Is Modo really that amazing?
So with 801 looming around the corner, is it worth learning? I've always had an interest in MODO ever since 301 or so, but never felt to take the time to learn it. And this thread will decide if I and maybe a few others start learning it and convert over!
I currently know 3DS Max and a couple months back switched to Maya. However everytime I read the classic "Maya/Max vs Maya/Max/Other" Thread or something along those lines. Long story short, MODO always ends up getting mentioned somewhere down the line being called "the best modeling program ever".
Is it really "the best modeling program ever" though? What makes it so superior to Max and Maya and other modeling suites? Also for those of you who switched to Modo from a previous program, how has it impacted your workflow? Will you always swear by Modo until you die?
I currently know 3DS Max and a couple months back switched to Maya. However everytime I read the classic "Maya/Max vs Maya/Max/Other" Thread or something along those lines. Long story short, MODO always ends up getting mentioned somewhere down the line being called "the best modeling program ever".
Is it really "the best modeling program ever" though? What makes it so superior to Max and Maya and other modeling suites? Also for those of you who switched to Modo from a previous program, how has it impacted your workflow? Will you always swear by Modo until you die?
Replies
My opinion is that it solely depends on person's preferences. For example the time you save on amazing selection tools you may lose on iterating without modelling stack. But may be your modelling workflow doesn't depend on stack that much so... again it's just a matter of preference.
In a word, yes. Caveats to follow.
Modo gives an absurd amount of control and ease of use where subD modeling and retopology are concerned. In addition, there are tons of freely available scripts and plugins that extend and build upon Modo's built-in tools to give it an even greater edge.
In my opinion, Modo's modeling tools are the smoothest and most intuitive around, once you get the hang of the interface and shortcuts. You can use almost any modeling tool on points, edges, or polygons, you can quickly and easily add cuts and loops to existing geo without having to worry about how many crazy n-gons you're creating (most of the time), and there are a bunch of awesome tools built right in that let you instance, replicate, paint meshes, create arrays, mirror, flip, work in symmetry, snap to grid lines and various parts of meshes, and you can do all of it in 3D, orthographic, or multi-paned hybrid views.
In addition to the modeling tools, it has a fantastic and bleeding-fast renderer and some of the most well-integrated UV toolsets I've seen in any program. Along with those, there is a very robust macro system and it has Python support for writing new plugins. Basically any action or series of actions you can take in the program could be mapped to a hotkey.
Caveat time:
Modo is NOT great for rigging or animation, advanced materials, or complex texturing.
It also lacks strong viewport shader support.
It does not have extensive import/export operations (though it does support many formats).
It can be a huge pain to learn to use after getting used to the likes of Max or Maya.
It has no modifier stack of any kind, though a large portion of its workflow wouldn't depend on modifiers anyway.
Its smoothing group tools are kind of abysmal, though they can be improved with a couple of scripts.
It's expensive, especially for a program that isn't as fully featured animation and scripting-wise as the competition.
Even with those caveats, I would still recommend it as a primary modeling tool. I have used it on every game-res model I've made in the past several years, and its modeling and retopo tools have saved my ass more than once when Max was being a buggy piece of shit because of all its stupid bolted-on features.
I'd recommend trying the demo, if possible, and doing some experiments with hard surface modeling, retopology, and UV mapping before making a decision one way or the other before you shell out for the full product. Those are the three areas it's best at, and it may not be worth it to you if you end up preferring tools in Max or Maya to the ones in Modo.
EDIT : Oh, you mean you JUST want the subd tools for a cheaper price. I get it. Well, it's already a third of the price of Max so IMO it already IS a cheaper subd tool. Heh.
Now, there are a couple of things that keep me from switching to Modo. As a person who often does level design Modo feels limited when it comes to manipulating large groups of objects and complex hierarchies, and it has weird scale system. I just feel like I lose precise control over my scenes. I know people were making RAGE levels in Modo, but I would rather do it in Maya.
