7) Eh, I wouldn't defend the UI. It's a losing battle. I do all my customizations through text files because the customizable UI within MODO is awful and requires tomes of arcane knowledge to operate successfully. One wrong move and you get to start over.
7) Eh, I wouldn't defend the UI. It's a losing battle. I do all my customizations through text files because the customizable UI within MODO is awful and requires tomes of arcane knowledge to operate successfully. One wrong move and you get to start over.
Fair enough and I agree, I dont want it to be seen as a defending whats there now, rather I still think...at least based on my experience so far, that the approach has been pretty simple (as far as duplicating, detaching, splitting and docking existing panels). It is finicky though, setting it up can feel like performing open heart surgery. But once its done thats it ...then again I don't really feel the need to heavily customize in Modo (outside of color options that is). It could be a lot better, in fact I enjoyed the simplicity of Blender's approach a lot more.
In max, you just press shift+x to toggle edge constraints on, and then moving verts/edges faces/ will move along the edges of your mesh, similar what the slide tool does in modo. but you can still use other tools, for example scaling, with the constraints on. just feels a bit handier in max than in modo and i missed it more than i thought i would :P
I have to spend some time with that boolean kit ... it looks promising for 2D boolean stuff but I can never make it behave in the way that my brain expects it to.
From someone who is going from 3DS Max to learning Modo:
Pro's :
The cost
Support from Foundry
Mac support - I travel a lot with a mac and wanted a 3D package.
Feels un-bloated - Max for me has slowly become more and more filled with tools i just don't use and modo is generally more trimmed and has the basics I need.
Tools don't hang, program starts instantly
I don't have random max scripts crash that tell me to restart in order to fix < this could be user based, 2014 & 2015 max seemed pretty common to just abandon ship randomly on high work loads.
Rendering is quick and fantastic
Cons (these may also come down to inexperience with modo):
The texture baking process doesn't seem as straight forward as max imo but I bake in Xnormal the most so it hasn't affected me.
Small issues with normal smoothing, smoothing groups, vertex normal adjustments etc have already been stated.
Modifier stack, max users get pretty used to this and it can build a backbone of non destructive workflow but really i haven't felt it was a massive loss and if anything I model preemptively smarter.
Max and Maya are industry standard and I think have a lot of tools and plugins that many companies use but really everything imports and exports from each other nowadays. You should just go with what you enjoy the most, if it gets the job done i doubt anyone cares what you use I enjoy Modo and hope pretty much use it as often as I can.
Dataday
1) Symmetry
I consider mirroring an instance not being a proper symmetry tool in 2015. In 2008 - maybe, not today. Regular modo symmetry in 801 breaks just after I move out of the sphere/box modelling and there`s no way to fix it.
In maya 15+16 you can model with topological symmetry anywhere in 3d space with any angle of rotation. And you can easily fix sym if it breaks.
Max has similar to modo workflow but with procedural modifier.
2) Normal editing.
Editing normals is a simple task, but in modo it is very complicated. You have to tweak vertex normal maps, figure out how they work with with smoothing group which work with material shading, how this is going to be exported. Why so complicated? Just look how easy it is in maya/max.
Just transfering normals from one mesh to another(eg. from a sphere to a pack of planes etc.) was very tricky and it was working not every time.
Farfarer's vertex normal toolkit is a great thing, I agree.
3) Smoothing topology.
No, I dont feel I`m wrong or subjected. AFAIK modo Smooth tool works in 3 types of background constrain: screen space, vector, point. SS and vector are almost useless, point is usable with not ideal results. Regular smooth brush doesnt respect background constrain at all.
Additionally, in both AD products you can relax topology maintaining volume without any background meshes. You just model the character and relax topology with a brush. This is not important for hard surface/archvis, but is a deal breaker for characters.
4) Maybe I had some strange bugs. I dont know. I`ve UVed a simple character and made him symmetrical deleting half and copying. After that you cant select "UV island" by double clicking in UV editor, because in UV space two sides are welded one to another.
Then I`ve exported to max with FBX. Every UV was disconnected.
5) This is subjective, I agree.
6) Hotkey/config export.
