Dan-r and his Modo quest

danielrobnik

Hi Polyfolk!

I have started this thread to share my progress learning Modo, and hopefully pick up some tips an tricks from those of you who know the application. What inspired me to start was watching people like Tor Frick, Warren Marshall, and William Vaughan and seeing what the program could do. I originally started my 3d modeling journey with the Blender 2.5 Alpha, and have been an avid Blender user since. Recently, I took a short break from most computer related activities, but would like to get back into making game assets (mainly for the Unity Asset Store).

I am eager to see how far I can push Modo and welcome any comments, criticisms, and advice.

danielrobnik

Lets start this with a mug I made this morning.



I'm liking the scene view widgets for controlling the tools like Radial Sweep, and Mirroring.

Deforges

Hi Dan,

I've also started getting into Modo and I love it. Keep sticking to it! I'd try something from reference next so people can give better feedback.

Brian "Panda" Choi

You’re gonna want to look for Eretea’s scripts. They help IMMENSELY. Helped me learn Modo easier coming from Maya

danielrobnik

@Deforges Yeah, I will definitely be using references. At the moment I'm just learning the tools before I jump into any big projects.

@Brian "Panda" Choi I've been hearing about them and just finished installing them.

pmiller001

Buddy you're gonna love yourself some Modo. Talk about a power program. One thing that helped me with Modo was, to not over think it. Its often WAY more simpler than it seems. 

CybranM

The ease of setting up custom hotkeys should be a selling feature by its own.
Senecas scripts are invaluable, I often try to figure out how to do something and find that he already made a script for it.
Baking normals is fast and easy with Modos baker so no need to export anything
Have fun

danielrobnik

I think it's all starting to click now. I'm loving the workplane, and the snapping is tops. Today I've been plugging away at one of these crates by Talros.



I'm happy with the high poly and will bake it down later.

WilliamVaughan

Looks like your off to a great start. Looking forward to see where you take it. Best of luck!

eFerrari

That's looking really good dan-r! Can't wait to see more! 

danielrobnik

Cheers guys!

Fixed: See below.

I have a question, for those of you who might know. I am trying to bake my low poly but the edges I have split in Modo seem to be imported into Toolbag merged. Here is an example (Modo on the right, Toolbag on the left).



The mesh is in four distinct parts and are separate within Modo, but when displaying the cage offset in Toolbag they appear merged again.

Here I moved the individual pieces slightly to form gaps, and you can see the desired result in Toolbag.



I haven't applied any other tool to the edges, I just moved the already separated groups. Here are my export settings.



Any help is much appreciated!

Fixed: Turns out it was the Smooth Cage setting I hadn't noticed in Toolbag before. Disabling it causes the cage to project using the specified vertex normals, and not the averaged normal of each vertex.

danielrobnik

Alrighty! Had some more time between a couple of really long work days and managed to finish my low poly mesh, bakes, and some simple textures (texturing is something I need to learn and practice more).

The low poly came in at just under 300 triangles. You can see in the wireframe where I have a few more than needed, because I had half an idea to have the lid removable, so it is a separable piece.

Here are some pics!









Any critique or thoughts are appreciated!