Another thing I don't like is they didn't bother to calibrate the interface for large monitors. I mean, seriously? The fonts are smaaaaaal, I can't read most of the buttons without leaning forward. The wireframe lines on models are thin and are hard to see too even if you remove opacity from them. I didn't have such problems with any other software, Modo seems to be extraordinary one here.
Yes.
There's also the question of Nexus and how it allowed plugins like Mesh Fusion to be made. So perhaps whats under the hood, its framework and or foundation, can also claim that description.
Its hard to use the word "amazing" though, since depending on how one defines it...no application would ever really be amazing.
Far more logical to ask what makes X application stand out, or what does it offer that makes it worth using.
Btw I do not qualify for the educational price since I am not at uni :P
The problem with Modo for game dev is that it's not a replacement for Max/Maya. And $1000 for an application you are mostly going to use for modeling is a bit much. It would be a great deal if it could do everything Max and Maya does, but it doesn't. I don't might spending a few hundred for a speciality application, but I don't feel like game artists get as much for their money with Modo currently.
3DCoat is $380, Quixel Suite $100, Zbrush $800, Substance painter + designer $200, Marmoset Toolbat $130, Topogun $100.
As for it not being a replacement for Max/Maya, I've seen Snefer say a few times on here that he only uses Modo. Sounds like it could be a replacement, if you're not wanting to do rigging, animation or baking.
@ZacD, How is it not a replacement for Maya/Max? Modo technically has more features and hits more areas of the pipeline than either max or maya (which are still great applications btw). I think a lot of people are having this misconception that Modo is just a modeling tool, when thats not really the case. Game artist get a lot for the cost of Modo in my opinion. You also get some great results from Modo's baking features (801 is adding cage baking via morph maps).
Very good UV unwrapping capability, topology tools that can compete with the dedicated retopology applications, sculpting (Zbrush is still #1), texture painting is also pretty good in Modo. You mention substance designer, which is great. This is made even better with a direct plugin for Modo, which lets you work with substances inside of Modo itself.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1-iPexmJ1g
Wait until they have a 50% off sale and you get quite a bit for less than $1000.
Modo isnt perfect, but in its current form it can compete extremely well in most areas of the game art pipeline in my opinion.
801 will have a tool for manipulating vertex normals. They made it look extremely easy, even to the point of painting the direction you want them to go (imagine brushing hair). 701 also has a plugin by a member of this community that makes it easy to soften edge and vertex normals. Pretty good stuff so far.
I've been a Modo user since late 301-ish. I got to 601 but didn't upgrade to 701 because, frankly, money was tight and I didn't see much in 701 that looked that compelling. This was pre-MeshFusion. Unless 801 is completely lackluster, I will probably upgrade, simply to to use MeshFusion (I got it on discount when it first was released).
The biggest dilemma with Modo is that, while it's certainly less expensive than Maya or Max, it currently isn't as fully-featured as either of those two stalwarts and I don't see it ever displacing those tools at most game studios (always will be a supplemental app, IMO). It is very expensive compared to the very capable Blender in which I have completely fallen in love.
So, it's a kind of a 'caveat emptor' situation. You definitely get great tools for the money, but are there are other worthy alternatives that don't have the same financial obligations? Absolutely. You'll have to just weigh the pros and the cons to see if buying it is a valuable for your particular needs.
Ariel Chai's PipelineIO script has a bent normals function for foliage.
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/post.aspx?f=37&t=41509&p=724667
Latest version of Farfarer's Vertex Normal Toolkit has an option for casting a background object's normals to the meshes. It has a similar uses with Normal Thief script in 3dsmax. Useful for overall vertex manipulation for certain parts of the meshes.
and in my opinion:
. "are Modo is the best modeling program ever ? " - No.
Modo is still lack something, I've saw a lot of professional use Modo because they have years of EXP, and they know how to solve problems in multiple way, unlike max or Maya that you could found everything on internet
And Modo is get better and better in every update with some cool feature. Potential !
. is it a good modeling software and worth to learning ? - Yes.