Open modo, make change to 1 hotkey. Export config named test01.
Work for some time, make another hotkey change and export config again - test 02.
Then compare those 2 file in text editor. One has all the preferences+your first hotkey, second one contains only 1 hotkey.
So you have to manually copy-paste it to "main" config.
And to understand this behaviour I spent half a day trying to export proper config.
7) This is also subjective, I wont argue on that topic. Just my opinion - UI customization should be simple. In modo it is complicated.
I feel like many simple things in modo are overcomplicated, not intuitive. And sometimes bugged.
I`m not a big fan of AD products but they at least work in a predictable way.
-Default tool settings are very different from Max or Maya. You will drive yourself nuts the first few models wondering why you're moving the pivot vs an element. For example in maya or Max its very easy to extend edges. In max you hold Shift, and as long as you hold SHift you can keep extending. Let go of the mouse button, you start a new poly. Sounds easy enough, not in modo with the default options. You have to keep clicking Z and dropping the tool. Dropping tools is a another strange concept that takes a while to wrap your head around.
Actually you don't have to drop the tool, you just extend the edge, shift+click, extend, shift+click, etc.
Shift+click will always apply the current tool without dropping it.
With that extend tool, you have to drop it to be able to use the dual planar handles (eg moving along X and Y coordinates) which I find really frustrating. In Max, when you extend, you just hold shift and can continue extending with normal translate handles and even rotation and scale (Modo can't without extending then dropping). I use those features a lot and it's super fast in Max. But Maybe that's just me modelling the "Max way" and I need to learn the "Modo way"....
With that extend tool, you have to drop it to be able to use the dual planar handles (eg moving along X and Y coordinates) which I find really frustrating. In Max, when you extend, you just hold shift and can continue extending with normal translate handles and even rotation and scale (Modo can't without extending then dropping). I use those features a lot and it's super fast in Max. But Maybe that's just me modelling the "Max way" and I need to learn the "Modo way"....
Is not just you, Cinema 4D has a shortcut similar to that, which is CTRL, you can extrude Edges and Faces while holding it down and moving the axis handle in one or multiple directions, it works for Points too, but they will be duplicated instead.
Hm, I'm still not sure what you mean by having to drop it to use the dual planar handles. You're always moving on the dual planar direction if you're not using the handles? And the plane you're moving on depends on your action center i.e. World,Local,Screen, etc
With that extend tool, you have to drop it to be able to use the dual planar handles (eg moving along X and Y coordinates) which I find really frustrating. In Max, when you extend, you just hold shift and can continue extending with normal translate handles and even rotation and scale (Modo can't without extending then dropping). I use those features a lot and it's super fast in Max. But Maybe that's just me modelling the "Max way" and I need to learn the "Modo way"....
This is confusing BUT it's actually a feature.
Right click the "Edge Extend" tool in the toolpipe window and make sure that "Select Through" is turned OFF. If it's off, you can shift click and move on both axis over and over again, just like Max.
1) 901 symmetry is good for me. Previous versions had many issues.
2) Agreed. Farfarer, you are life saver, thanks!
3) You can emulate relax brush with smooth tool in topology tab + airbrush faloff. Workaround for lowpoly meshes - duplicate and constrain to its copy.
4) I remember some UV issues with FBX export. Forgot how I solved this.
5) Subjective.
6-7) Oh boy, I've got mixed feelings on this particular subject.
On one hand - customizing modo is very very very rewarding. Ability to run scripts binded to hotkey only for specific tools was eye opening. Layered configs, hotkeys, forms, layouts - I've build two different workspaces for me and my wife that sync across 2 workstations and 3 laptops. Made a custom pie menu and bound it to a hotkey? It's ready for you anywhere.
On the other hand - it's confusing, complicated and takes time to learn how modo ui work. However, you really should put some time in customizing you work app (modo in my case). It will pay well in the end.
at 22 minute mark you make a bunch of cyl and cut them out of the angled side to make that holed piece , When you do something like that how do you repto or turbosmooth it. Does modo handle booleans much better then max
I tried 901 trial on linux and it was a painful experience for me. Multiple crashes in short time span, bad viewport performance especially new advanced pbr mode, no AA whatsoever. tried it on amd card with both proprietary and xorg drivers. maybe it was my OS setup or overall instability of freshly released 901. I heard they come along a long way about stability since initial release.
