I have to agree with what Jed said, Quixel has the right idea about how to price software. I feel like if you guys followed their business model for pricing, you'd be in a good place... we all would be in a good place.
I'm pretty sure Tor doesn't even need hands or eyes. He just makes awesome art through sheer force of will.
The old idea was to eat him and and in magical ways we obtain his skills. :poly124:
Yes i think that more licensing options are better than internal barriers.
Beginners are unsure with the barriers because they exist and doesnt know when the barriers grab them.
Indie developer.
I mean somebody who pays without problem 200 bucks is in my opinion somebody who has other modelling program experience. Nobody wake up, pay 200 bucks and say now im a indie developer, wait world in 3 months i have a game. Why not make the private usage very cheap like student version with no monetize options.
Charge every dreamer a handful dollar and when they wake you are rich. Or they dont wake up and make something promising they buy a indie lincence and you have earn more money.
When you enter the suitable level the price doesnt hurt, but when you are at the bottom the price is a nogo.
Seems like a decent deal. I just can't let go of Maya.
More like Maya cant let go of you. The transition is actually pretty easy. Just change navigation to maya in Modo, turn off trackball rotation and play with it for a few days. I cant imagine going back to maya to be honest, especially after you set up macros and custom pies.
I would gladly trade rendering for an increased export limit. Outside of assigning materials I do all of my texturing/ baking work in an external program. That being said, I've got around 2 days into the modo demo and I love almost every thing about it. It has the modelling speed of Blender with the stability of a professional application. Time to cancel my MayaLt subscription.
More like Maya cant let go of you. The transition is actually pretty easy. Just change navigation to maya in Modo, turn off trackball rotation and play with it for a few days. I cant imagine going back to maya to be honest, especially after you set up macros and custom pies.
Scripting is disabled in Modo Indie. Could you explain a bit why this is a show stopper for your friend?
So I was pretty excited by this news until I got the inevitable limitations. And scripting is a big one for me. No third party scripting is in fact a dealbreaker.
I think scripts are essential to my workflow. I use senecas various scripts when modeling, I use farfarer's and etera's collection when UVing, I use a script to toggle specific action centers on (axis origin, center element), I use Ariel Chai's pipelineIO to export my lowpoly (With hard edges at UV seam), cage (after applying the morph map to push the model out and another to explode the mesh if necessary), highpoly in quads or tris... and speaking of highpoly, how can I even export that with a 100k limit?
Perhaps I could live with a whitelisted script listing... but I think unless the list was rigourously updated every time a script is updated, and new scripts were quickly approved I'd still dislike it intensly. Plus it still locks out indie users from developing scripts. Indie studios that use modo sometimes write their own scripts for import/export of their proprietary file format or for whatever other specific reason; restricting scripts is quite crippling.
When you list the reduced image file formats you don't mention EPS can modo Indie version still export UV's as an EPS?
Also not toooo keen on having programs tied to steam, but that's probably a topic for another day.
While this looks better than SE with such limitations I can't really recommend it.
This just wastes people's time as they either have to split their highpoly up into more parts or apply the subdivision in a different app
If you need to differentiate between the full price and indie version perhaps it would be better to consider a 'modo LT' approach and strip features; or have modular features that people pay for separately. Say I just want to model and UV. I don't need the render tab (but I still need to bake out information); I don't need the sculpting and painting tools, I don't need the animation tools... that's the sort of modo LT I'd like to see. Not one with frustrating limitations, but agreeable ones.
There's only so much one can ask for before the answer is: "just get he full thing"
This is one of the most balanced cheaper/accessible licenses I have seen so far. Scripts is one thing, that can possible get added or at least the ones people want (senecas, farfarers..ect), but at some point the answer is just going to have to be "buy the normal version of Modo", which should be under $999 when on sale.
I'd prefer if there was a solution where I could pay 30% of the total price for 30% of the total features, but get 100% of the features that I actually use. That's what the idea behind the indie version is (I assume...), and for my uses it fails to do that. Which is why I'm giving feedback.
I can empathize with that sentiment, and even frustration of paying for features you wont use but at some point its a bit unrealistic. What if product designers only want modeling and rendering, and the animators only want rigging and animation, and the guy from accounting only wants a damn spreadsheet... We cant really expect software developers to keep pumping out and micromanaging 101 different versions of software to fit a niche.
Its far more sound to try and offer a version that reaches a wider audience and covers the entire pipeline. We get more in the way of development and integration this way. I dont disagree with your sentiment, because I have felt it too but the practicality of it all isnt very sound.