I totally agree with ZacD, they should have do a release or cheaper version that was just focused on being a subdiv modeling tool. Modo is damn fast to do some environment pieces
But to be fair, I think for everything Modo is missing, you can point to something that it has that Max/Maya doesn't. So every app is (or should be) evolving. No app is the perfect animal yet. Nor will probably ever be...
The strength of Modo is to have all the modeling tools for one shortcut ie: bevel "b" bevels anything whether poly/edge/point under your selection, whereas in Max you would need 5 strokes and 2 shortcuts for the same operation.
Same here, except I jumped ship from Lightwave to Modo very early, and couldn't be happier.
Modo may not be as powerful is Max if you use the stack, but its basic out of the box modeling tools are IMO the best there are. It sort of depends on how you work, if you use a lot of non-destructive stack stuff in Max you'll have a hard time transitioning to Modo.
VS Maya, I don't really see much that Maya offers for modeling over Modo, animation, etc, sure, but not modeling.
I didn't migrated to Modo because i was too much into Max and Maya. I fairly never model in Max nowadays but i kept Maya in my workflow because its rather good to handle all my import/export (i love the implemented Fbx applet) and still to this day is extensively robust in the curve department. Also some conversion purpose Sub-D to poly.
Actually one of the strongest workflow i ever had in my career was modeling in Lightwave and send everything in Maya for the final.
Where did you get that information, my good sir? (I know its just two days to the 801 reveal but a few sneak peaks never hurt
If you own a modo license, Brad Peebs, also known as B-Rad, drops sneaks into special subforum (visible to license holders) on the foundry site. One of the videos he showed was cage baking and then an animated gif with vertex normals being moved around with a transform widget, also painted in a direction with a type of manipulation brush.
I'm loving it, I definitely lost some speed but I feel much more comfortable modeling in Modo than Max or Maya and goodness that renderer!
Apart from that I didnt really had any need to use other features yet.
Last I tried them the spline tools in Modo seemed a bit primitive coming from Max, though I never delved too deep into them...
iirc there's also no selection memory, so if you have nothing selected and rotate sometimes the camera will fly off into nowhere instead of going based on the last thing that was selected. Other then that navigation in Modo is actually pretty good though.
The viewport is also a bit feature barren compared to Max/Maya; no custom viewport shaders, realtime shadows/AO, etc.
That's what macros are for; I've written macros to combine almost every max modeling tool I use into just a few context-sensitive hotkeys.
http://armvoid.blogspot.com/2014/02/maxscript-stuff.html
That snapping is improved which I think is a great news. Also proper cage baking with proper normal maps results. I don't think Modo lacks anything in game art now. I know it doesn't have proper viewport shaders to simulate in engine behaviour but since it's PBR time which app does ?
801 seems tighter and more useful for game art but haven't worked on any project with it yet. During normal works that's when kinks come out. Hope there won't be any.
I guess the way The Foundry has now dominated the compositing world with Nuke they are now on the hunt for 3D software domination.
Maybe Autodesk will buy it out and crash it into a cliff like XSI
I've seen people on here say that modo seems more geared towards VFX lately, and seems to be veering away from game dev, like newtek apparently did with lightwave.
Has this changed with 801?
I completely agree. But it's not like Luxology have been great about this either, they've relied on Senecas scripts for over a decade to cover holes in the Modo toolset. Writing script in Modo is also more of a pita due to a lack of a built in script editor, which means when you do need a script for something it's that much less likely you'll find it out there.
The scripting interface is just more limited and harder to use than Max or Maya as well, you pretty much have to recompose macro strings using a scripting language like python or pearl.
Agreed on some of that, for sure. The scripting in Modo is ... obtuse, to say the least. Most of my home brew stuff is macros.
I think Seneca's scripts have been a blessing and a curse. Yes, they fill in a lot of holes in the MODO toolset which is great - but at the same time, that allows Luxology to not work on filling those holes and instead spend yet another development cycle on the renderer.
I'd love to see them come out with a modeling/game-art focused release but I don't know if it'll ever happen at this point.
Well unwrapping is still PITA, but packing UVs with respected proportions is just single click.