I tried 901 trial on linux and it was a painful experience for me. Multiple crashes in short time span, bad viewport performance especially new advanced pbr mode, no AA whatsoever. tried it on amd card with both proprietary and xorg drivers. maybe it was my OS setup or overall instability of freshly released 901. I heard they come along a long way about stability since initial release.
Cant complain, im actually surprised how decent it work under my AMD card, under a currrent ubuntu install, no LTS.
Thanks for the feedback, I have an AMD setup too, so in the future (when I'm done with the projects on Cinema 4D) I'll try the switch to Linux, but I'm still not sure on the distro or the DCC, so I'm making some tests.
I was going to try another distro, based on RedHat (Fedora or CentOS) since most of the guides on how to install this kind of software take in consideration that you have this kind of OS. I couldn't figure out how to install (for example Maya 2016) on Manjaro with my guinea pig laptop (Intel - Nvidia), on AUR I've found Maya 2015 (going back to 8.5) but I wanted to manually install the latest one, this is a frustrating situation.
Right click the "Edge Extend" tool in the toolpipe window and make sure that "Select Through" is turned OFF. If it's off, you can shift click and move on both axis over and over again, just like Max.
Really? If "select through" is toggled off, you should be able to shift-click-drag anywhere in empty space in the viewport and drag out edge extrusions. If it's not, well, that sucks ... because it's super handy.
Future SPs will certainly feature some more polishing and bug squashing but this time around they seem to be far more substantial in that there will be added features/elements or feature enhancements coming along with them.
As for Indie, definitely stay tuned for more information on where its going. Its a bit of a slow process but well worth the wait in my opinion.
I think I can help out here. I've worked in the game industry and the product design industry. When it comes down to it Modo feels like it was designed recently, where as 3DS Max and Maya feel like they were designed in the 90s and have just been upgraded and upgraded and upgraded to the point that they are bloated.
Modo specializes in fast modeling, texturing and rendering. It's ideal for Product Design and concepting. It's tools are based on making beautiful renders quickly.
The updates that come out once a year are substantial. The company listens to the community, and designs their updates accordingly.
As an example, the people that use Modo work closing with engineers, so they made plug-ins that allow you to import and export directly from Solid Works and other engineering programs, so you can work directly with them to get the best, most realistic look.
They realized the steam community loves Modo, so they created a kit for the steam community to make it easier to shade for the Dota 2 game engine.
That's why I love Modo, they listen to the community and design for the people.
Examples of what you can do, this took me 5 hours of work including render time.
Modo is to -me- an easier version of Blender. It has all that I need without having to rent a Autodesk software. I like to know that I own the things I produce
I know there has been a lot of Modo talk recently, especially with 901 Indie coming out and a bit of controversy surrounding its limitations (or lack there of).... but it seems like a lot of news is coming out all at once, some thats worth sharing due to timing of it all.
The timing coincides with Modo having a 40% off sale in case anyone wants to jump on that combo. (FE2 works with other apps as well, so if you already have maya, max, xsil...ect you are still covered)
** Modo version of FE2 isnt out, beta coming soon.
I tried out 601 years ago, and although it was pretty good, like others I found the UI, symmetry and vert sliding ( among other small things) a bit of a minus point. These new vids have me curious, even just the boolean feature is enough to make me curious again.
Replies
Fair enough and I agree, I dont want it to be seen as a defending whats there now, rather I still think...at least based on my experience so far, that the approach has been pretty simple (as far as duplicating, detaching, splitting and docking existing panels). It is finicky though, setting it up can feel like performing open heart surgery. But once its done thats it ...then again I don't really feel the need to heavily customize in Modo (outside of color options that is). It could be a lot better, in fact I enjoyed the simplicity of Blender's approach a lot more.
Just out of curiosity, have you tried it with the snapping functionality?
Also have you seen?: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=119&t=80869
If that doesnt quite cover it, I would be curious to see a detailed example in which to share on the feature request subforum.