Thankfully, Modo doesnt penalize you for not upgrading. You can wait out 2-3 versions, then pay the same upgrade cost and get up to date. So if one version doesnt improve on your workflow/pipeline too much, ignore it and wait. ...and for everything else there is Blender.
Yeah, but limitations like no scripts, export file type / tri count affect everyone significantly. If the tools currently split into tabs could be modular that'd be amazing but I can't imagine how complicated that would be to do. Would probably be a support nightmare as well.
I will say that it was good of them to upgrade everyone on SE to indie though.
Yeah, but limitations like no scripts, export file type / tri count affect everyone significantly. If the tools currently split into tabs could be modular that'd be amazing but I can't imagine how complicated that would be to do. Would probably be a support nightmare as well.
I will say that it was good of them to upgrade everyone on SE to indie though.
For sure. And the upgrade from SE is pretty well timed actually, considering modo upgrades annually for the most part. That puts SE around a year old. Who knows what it might look like a year from now? Seneca's scripts built in or offered as dlc? Maybe a boost to poly count limit? Cant really know what the future holds, but this is a good step and very usable depending on expectation. Even Modo proper isnt to bad price wise (compared to competition).
As artist we have it pretty good at this point, lots of options and one of them being free. Things are looking up.
Well I think the only way to go and the way you can really win over autodesk or atleast create your own market is to do it like quixel, big companies won't dare to cheat and use other versions, and the individuals that would normally pirate would skip the hassle and settle for the 300$ version.
More like Maya cant let go of you. The transition is actually pretty easy. Just change navigation to maya in Modo, turn off trackball rotation and play with it for a few days. I cant imagine going back to maya to be honest, especially after you set up macros and custom pies.
I like Maya's navigation and I saw that MODO got a remapping option to only change the navigation to Maya like. Would that only affect the navigation or will it break some of MODO's actions? I'm asking because I've tried to play with Max once, and used the Maya like navigation, but then lots of Max's actions got broken
I like Maya's navigation and I saw that MODO got a remapping option to only change the navigation to Maya like. Would that only affect the navigation or will it break some of MODO's actions? I'm asking because I've tried to play with Max once, and used the Maya like navigation, but then lots of Max's actions got broken
They give you the option to change it so its just Maya navigation or navigation + keymap. The navigation wont break anything. Modo is very well designed in that regard, you might as well consider the custom keymaps and navigation on the same level as the default controls.
Anyone know how well Mari compares to something like 3D Coat for painting?
Everything I've found says that Mari is heavily stilted toward projection painting for photo-realism, and movie work (IE; ridiculously high texture resolutions on a high-poly model).
It's disconcerting enough that I've had quite a bit of trouble finding any examples of people using it for anything other than just projecting, but I've hardly found any examples of it being used in games at all.
Any chance at some point in the future modo indie will have python scripting? Its been mentioned a few times but no one has actually asked; as a tech animator this pretty much stops me buying. I will be picking up mari though =D
Any chance at some point in the future modo indie will have python scripting? Its been mentioned a few times but no one has actually asked; as a tech animator this pretty much stops me buying. I will be picking up mari though =D
I'll have a chat with the Modo product manager and let him know your concerns.
After looking at lots of videos and documentation, it does seem that Mari is only good for making photo-realistic textures from images.
That's pretty disappointing, but surprising as well considering the price point on the full version.
Still love my free copy of Modo, at least.
Seriously? You're just going to go and dismiss the program like that without downloading the trial version and seeing if you can hand-paint something with it? You may find yourself pleasantly surprised at how good it is at creating any kind of texture.
It's great to see Modo getting more exposure and becoming more accessible. I haven't used it myself yet, but from all the commercial tools it is the one that looks like I, as a long time blender user, would get along with best. I'd even consider getting a subscription for a few months at some point, to try if the pro version would be a good investment for me.
This means I will not be able to modify anything (or even open the project files) that my teammate creates?
Am I understanding correctly, that if for some reason my Steam account gets deleted or I lose access to it temporarily or permanently, I can't access my files even if I would buy another license with another steam account?
Am I the only one to whom that sounds ... risky?
I'm ok with using steam as a payment and distribution plattform (even though there are drawbacks to it imho and people have been burned by it in the past), but I am sooooooo not ok with using steam as copy protection for professional software and I'm having trouble to trust software with critical tasks and data, where even the slightest possibility exists, that I will get locked out from the stuff I need to do my job. Anyone feel the same or am I the tinfoil-hat guy here?
