Should I Learn Blender or Modo
polycounter lvl 12
I've been thinking of moving away from Maya. I end up spending more time fixing errors caused by the program than I probably would have saved if I just used something else. I'm sure others can relate. I know a few of the really hard core guru's use Modo. Meanwhile Blender has a really sweet tool called Hard-Ops which reduces the number of clicks for any hard surface operations.
>Which one is quicker to learn.
>Which one is a has a faster modeling workflow?
>Which one is the most rock solid in terms of it's stability?
>Which one is quicker to learn.
>Which one is a has a faster modeling workflow?
>Which one is the most rock solid in terms of it's stability?
Replies
HardOps is cool, I use it myself, but I suspect you could probably get better results out of Mesh Fusion so I don't really think that should be a factor in your decision.
1) Shrug
2) Shrug. Modeling is fast for me in Blender but I have customized the UI to the point where it is unrecognizable to Blender out of the box. I suspect a lot of people have given how easy it is to do.
3) Blender is very stable, can't comment on Modo.
2) Modo is definitely faster once you customize it with hotkeys and pie menus. Blender is technically faster out of the box, but that requires you to have memorized the existing hotkeys, of which there are many.
Modo will allow you to have a single key perform a different function depending on any number of factors; what selection type you have active, what tool you're currently using, which panel you're currently in, etc. The tools themselves are also more robust, reliable and plentiful. The Bevel tool is a perfect example; the B key can bevel either verts, edges, or faces depending on your selection, and can simultaneously extrude, inset, or bevel.
Modo also has many ways of speeding up selection, like pattern select to grab every 3rd edge loop on a cylinder, as an example.
3) If you mean crashing, I've never had either do that. Though Blender does have far more quirky behavior, if that's what you mean.
You can subscribe to the Blender cloud to get access to training and resources for 10euro a month.
I like Blender because the strong modifier stack approach, such as bevel modifier, data transfer, triangulate etc..
I don't know much about Modo.
Budget constraints is a big consideration; Blender is free, and a solid all-in-one toolset. It doesn't play as well with other software, though. Modo does what it does extremely well, but is best used with other tools like ZBrush and Substance Painter, all of which have a cost.
Modo has powerful modeling and rendering. It also has powerful pipeline support, like GoZ and substances, as well as game engine shaders and exporting. Animation is difficult to work with in it.
Blender has stronger animation, as well as relatively effective secondary tools often offloaded to other software, like sculpting and painting. The strict opensource license generally blocks it off from interacting directly with other software.
Modo can also do many things out of the box that Blender requires addons for, which run the risk of losing support at any time. Boolean (HardOps) and retopology (Contours) tools are a good example. But due to the much larger community, Blender does have far more addons, and very useful ones at that.
To give an idea of their respective strengths, Modo is often preferred for product design, and Blender is often preferred for VFX. For games, it's a bit of a mixed bag.
Blender is most often used by small studios on a budget, and Modo is most often used by individual team members working on environments and props.
Modo can do character work as well as anything, but there are better tools for rigging/animating them, and the huge majority of character modeling is usually done in ZBrush anyway.
Modo does see some character work in mobile games, due to the often very low-poly designs that are better off having the base model made without sculpting, and the simpler rigging/animations used by them.
2) Modo. Easy. In blender you have work with a handful of extrudes and bevels as separate operations as well as for separate components. They are not context sensitive. Modo on the other hand smartly puts it into one operation. Press B and you can extrude or bevel, or both. Context sensitive. If you add geometry in Modo, it get added to the UVs properly. The one perk I would say Blender has is that its modifiers are less convoluted and you have a lot of plugins to play with, the downside with the plugins though is that they could die out when the developer vanishes and Blender does a version update.
3) Blender is more stable. This is not to say that Modo crashes a lot, far from it. Just I can only think of 3 times Blender has ever crashed on me and I believe two of the times was with a beta build. Modo has crashed a handful of times over the years, not enough to say its not stable. I would still consider it a stable application.
Blender does have more learning materials, Modo struggles to pump out enough. However there are enough to get someone going with Modo's basics.
With all that said, Modo does have the financial incentive to appeal to its base and stay competitive on a professional level. Blender does not and there is no transparency as to how donations are spent with Blender. If you go with Modo, you still have access to Blender as a side app. Less to lose that way, other than the cost of buying Modo.
One important thing to take into consideration is that Modo does have an advanced PBR viewport with Unreal and Unity shaders, there is also a substance plugin. With 10.2, autoretopology will be available as well. For a game artist it is simply better software.
It's very much up to the user to model cleanly and keep the mesh in order.
So if you're after something that'll stop you doing that (sounds like you are) it's probably not for you.
All that said, Blender is free and MODO has a free demo so just give them both a try?
Honestly I think it ends up being personal preference but modo is starting to grow so rapidly in games now that I think it'd be silly not to check it out
In terms of benefits, I've found it really handy at times to be able to create non-manifold geometry on the way to creating manifold geometry. Otherwise you're cutting and pasting chunks of the mesh out to perform the operations before having to weld it all back together once it's clean.
it has pretty awesome features, which sadly are not so obvious from the start
and theres a shitton of addons for nearly everything
i did not try modo yet, but from the videos i have seen it looks nice too
just try them both
and like stated above, blender is free, so you can always have it as second app without extra cost
Blender is more like 3ds max. A lot of live stacked modifiers. It's so a huge advantage that really overweights slightly less advanced and less context aware mesh modelling tools. Sometimes I watch Houdiny videos and think: ok, I can do same in Blender and 3dmax.
Right now Modo has better fbx import/export imo. Stll materials come messy in both
Cycles imo is more convenient. simple and easy to work render than Modo one. It feels more modern since you don't have to learn a lot of technical stuff to use it. On the other hand Modo's one is a bit more flexible. Modo has outstanding texture baker doing unique things no other soft can. Blender baker is slow , aliased and glitchy.
Both soft are far far away behind 3d Max in regards of editable and importable poly count . Same for particle preview and editing.
Blender node editors is a piece of art itself . Extremly simple, user friendly and context aware. Working real-time for both GLSL and Cycles gpu preview with a speed of light.
Coming to Substance Designer from Blender is a tourture. Same with Modo. Formerly I loved old ShaderFX plugin for 3d Max , then they implemented it inside and now I hardly able to use it .
Any time I need to show a shader idea to programmer , I use Blender.
2. There is an official substance plugin for Modo. Going back and forth between them is not torture. In addition to that, Modo has both a Unity and Unreal Engine 4 material which is the same targets you can achieve with substance.
I meant not going in between Substance Designer and Modo exactly. I meant how simple, convenient, and instantly clear and readable nodes and node groups are in Blender. How much they are hotkety driven and how quickly you can work with them.
I mean that being accustomed to Blender nodes, it's a tourture to work with Substance Designer ones. No node bypass , all those grayscale or color input mismatches, all those exposed parameters you can't recall what they do, even in your own substances. The whole SD node network is unreadable mess.
But, @gnoop, I can't just ingore that you're having 2-4 spaces after a sentence, so irritating to read (you need only one). Sorry, I'm just a prefectionist.