I parked it right on the bottom: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6C-cBuP60GjWUYyMV9mSHhUQTQ/view?usp=sharing
You can also see the best boolean kit I have found so far in the upper right.
Pretty sure you already saw it though: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=36&t=94894
Also as far as customizing the UI, for a streamlined work environment... toggling the CAD Junkie Zen UI was perfect, especially with 901's pinned window feature.
Example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6C-cBuP60GjNTQyQlJuVFM0R3c/view?usp=sharing
Pro's :
The cost
Support from Foundry
Mac support - I travel a lot with a mac and wanted a 3D package.
Feels un-bloated - Max for me has slowly become more and more filled with tools i just don't use and modo is generally more trimmed and has the basics I need.
Tools don't hang, program starts instantly
I don't have random max scripts crash that tell me to restart in order to fix < this could be user based, 2014 & 2015 max seemed pretty common to just abandon ship randomly on high work loads.
Rendering is quick and fantastic
Cons (these may also come down to inexperience with modo):
The texture baking process doesn't seem as straight forward as max imo but I bake in Xnormal the most so it hasn't affected me.
Small issues with normal smoothing, smoothing groups, vertex normal adjustments etc have already been stated.
Modifier stack, max users get pretty used to this and it can build a backbone of non destructive workflow but really i haven't felt it was a massive loss and if anything I model preemptively smarter.
Max and Maya are industry standard and I think have a lot of tools and plugins that many companies use but really everything imports and exports from each other nowadays. You should just go with what you enjoy the most, if it gets the job done i doubt anyone cares what you use
1) Symmetry
I consider mirroring an instance not being a proper symmetry tool in 2015. In 2008 - maybe, not today. Regular modo symmetry in 801 breaks just after I move out of the sphere/box modelling and there`s no way to fix it.
In maya 15+16 you can model with topological symmetry anywhere in 3d space with any angle of rotation. And you can easily fix sym if it breaks.
Max has similar to modo workflow but with procedural modifier.
2) Normal editing.
Editing normals is a simple task, but in modo it is very complicated. You have to tweak vertex normal maps, figure out how they work with with smoothing group which work with material shading, how this is going to be exported. Why so complicated? Just look how easy it is in maya/max.
Just transfering normals from one mesh to another(eg. from a sphere to a pack of planes etc.) was very tricky and it was working not every time.
Farfarer's vertex normal toolkit is a great thing, I agree.
3) Smoothing topology.
No, I dont feel I`m wrong or subjected. AFAIK modo Smooth tool works in 3 types of background constrain: screen space, vector, point. SS and vector are almost useless, point is usable with not ideal results. Regular smooth brush doesnt respect background constrain at all.
Additionally, in both AD products you can relax topology maintaining volume without any background meshes. You just model the character and relax topology with a brush. This is not important for hard surface/archvis, but is a deal breaker for characters.
4) Maybe I had some strange bugs. I dont know. I`ve UVed a simple character and made him symmetrical deleting half and copying. After that you cant select "UV island" by double clicking in UV editor, because in UV space two sides are welded one to another.
Then I`ve exported to max with FBX. Every UV was disconnected.
5) This is subjective, I agree.
6) Hotkey/config export.
Open modo, make change to 1 hotkey. Export config named test01.
Work for some time, make another hotkey change and export config again - test 02.
Then compare those 2 file in text editor. One has all the preferences+your first hotkey, second one contains only 1 hotkey.
So you have to manually copy-paste it to "main" config.
And to understand this behaviour I spent half a day trying to export proper config.
7) This is also subjective, I wont argue on that topic. Just my opinion - UI customization should be simple. In modo it is complicated.
I feel like many simple things in modo are overcomplicated, not intuitive. And sometimes bugged.
I`m not a big fan of AD products but they at least work in a predictable way.
With that extend tool, you have to drop it to be able to use the dual planar handles (eg moving along X and Y coordinates) which I find really frustrating. In Max, when you extend, you just hold shift and can continue extending with normal translate handles and even rotation and scale (Modo can't without extending then dropping). I use those features a lot and it's super fast in Max. But Maybe that's just me modelling the "Max way" and I need to learn the "Modo way"....