And yes, I'm staying away from the Adobe creative-cloud for as long as I possibly can.
After looking at lots of videos and documentation, it does seem that Mari is only good for the pretty niche purpose of making photo-realistic textures from images.
That's pretty disappointing, but surprising as well considering the price point on the full version.
Still love my free copy of Modo, at least.
It's certainly good for regular hand painting too, it is just most commonly used at the moment for image based texturing.
The brush engine, procedural system, masking, adjustment and layering systems are really, really powerful.
It's what everyone asks for, though. You can either subscribe or buy.
I was wishing for a subscription for a while. Mainly cause I dont do much modeling at home to warrant a full purchase but want something more than a trial of 30 days. Subscriptions solves that problem Now only if theres a subscription for full Modo
I'm ok with using steam as a payment and distribution plattform (even though there are drawbacks to it imho and people have been burned by it in the past), but I am sooooooo not ok with using steam as copy protection for professional software and I'm having trouble to trust software with critical tasks and data, where even the slightest possibility exists, that I will get locked out from the stuff I need to do my job. Anyone feel the same or am I the tinfoil-hat guy here?
And yes, I'm staying away from the Adobe creative-cloud for as long as I possibly can.
If you do not have an internet connection, you can still access Modo (or any steam game/software for that matter) as long as you have run it once on that computer. (Assuming theres no retarded online DRM) Would like to hear how people were burned in the past.
Seriously? You're just going to go and dismiss the program like that without downloading the trial version and seeing if you can hand-paint something with it? You may find yourself pleasantly surprised at how good it is at creating any kind of texture.
I'm not just dismissing it; like I said I looked at several videos and lots of documentation.
It straight-up cannot paint directly on the model; the best it can do is paint inside screen-space and project it down to the model which A: is extremely slow compared to something like 3D Coat, Substance Painter or Mudbox, and B: is extremely inaccurate and results in lots of accidental stroke deformations if you aren't really careful.
I'm not just dismissing it; like I said I looked at several videos and lots of documentation.
It straight-up cannot paint directly on the model; the best it can do is paint inside screen-space and project it down to the model which A: is extremely slow compared to something like 3D Coat or Mudbox, and B: is extremely inaccurate and results in lots of accidental stroke deformations if you aren't really careful.
This isn't the experience our users report to us. We've had nearly 10 years of development now to iron out any problems people might expect with a projection based system.
If you do not have an internet connection, you can still access Modo (or any steam game/software for that matter) as long as you have run it once on that computer. (Assuming theres no retarded online DRM)
Sadly with games my experience has been different. I had several occasions where sudden loss of access to the internet (meaning before I could manually set steam to offline mode) prevented my from launching games. It also was no longer possible to switch to offline mode with the internet access gone.
I believe I have read something about this being not exactly intended behaviour a long time ago, but I'm not sure if it was fixed or ever will be.
Would like to hear how people were burned in the past.
When Gamemaker was first deployed to steam people hat the problem that the steam version was lacking behind in updates and also there was no way to roll back to older versions. So what happend was that an update broke critical features for some users and they couldn't even roll back to an older version. Also the Dev was unwilling to grand standalone licenses to people who bought it on steam, even though people who bought the standalone license from their site could get a free steam version. As far as I know they introduced beta branches to roll back to older versions on steam a few months later, but I can't comment on how useful the implementation was to the users. You can still find plenty of "don't buy this on steam" comments in the negative reviews section. Also I believe there was something like access to a marketplace missing from the steam version, but I can't comment on that. I got scared away from using Gamemaker. Also because of this story: (which has nothing to do with steam):
This isn't the experience our users report to us. We've had nearly 10 years of development now to iron out any problems people might expect with a projection based system.
The use of camera projection instead of tangent is probably just a minor annoyance. But unless there's some way to cut out the process of constantly baking and clearing your strokes, which I couldn't find despite searching deliberately for that exact feature, it's an objective fact that it would be much slower than simply painting directly on the model.
Thanks Foundry! The offering seems appropriate for the price point. I'll probably be picking the mari+modo bundle up before the 18th.
However, I'm torn about the no scripts deal. Not a complete deal breaker for me, but I'm sure there will come a point where my workflow will suffer because of it. I'd like to +1 a previous post that mentioned the option to download certain script packs that are approved by the Foundry. I know that opens up a whole other can of worms, but I think that the power of scripts shouldn't be an all or nothing deal. Especially within these sorts of communities where sharing ideas and workflows is essential to everyone's growth.
