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Modo 40% sale Dec. 17-19

polycounter lvl 10
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MagicSugar polycounter lvl 10
[EDIT]: New steam store releases Modo indie & Mari indie

Modo indie on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/321540/

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/about-us/news-awards/modo-mari-48-hr-sale/
a new seat of MODO for $897 / £599.40 / €701.40, or upgrade from any previous version of MODO (in your account) from only $396 / £263.20 / €303.20.
Mari is gonna be on sale too but still gonna cost over a grand for a new license.

Plug ins and training vids just 20% off though.

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  • MeshMagnet
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    MeshMagnet polycounter lvl 9
    Cool, thanks for the heads up.
  • Dataday
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    Dataday polycounter lvl 8
    Should be a good month for game artists...software wise.
  • MeshMagnet
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    MeshMagnet polycounter lvl 9
    So, what do you guys think, is Mari worth the price?
  • Dataday
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    Dataday polycounter lvl 8
    In my opinion Its hard to justify the cost of Mari for this particular line of work. I can see a studio picking up the tab if they absolutely need it, but on its own (for individual users) its hard to justify. If only there was a cheaper version for our line of work....

    Modo is totally worth it though. There is just way too much functionality packed into one solid application for it not to be, and its competitively priced.
  • MeshMagnet
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    MeshMagnet polycounter lvl 9
    Dataday wrote: »
    If only there was a cheaper version for our line of work....

    You mean something like, Substance Painter? ;)
  • Spoon
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    Spoon polycounter lvl 11
    I own substance painter, and I worked professionally with Mari.
    Painter isnt near Mari, in my opinion. I really want it to be, and I am sure it will get there with future versions, but at the moment it's not.
    When that's said, I prefer Mari for commercial\film work, but I wouldnt use it for the games I am currently working on. 3D coat is actually preferable for those.

    Not only does it depend on personal taste, it also varies from project to project, in my opinion.

    When all that is said, it might be just me not having enough experience with all the different painting apps.
  • jgreasley
    Hmmmm a cheaper version of Mari targeted at Games / Indie devs.... Interesting idea.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    Could you pin point why Mari is more appropriate for commercial/films? I read that a lot, but no one really explains why.

    it's been a while since i used it but it struck me as a an app requiring a quite slow, diligent way of working. (at least a year ago) it could only do projection painting, did not work well with typical optimized (overlapping/mirrored) game UV layouts and had no realtime mirroring of paint going for it.
    it was also rather slow on the machine i used it on (i7, 16 gigs with a geforce 57x series card if memory serves) and it all looked quite muddy when zoomed out in the viewport. it uses some kind of megatexture/texture atlas approach to manage it's tiles and that just didn't look sharp/representative on the screen.
    another thing i personally didn't like was that the texture layers weren't freely accessible in the filesystem, you had to always im/export to use in other apps.

    you can make it work of course and i suppose if you approach characters like you would in VFX as a specialist with a narrow focus and more generous schedule than often experienced in games, setting up projects, unwrapping assets into texture tiles and had the need to use and modify lots of photo source textures and manage lots of layers/masks it might even be the best solution out there. i suspect outside of a few 'AAA' highest end realism titles it's not too applicable in games though. would it be a good solution for actual painting? dunno.
    i'd expect in most productions you'd still have to combine all your texture tiles at the end into a more realtime friendly layout. so more pipeline fun for you. :)

    it is a bit of a complex program too and eats up system resources. i'd prefer a more lightweight approach, something you can keep in the background without hassle, simple interface and suited to quick fixing of assets and not fighting about resources with a game editor you need to be running as well.

    now, back to modo discussion. :)
  • soulty
  • Spoon
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    Spoon polycounter lvl 11
    Could you pin point why Mari is more appropriate for commercial/films? I read that a lot, but no one really explains why.

    EDIT:ThomasP summed it all up.

    Just adding a reason was (and I believe still is) that Mari doesnt pick up on normal maps for stuff like cavity painting

    A personal thing for me, is the camera orbit. I always orbit and tumble around like a drunk person - would love if it was possible to contrain it to Y or Z like in Zbrush. the option is there, but it will completely remove all possibility to use those axis' then. (Nothing related to games, just throwing it out there :) )

    Was using one of the early versions of Mari, so some things might have changed.
    If they have, I would love to know!
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    Spoon wrote: »
    I own substance painter, and I worked professionally with Mari.
    Painter isnt near Mari, in my opinion. I really want it to be, and I am sure it will get there with future versions, but at the moment it's not.
    When that's said, I prefer Mari for commercial\film work, but I wouldnt use it for the games I am currently working on. 3D coat is actually preferable for those.