Is not just you, Cinema 4D has a shortcut similar to that, which is CTRL, you can extrude Edges and Faces while holding it down and moving the axis handle in one or multiple directions, it works for Points too, but they will be duplicated instead.
Right click the "Edge Extend" tool in the toolpipe window and make sure that "Select Through" is turned OFF. If it's off, you can shift click and move on both axis over and over again, just like Max.
2) Agreed. Farfarer, you are life saver, thanks!
3) You can emulate relax brush with smooth tool in topology tab + airbrush faloff. Workaround for lowpoly meshes - duplicate and constrain to its copy.
4) I remember some UV issues with FBX export. Forgot how I solved this.
5) Subjective.
6-7) Oh boy, I've got mixed feelings on this particular subject.
On one hand - customizing modo is very very very rewarding. Ability to run scripts binded to hotkey only for specific tools was eye opening. Layered configs, hotkeys, forms, layouts - I've build two different workspaces for me and my wife that sync across 2 workstations and 3 laptops. Made a custom pie menu and bound it to a hotkey? It's ready for you anywhere.
On the other hand - it's confusing, complicated and takes time to learn how modo ui work. However, you really should put some time in customizing you work app (modo in my case). It will pay well in the end.
I tried 901 trial on linux and it was a painful experience for me. Multiple crashes in short time span, bad viewport performance especially new advanced pbr mode, no AA whatsoever. tried it on amd card with both proprietary and xorg drivers. maybe it was my OS setup or overall instability of freshly released 901. I heard they come along a long way about stability since initial release.
Cant complain, im actually surprised how decent it work under my AMD card, under a currrent ubuntu install, no LTS.
https://vimeo.com/135353349
Thanks for the feedback, I have an AMD setup too, so in the future (when I'm done with the projects on Cinema 4D) I'll try the switch to Linux, but I'm still not sure on the distro or the DCC, so I'm making some tests.
I was going to try another distro, based on RedHat (Fedora or CentOS) since most of the guides on how to install this kind of software take in consideration that you have this kind of OS. I couldn't figure out how to install (for example Maya 2016) on Manjaro with my guinea pig laptop (Intel - Nvidia), on AUR I've found Maya 2015 (going back to 8.5) but I wanted to manually install the latest one, this is a frustrating situation.
This doesn't seem to work for me
Like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/161473/Misc/EdgeExtend.mp4
[ame]
I like how custom properties are floating dialog boxes.
I like the way of the text with short paragraph with illustration, it's light and confortable to read.
> http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/buy/
I've transitioned now as a happy MODO user
Ahhh, shit. I just upgraded a few days ago.
Congrats!
I predict this will start becoming more common. Modo just keeps getting better and better. Best investment made so far.
Potential 40-45% off christmas sales + Modo Indie for $10/mo ($299 perpetual). Thankfully theres a good range of options for when its too much.
Might be that they reduced it to 30% now that they raised the pricetag
As for Indie, definitely stay tuned for more information on where its going. Its a bit of a slow process but well worth the wait in my opinion.
Cheers
Modo specializes in fast modeling, texturing and rendering. It's ideal for Product Design and concepting. It's tools are based on making beautiful renders quickly.
The updates that come out once a year are substantial. The company listens to the community, and designs their updates accordingly.
As an example, the people that use Modo work closing with engineers, so they made plug-ins that allow you to import and export directly from Solid Works and other engineering programs, so you can work directly with them to get the best, most realistic look.
They realized the steam community loves Modo, so they created a kit for the steam community to make it easier to shade for the Dota 2 game engine.
That's why I love Modo, they listen to the community and design for the people.
Examples of what you can do, this took me 5 hours of work including render time.
2 hours of work
less than 4 hours
Modo makes beautiful renders quickly.
With that said,
Fabric Engine 2 just released. Individual license is free.
http://fabricengine.com/
https://vimeo.com/132732105
https://vimeo.com/135558017
The timing coincides with Modo having a 40% off sale in case anyone wants to jump on that combo. (FE2 works with other apps as well, so if you already have maya, max, xsil...ect you are still covered)
** Modo version of FE2 isnt out, beta coming soon.
Well done developers!