The use of camera projection instead of tangent is probably just a minor annoyance. But unless there's some way to cut out the process of constantly baking and clearing your strokes, which I couldn't find despite searching deliberately for that exact feature, it's an objective fact that it would be much slower than simply painting directly on the model.
The default Mari behaviour is to "Auto Bake and Clear". Which, when moving the camera, bakes for you automatically and clears the buffer.
This can be tailored in different ways, most people start with this option but actually move to "Manual" out of preference after a while.
There is also automatic edge masking to remove the possibility of streaking on edges.
Again, most people turn this on and then forget about it.
Thanks Foundry! The offering seems appropriate for the price point. I'll probably be picking the mari+modo bundle up before the 18th.
However, I'm torn about the no scripts deal. Not a complete deal breaker for me, but I'm sure there will come a point where my workflow will suffer because of it. I'd like to +1 a previous post that mentioned the option to download certain script packs that are approved by the Foundry. I know that opens up a whole other can of worms, but I think that the power of scripts shouldn't be an all or nothing deal. Especially within these sorts of communities where sharing ideas and workflows is essential to everyone's growth.
We're already talking about this internally so it's certainly on our radar. Thanks for the feedback.
The default Mari behaviour is to "Auto Bake and Clear". Which, when moving the camera, bakes for you automatically and clears the buffer.
This can be tailored in different ways, most people start with this option but actually move to "Manual" out of preference after a while.
There is also automatic edge masking to remove the possibility of streaking on edges.
Again, most people turn this on and then forget about it.
That's really good to hear. I'll keep looking into it, then.
I have a question though; does the script blocking prevent Modo from being able to use GoZ with ZBrush as well, or to load Substances?
When I saw Mari indie I got really excited... but then I read that it is limited to 2 UDIMs and 4K maps. The only reason I wanted Mari was because I wanted to use it with Amplify Texture for Unity. I wanted to paint up some really high-res, large set pieces to bake into the Amplify virtual texture. For that you need many UDIMs, and big maps (8k-32K). The more you can get in one material, the fewer the draw calls. With Amplify Texture, more UDIMs let you get more into one material.
IMO, the only big advantage that Mari has over 3D-Coat or Substance Painter is it's ability to handle really massive texture data. That's Mari's thing, the thing that it does well. You pull that out and Mari doesn't have it's edge anymore. After killing Mari's biggest strength, they didn't add anything to help it better compete with substance painter and 3D-Coat like true multi-channel PBR painting with a material-centric workflow (yeah, I get it, Mari has shared layer masking to sort of, kind of achieve the same thing), and a Unity and UE4 compatible shader and easy export to those engines. Substance painter and 3D-Coat will do the channel packing for you on export like packing the gloss into the alpha of the albedo map. The competing packages are designed specifically for games, and are very good creating game assets.
When I saw Modo indie I got really excited... but then I read that there is no scripting and plugin support. If it weren't for Farfarer, Seneca, Eterea, Zoltan, Jacobo, etc (I know I've left some people out, sorry), I wouldn't ever even load up Modo. The contributions from those awesome community members make Modo a usable game dev tool. That community spirit is also what I love about blender. People create solutions to missing functionality, and then share their creations so that other artists with similar workflow issues can also benefit.
I think you are underestimating how important scripting and addons are to Modo game artists. No substances even? Does it even have the baking UI toolkit? Come on! This is not some luxury that should be reserved for the top-end product... it is an necessity. If you are worried that scripting in Modo indie will make it too powerful, and it will cannibalize big Modo... Just stop. Your paranoia will destroy ya. You've already locked the master scene to an individual steam user account. A far stricter measure than you took with the original Modo SE, which just had it's own file format. Similar to the Mari indie situation, you've handicapped Modo's greatest strength, it's renowned polygon modeling, by imposing an arbitrary poly limit on the exporter. I guess this is because if you are "indie," then you don't have need for lots of polys... your Minecraft clone won't need that.
I'd also like to point out that Maya LT has no poly count restrictions when exporting to your game project. And they were forced into adding back basic mel scripting. Also, substance support is there. I feel like the Foundry didn't learn anything from the Maya LT launch. Or the plan was simply tear everything out, and only put back in what users scream the loudest for. That was the Autodesk strategy. But one thing that helped them with this approach is that Autodesk has a site where users can vote on the features they want... put back in. If the Foundry is going to copy Autodesk's Maya LT playbook, then maybe they can consider a feature voting system as well. Just to keep up with the Joneses.