    Not only does it depend on personal taste, it also varies from project to project, in my opinion.

    When all that is said, it might be just me not having enough experience with all the different painting apps.

    Curious to your reasons why you feel it's not there yet? I have barely used either, so i really have no clue. All I know mari's interface and philosophy look a lot more complex and potentially cumbersome than painter.
  • Fwap
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    Fwap polycounter lvl 13
    40% off, hnnngg so close, yet so far.
  • jgreasley
    Spoon wrote: »
    EDIT:ThomasP summed it all up.

    Just adding a reason was (and I believe still is) that Mari doesnt pick up on normal maps for stuff like cavity painting

    A personal thing for me, is the camera orbit. I always orbit and tumble around like a drunk person - would love if it was possible to contrain it to Y or Z like in Zbrush. the option is there, but it will completely remove all possibility to use those axis' then. (Nothing related to games, just throwing it out there :) )

    Was using one of the early versions of Mari, so some things might have changed.
    If they have, I would love to know!

    Mari now has the option to make Navigation work like other applications including Maya, Houdini and Softimage (Check under preferences->Navigation)

    Here is a quick example of using displacement /bump maps for cavity / dry brush painting.

    [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep7bJrE801E"]Mari Mask Painting - YouTube[/ame]

    And this video from a couple of years ago shows Screen space symmetry and overlapping UV support.

    [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPzn0YqJKfg"]What's new in MARI 1.5 - YouTube[/ame]
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    Xoliul wrote: »
    Curious to your reasons why you feel it's not there yet? I have barely used either, so i really have no clue. All I know mari's interface and philosophy look a lot more complex and potentially cumbersome than painter.
    They're still working on it, but I don't think Painter in its current state should even be out of Beta. It's still terribly unrefined.
    Painting has wild accuracy issues, it handles painting across UV seams very poorly, you can't export layers, you can't turn on wireframe while in paint mode, it comes with a very small number of brushes and shaders built in, it has no color wheel or color pallet, etc.
    Some of the problems listed above make it outright unusable for me in a real workflow.
  • Spoon
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    Spoon polycounter lvl 11
    Waow, Mari has come such a long way since I worked with it :O
    Im honestly very excited to see this! Mari is, in my opinion, the Zbrush of texturing :)

    Thanks a lot, Jack! Will hopefully get time to try it over christmas :)
  • martinszeme
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    martinszeme polycounter lvl 8
    I'd say that 3dCoat is a great painting tool used by many pros. And its price is only 379$.
    Yet it has great retopo, UV and other tools.
    I personally would really love to try to migrate to Modo. Might get my work place get a licence.
  • jgreasley
    Spoon wrote: »
    Waow, Mari has come such a long way since I worked with it :O
    Im honestly very excited to see this! Mari is, in my opinion, the Zbrush of texturing :)

    Thanks a lot, Jack! Will hopefully get time to try it over christmas :)

    That video is from 1.5, we're on 2.6v4 now. :)

    [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n75CmpTLEuA"]MARI 2.6 features overview - YouTube[/ame]
  • MeshMagnet
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    MeshMagnet polycounter lvl 9
    I have to say, Substance Painter has come a long way since I last used it:

    [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt7UeiZj-6s&list=PLB0wXHrWAmCyJEDZLLQvusBxDbskFmh9K&index=3"]Substance Painter Tutorial #3 - Texturing the body: Part One - YouTube[/ame]
  • jgreasley
    [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtiLp_lUiQg"]Mari Indie Preview[/ame]

    Yep, certainly was an interesting idea.

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/289550?beta=0

    Mari Indie is now available.

    The full feature set of Mari, no commercial limitations, $149.99 regular price with a launch sale of 25%.

    There is a limit on the amount of textures you can paint (2 patches per object) and the max resolution (4k), but the same feature from the commercial version are in there.

    And did I mention there are no commercial limitations?

    Edit : I just started a thread about this http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145506
  • WarrenM
  • MagicSugar
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    MagicSugar polycounter lvl 10
    Besides Mari Indie there's now Modo Indie:

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/321540/

    Checkout the bundle and rental options (first time The Foundry is offering subscriptions?)
  • dmj
    Modo indie looks much improved over the SE version. I wonder if Farfarer's vertex normal kit will work with it?
  • dongyfeng
  • Dataday
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    Dataday polycounter lvl 8
    jgreasley wrote: »
    Hmmmm a cheaper version of Mari targeted at Games / Indie devs.... Interesting idea.

    I know right? Glad the cats out of the bag now though, haha.

    I look forward to seeing how the competitive nature of Mari + Modo play out in marketplace.
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