.com/
it has also a nice list of scripts that you can explore and download. What I did not liked about modo scripting so far was that there is not archive system and simplified or structured install process of scripts - you dumb them into admin?folders.
Also some more GUI options like max offers with their rollout system would be nice for developers that want to bend their pipeline more into modo.
As for modeling:
Modo is just like Lightwave in that regards, you don't have modifiers and not history in the way that you can go back and make slight changes that will effect the last outcome. Which is bit of a thumbs down for me as it makes technical modeling with lots of instanced elements difficult and not so pleasant.
Every action you do you have to confirm and enter with the space key, so once you are down with an action its baked into the workflow - its not that easy to go back anyway you want.
Interface/ Usebility:
I think its modo's greatest achievement- the consistency of the shortcuts, colors, design and functionality through out the tools and editors (uv, 3d, paint,....) is really strong, booth max and maya are a disaster compared to that.
I would recommend modo for smaller studios that are not so dependent on 3rd party plugins that are only available for max or maya but instead have or can produce their own pipeline tools.
For many things I think modo would still need lots of scripts in order to run well in a pipeline (like asset management, exporting,...) but at least you the the ability to easily learn their scripting language and add stuff yourself.
That's the one thing that really keeps me from wanting to use Modo more. I already have Max and that can do everything from start to finish very effectively (highpoly = excellent, lowpoly = comparable to any other app, UV tools = mostly ok, excellent with scripted support, animation = good). Once Modo can offer something comparable or better all the way down the line, then I'll be really interested.
And I still am incredibly surprised that even these "new" apps which have been developed in recent years don't have anything like Max's Modifier Stack, it's easily the most flexible workflow thing available and i can't believe developers of 3d apps look at it and go "nah, we're better off without that".
If Modo added a true modifier stack for a non-destructive workflow, I'd be all over that.
Just joking, but seriously who uses modo? ;P
Best modeling/UV software I've ever used. I love it.
- massive entertainment (world in conflict)
- black rock studios (split second)
those are a few I could spot ,- but I am sure its used in way more studios where artist can choose their own tool set for their jobs.
If you don't work with animations but have to model, uv edit and perhaps paint textures modo is a pretty good choice.
ME, and also ur mother!
Honestly i think a lot of the stuff in render's script are default tools in modo's uv editor, i would have to look over it again, but out of the box modo's uv tools leave little to be desired.
It doesn't sound to bad but I'm sticking with good ol' max.
And its not like modo has it all, for me uvLayout is still the champ in this area, modo is nice and consistent but does not have it all in regards of UV editing - but most certainly way better as max and maya.
Or I'm the idiot who use this workflow anyway? I thought it's pretty standard in max and maya?
Baking that stuff would be cool, but i dont use modo for baking normals anyway, just modeling/uvs. Normals should generally be baked in something that supports the correct format for your engine, so even if i could bake in modo, it would be wrong, lack of smoothing groups etc would make it pretty pointless as well.
Really UVing in modo, if done in a sensable manor negates the use of many of those tools, just a simple edge select, unwrap, relax, align, and maybe some edge snap for a little clean up, and in the worst case some unwrap + pin points, all which are default tools, produces very clean results, very quickly. It would be nice to have the... auto uv density thing, but if you're unwraping all at once this happens automatically, its a pain when you have tons of different chunks tho, but i bet somewhere there is a script for it.
Stand alone apps may do some things better, but its much more of a hassle to use a separate app for what is only a very minimal gain in almost every case, sure there are apps that have slightly better uv tools, but if i'm already in modo theres no point to use a different app that has basically the same functionality. Same with max, if i'm in max i would use your tools instead of going to a different app, cause that is just a major waste of time if i want to make some small changes to the mesh while uving.
This is probably the most common complaint i see from people switching over to modo, and for good reason. I'm used to it myself, and have my thumb permanently glued to the space key.
Especially the "if nothing's selected, everything's selected" functionality.
Oh, and packing UVs will normalise them, if that's what you're after EQ. Just ensure you've only got scale selected and not rotate. The packing's pretty useless for anything but that :P
Seneca's SuperUVTools script does a lot of really neat stuff like that, too. (Copy/paste/auto calculate texel density, etc...).
I'd have to say the attraction to modo for me is the customizability of the interface and toolset. No single program has everything you'd ever want, but modo does a great job of rounding up useful tools and methods and putting them together.
And yes, I also think the snapping is unstable.