A fear that I have, is that these paranoid commercial apps that distrust and arbitrarily limit their users will just push more people towards blender. Now that isn't a bad thing for the users (blender _is_ awesome), or the blender foundation, but that is a bad thing for commercial 3d packages.
Lets imagine for a moment a very common scenario when new users are seeking help with a problem. The first thing advanced users trying to help out ask for is for the OP to share their scene file. That is not even an option with Modo indie. You will create inside a hermetically sealed bubble. "Why? Because of fear."
It is obviously too late, and no one asked for my opinion, but a tiered licensing model is the better way to go. But that involves trust. Us users of the full Modo package are continually told that there just aren't the resources for game specific features, and yet again, there are the resources to fork the product and remove features. Modo for indie game artists has nothing added, only things removed. There also seems to be a strange contradiction between the vibe of the Modo developers wondering why we can't just script our own solutions for game-specific needs (as Seneca did James did), and then wondering why in the world we would need scripting in Modo indie.
I guess I should end on a positive note. I think this is a good first try, actually second try for Modo I guess. I think at this point, I would recommend that if an indie game dev was interested in Modo, that they just pony-up for the full package. For anyone interested in Modo proper, there is 40% sale coming up! Now if I come across freelance product designers, or previs guys. I will definitely recommend Modo indie, because I think it's a great product for that crowd. Unfortunately, Mari indie doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know who that is for. One nice thing I guess I can say about Mari indie is that unlike it's big brother, it doesn't require a license server or a node lock. Because of steam, it is waay more user friendly.
Yeah, yeah, I know... shut up and go model something... over and out.
Sadly with games my experience has been different. I had several occasions where sudden loss of access to the internet (meaning before I could manually set steam to offline mode) prevented my from launching games. It also was no longer possible to switch to offline mode with the internet access gone.
I believe I have read something about this being not exactly intended behaviour a long time ago, but I'm not sure if it was fixed or ever will be.
When Gamemaker was first deployed to steam people hat the problem that the steam version was lacking behind in updates and also there was no way to roll back to older versions. So what happend was that an update broke critical features for some users and they couldn't even roll back to an older version. Also the Dev was unwilling to grand standalone licenses to people who bought it on steam, even though people who bought the standalone license from their site could get a free steam version. As far as I know they introduced beta branches to roll back to older versions on steam a few months later, but I can't comment on how useful the implementation was to the users. You can still find plenty of "don't buy this on steam" comments in the negative reviews section. Also I believe there was something like access to a marketplace missing from the steam version, but I can't comment on that. I got scared away from using Gamemaker. Also because of this story: (which has nothing to do with steam):
Ah i see. Yeah regarding the first bit that shouldnt be as intended. I know recently we had an internet outage but I could still keep playing which is nice. On the Gamemaker end, yeah thats more to do with the developer than Steam. Though Valve is kinda somewhat accountable as they let them on the Steam platform.
Could you guys make a list of the custom scripts you use the most for games?
The Foundry might be willing to add those to the default Modo indie and full modo versions, at least, if they aren't willing to unlock custom scripts for the Modo indie version. It seems like it could be a decent compromise.
I don't think this is a valid solution. What if someone writes a super useful script the day after the list is compiled? It's going to be a maintenance headache for the Foundry and a hassle for end users.
Just limit access to the File I/O library or something. Then nobody can circumvent the limitations on export. Done.
I don't think this is a valid solution. What if someone writes a super useful script the day after the list is compiled? It's going to be a maintenance headache for the Foundry and a hassle for end users.
Just limit access to the File I/O library or something. Then nobody can circumvent the limitations on export. Done.
Unfortunately I believe that's similar to what Autodesk did, and it prevented ZBrush GoZ from working.
Replies
Yes i think that more licensing options are better than internal barriers.
Beginners are unsure with the barriers because they exist and doesnt know when the barriers grab them.
Indie developer.
I mean somebody who pays without problem 200 bucks is in my opinion somebody who has other modelling program experience. Nobody wake up, pay 200 bucks and say now im a indie developer, wait world in 3 months i have a game. Why not make the private usage very cheap like student version with no monetize options.
Charge every dreamer a handful dollar and when they wake you are rich. Or they dont wake up and make something promising they buy a indie lincence and you have earn more money.
When you enter the suitable level the price doesnt hurt, but when you are at the bottom the price is a nogo.
More like Maya cant let go of you. The transition is actually pretty easy. Just change navigation to maya in Modo, turn off trackball rotation and play with it for a few days. I cant imagine going back to maya to be honest, especially after you set up macros and custom pies.
I'll give it a try and see what happens.
So I was pretty excited by this news until I got the inevitable limitations. And scripting is a big one for me. No third party scripting is in fact a dealbreaker.
I think scripts are essential to my workflow. I use senecas various scripts when modeling, I use farfarer's and etera's collection when UVing, I use a script to toggle specific action centers on (axis origin, center element), I use Ariel Chai's pipelineIO to export my lowpoly (With hard edges at UV seam), cage (after applying the morph map to push the model out and another to explode the mesh if necessary), highpoly in quads or tris... and speaking of highpoly, how can I even export that with a 100k limit?
Perhaps I could live with a whitelisted script listing... but I think unless the list was rigourously updated every time a script is updated, and new scripts were quickly approved I'd still dislike it intensly. Plus it still locks out indie users from developing scripts. Indie studios that use modo sometimes write their own scripts for import/export of their proprietary file format or for whatever other specific reason; restricting scripts is quite crippling.
When you list the reduced image file formats you don't mention EPS can modo Indie version still export UV's as an EPS?
Also not toooo keen on having programs tied to steam, but that's probably a topic for another day.
While this looks better than SE with such limitations I can't really recommend it.
I always use senecas perfectcircle.pl... but that's a script.
This just wastes people's time as they either have to split their highpoly up into more parts or apply the subdivision in a different app
If you need to differentiate between the full price and indie version perhaps it would be better to consider a 'modo LT' approach and strip features; or have modular features that people pay for separately. Say I just want to model and UV. I don't need the render tab (but I still need to bake out information); I don't need the sculpting and painting tools, I don't need the animation tools... that's the sort of modo LT I'd like to see. Not one with frustrating limitations, but agreeable ones.
This is one of the most balanced cheaper/accessible licenses I have seen so far. Scripts is one thing, that can possible get added or at least the ones people want (senecas, farfarers..ect), but at some point the answer is just going to have to be "buy the normal version of Modo", which should be under $999 when on sale.
Its far more sound to try and offer a version that reaches a wider audience and covers the entire pipeline. We get more in the way of development and integration this way. I dont disagree with your sentiment, because I have felt it too but the practicality of it all isnt very sound.
Thankfully, Modo doesnt penalize you for not upgrading. You can wait out 2-3 versions, then pay the same upgrade cost and get up to date. So if one version doesnt improve on your workflow/pipeline too much, ignore it and wait. ...and for everything else there is Blender.
I will say that it was good of them to upgrade everyone on SE to indie though.
For sure. And the upgrade from SE is pretty well timed actually, considering modo upgrades annually for the most part. That puts SE around a year old. Who knows what it might look like a year from now? Seneca's scripts built in or offered as dlc? Maybe a boost to poly count limit? Cant really know what the future holds, but this is a good step and very usable depending on expectation. Even Modo proper isnt to bad price wise (compared to competition).
As artist we have it pretty good at this point, lots of options and one of them being free. Things are looking up.
I think you would double your profits over night.
I like Maya's navigation and I saw that MODO got a remapping option to only change the navigation to Maya like. Would that only affect the navigation or will it break some of MODO's actions? I'm asking because I've tried to play with Max once, and used the Maya like navigation, but then lots of Max's actions got broken
They give you the option to change it so its just Maya navigation or navigation + keymap. The navigation wont break anything. Modo is very well designed in that regard, you might as well consider the custom keymaps and navigation on the same level as the default controls.
Everything I've found says that Mari is heavily stilted toward projection painting for photo-realism, and movie work (IE; ridiculously high texture resolutions on a high-poly model).
It's disconcerting enough that I've had quite a bit of trouble finding any examples of people using it for anything other than just projecting, but I've hardly found any examples of it being used in games at all.
We'll drop Valve an email and see what we can do. This is a Steam store feature and a bit out of our hands at the moment I think.
I'll have a chat with the Modo product manager and let him know your concerns.
Good job for the Foundry, and lets hope Autodesk follows suit.
It's what everyone asks for, though. You can either subscribe or buy.
That's pretty disappointing, but surprising as well considering the price point on the full version.
Still love my free copy of Modo, at least.
Am I understanding correctly, that if for some reason my Steam account gets deleted or I lose access to it temporarily or permanently, I can't access my files even if I would buy another license with another steam account?
Am I the only one to whom that sounds ... risky?
I'm ok with using steam as a payment and distribution plattform (even though there are drawbacks to it imho and people have been burned by it in the past), but I am sooooooo not ok with using steam as copy protection for professional software and I'm having trouble to trust software with critical tasks and data, where even the slightest possibility exists, that I will get locked out from the stuff I need to do my job. Anyone feel the same or am I the tinfoil-hat guy here?
And yes, I'm staying away from the Adobe creative-cloud for as long as I possibly can.
It's certainly good for regular hand painting too, it is just most commonly used at the moment for image based texturing.
The brush engine, procedural system, masking, adjustment and layering systems are really, really powerful.
I was wishing for a subscription for a while. Mainly cause I dont do much modeling at home to warrant a full purchase but want something more than a trial of 30 days. Subscriptions solves that problem
If you do not have an internet connection, you can still access Modo (or any steam game/software for that matter) as long as you have run it once on that computer. (Assuming theres no retarded online DRM) Would like to hear how people were burned in the past.
I'm not just dismissing it; like I said I looked at several videos and lots of documentation.
It straight-up cannot paint directly on the model; the best it can do is paint inside screen-space and project it down to the model which A: is extremely slow compared to something like 3D Coat, Substance Painter or Mudbox, and B: is extremely inaccurate and results in lots of accidental stroke deformations if you aren't really careful.
This isn't the experience our users report to us. We've had nearly 10 years of development now to iron out any problems people might expect with a projection based system.
Why not try a 15 day trial for yourself?
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari/trial/
Sadly with games my experience has been different. I had several occasions where sudden loss of access to the internet (meaning before I could manually set steam to offline mode) prevented my from launching games. It also was no longer possible to switch to offline mode with the internet access gone.
I believe I have read something about this being not exactly intended behaviour a long time ago, but I'm not sure if it was fixed or ever will be.
When Gamemaker was first deployed to steam people hat the problem that the steam version was lacking behind in updates and also there was no way to roll back to older versions. So what happend was that an update broke critical features for some users and they couldn't even roll back to an older version. Also the Dev was unwilling to grand standalone licenses to people who bought it on steam, even though people who bought the standalone license from their site could get a free steam version. As far as I know they introduced beta branches to roll back to older versions on steam a few months later, but I can't comment on how useful the implementation was to the users. You can still find plenty of "don't buy this on steam" comments in the negative reviews section. Also I believe there was something like access to a marketplace missing from the steam version, but I can't comment on that. I got scared away from using Gamemaker. Also because of this story: (which has nothing to do with steam):
http://www.develop-online.net/news/gamemaker-anti-piracy-bug-destroys-developer-assets/0113519
The use of camera projection instead of tangent is probably just a minor annoyance. But unless there's some way to cut out the process of constantly baking and clearing your strokes, which I couldn't find despite searching deliberately for that exact feature, it's an objective fact that it would be much slower than simply painting directly on the model.
However, I'm torn about the no scripts deal. Not a complete deal breaker for me, but I'm sure there will come a point where my workflow will suffer because of it. I'd like to +1 a previous post that mentioned the option to download certain script packs that are approved by the Foundry. I know that opens up a whole other can of worms, but I think that the power of scripts shouldn't be an all or nothing deal. Especially within these sorts of communities where sharing ideas and workflows is essential to everyone's growth.
The default Mari behaviour is to "Auto Bake and Clear". Which, when moving the camera, bakes for you automatically and clears the buffer.
This can be tailored in different ways, most people start with this option but actually move to "Manual" out of preference after a while.
There is also automatic edge masking to remove the possibility of streaking on edges.
Again, most people turn this on and then forget about it.
We're already talking about this internally so it's certainly on our radar. Thanks for the feedback.
That's really good to hear. I'll keep looking into it, then.
I have a question though; does the script blocking prevent Modo from being able to use GoZ with ZBrush as well, or to load Substances?
it's like Maya without MEL. Or any 3d package really but.... I just can't imagine using modo without them.
I'd recommend buying the full package on sale.
IMO, the only big advantage that Mari has over 3D-Coat or Substance Painter is it's ability to handle really massive texture data. That's Mari's thing, the thing that it does well. You pull that out and Mari doesn't have it's edge anymore. After killing Mari's biggest strength, they didn't add anything to help it better compete with substance painter and 3D-Coat like true multi-channel PBR painting with a material-centric workflow (yeah, I get it, Mari has shared layer masking to sort of, kind of achieve the same thing), and a Unity and UE4 compatible shader and easy export to those engines. Substance painter and 3D-Coat will do the channel packing for you on export like packing the gloss into the alpha of the albedo map. The competing packages are designed specifically for games, and are very good creating game assets.
When I saw Modo indie I got really excited... but then I read that there is no scripting and plugin support. If it weren't for Farfarer, Seneca, Eterea, Zoltan, Jacobo, etc (I know I've left some people out, sorry), I wouldn't ever even load up Modo. The contributions from those awesome community members make Modo a usable game dev tool. That community spirit is also what I love about blender. People create solutions to missing functionality, and then share their creations so that other artists with similar workflow issues can also benefit.
I think you are underestimating how important scripting and addons are to Modo game artists. No substances even? Does it even have the baking UI toolkit? Come on! This is not some luxury that should be reserved for the top-end product... it is an necessity. If you are worried that scripting in Modo indie will make it too powerful, and it will cannibalize big Modo... Just stop. Your paranoia will destroy ya. You've already locked the master scene to an individual steam user account. A far stricter measure than you took with the original Modo SE, which just had it's own file format. Similar to the Mari indie situation, you've handicapped Modo's greatest strength, it's renowned polygon modeling, by imposing an arbitrary poly limit on the exporter. I guess this is because if you are "indie," then you don't have need for lots of polys... your Minecraft clone won't need that.
I'd also like to point out that Maya LT has no poly count restrictions when exporting to your game project. And they were forced into adding back basic mel scripting. Also, substance support is there. I feel like the Foundry didn't learn anything from the Maya LT launch. Or the plan was simply tear everything out, and only put back in what users scream the loudest for. That was the Autodesk strategy. But one thing that helped them with this approach is that Autodesk has a site where users can vote on the features they want... put back in. If the Foundry is going to copy Autodesk's Maya LT playbook, then maybe they can consider a feature voting system as well. Just to keep up with the Joneses.
A fear that I have, is that these paranoid commercial apps that distrust and arbitrarily limit their users will just push more people towards blender. Now that isn't a bad thing for the users (blender _is_ awesome), or the blender foundation, but that is a bad thing for commercial 3d packages.
Lets imagine for a moment a very common scenario when new users are seeking help with a problem. The first thing advanced users trying to help out ask for is for the OP to share their scene file. That is not even an option with Modo indie. You will create inside a hermetically sealed bubble. "Why? Because of fear."
It is obviously too late, and no one asked for my opinion, but a tiered licensing model is the better way to go. But that involves trust. Us users of the full Modo package are continually told that there just aren't the resources for game specific features, and yet again, there are the resources to fork the product and remove features. Modo for indie game artists has nothing added, only things removed. There also seems to be a strange contradiction between the vibe of the Modo developers wondering why we can't just script our own solutions for game-specific needs (as Seneca did James did), and then wondering why in the world we would need scripting in Modo indie.
I guess I should end on a positive note. I think this is a good first try, actually second try for Modo I guess. I think at this point, I would recommend that if an indie game dev was interested in Modo, that they just pony-up for the full package. For anyone interested in Modo proper, there is 40% sale coming up! Now if I come across freelance product designers, or previs guys. I will definitely recommend Modo indie, because I think it's a great product for that crowd. Unfortunately, Mari indie doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know who that is for. One nice thing I guess I can say about Mari indie is that unlike it's big brother, it doesn't require a license server or a node lock. Because of steam, it is waay more user friendly.
Yeah, yeah, I know... shut up and go model something... over and out.
And yes, when they tear out a lot of useful stuff there is no point in buying it, you can download Blender and enjoy more features for free.
Ah i see. Yeah regarding the first bit that shouldnt be as intended. I know recently we had an internet outage but I could still keep playing which is nice. On the Gamemaker end, yeah thats more to do with the developer than Steam. Though Valve is kinda somewhat accountable as they let them on the Steam platform.
I don't think this is a valid solution. What if someone writes a super useful script the day after the list is compiled? It's going to be a maintenance headache for the Foundry and a hassle for end users.
Just limit access to the File I/O library or something. Then nobody can circumvent the limitations on export. Done.
Unfortunately I believe that's similar to what Autodesk did, and it prevented ZBrush GoZ from working.