...modo301 is out!

Wonderful modelller, sculpter, painter, render and render animation software, crossplatform (pay for one, get both platforms - just the way it should always be) although no animation support which you can use for unity (hopefully will come with an 30x update). Great update from what i've seen so far!

-> http://www.luxology.com

 

Thanks for the tip . I just bought it (thank you student ID), as I'm sick of booting vista just to use zbrush 3. Hopefully this will suit my modeling and sculpting needs. Looks very promising. Hopefully the learning curve isnt too steep!

 

I hope you enjoy it!

If something isn't clear then i suggest a) looking in the tool tab on the right side (screen attached), b) consulting the gigs of video material, c) looking at the seahorse tutorial you also got for free, d) consulting loxology.tv, d) the forum e) swearing like hell...

Feel free to change the order... :O)

 

Seemed to work for me. Just did a basic channel animation in Modo and exported out as FBX and it came into Unity fine. Very exciting I must say.

Cheers.

 

I'm a little fuzzy on what exactly modo can NOT do animation-wise. I haven't done a lot with 3D content creation, but most of what I have done has been with Blender, and I'd like to move to something that is significantly less ugly, while also offering great workflow capabilities. modo seems to come with high praise as a modeling package, but it just started having animation a couple days ago, apparently. Will learning modo be a limiting thing for me now, in a time when I still need to practice a lot of basic skills?

 

the short answer is Yes. It probably be a bit limiting just sticking with Modo. I'd learn the basics in Blender or Cheetah. As (especially Cheetah) they have a very clean pipeline into Unity. If money isn't an option (when is it not?) then go with Maya. As it is an industry standard like it or not, aside from Max of course.

But we use Modo and Lightwave/XSI here at Sector3. And Modo is great for making levels, static items, and texturing in Modo is a pleasure. But for animation we use either LW or XSI... with the animations exported out to FBX.

I've been playing with Modo 301's animations compatibilities in respect to bringing FBXes into Unity. Sadly their much touted MDD support isn't carried over to exporting as FBX. But basic channel (transform, rotate, scale) based animation does come into Unity 100% fine. So for doing mechanical type of animations (robots, cars, etc) then using Modo 301 for that should be fine.

But Modo isn't an animation package yet! Far from it. So I would suggest learning your trade in something else.

Cheers.

 

What interests me most with software is potential longevity (because I am learning so many things at once). I am not keen on Cheetah because if Martin dies, the project probably goes with him. Morbid, but true. Lightwave also scares me because of Newtek's slow progress. Windows programs are not a consideration for me. What I am liking about other programs, that I don't find in Blender, is a lot of cool procedural or node-based behavior.

It's a shame that what you recommend is so expensive...I get the feeling that by the time I could afford these packages, cheaper things will be available that are equally as capable for my needs. Still, I have to get work done somehow, so I suppose I'll have to make some kind of compromise. Thank you very much for the advice.

 

I would say Yes and No.

It depends on how fast you learn and what you want. Animations so far in Modo are about Rendered Animations only (but they are sweet in terms of quality and possibility). Some people went with Modo since the first or the second release and they grew with the application which means that they've learnt new features with each iteration and so if you're new there is a lot to learn and enjoy.

Luxology has the goal to make this a complete package and so it's just a matter of time till you'll be able also to rigg characters which you can use in Unity. Modo 301 a.o. introduced Rendered Animations and i bet we'll see more in the future updates 302 and 303. And if not there it's sure that it'll be in 401. They do have a nice balance between improving already built in stuff and introducing new reasonable features.

In case you need to animate realtime stuff now there are two good ways in my opinion: a) You go with another tool like Cheetah for OSX or XSI Foundation for Win/Lin or if you're just after the modelling Silo (Win/OSX) b) you take Modo and get another tool for the animation on top.

The Modo workflow is sweet and i feel pretty safe when thinking of the future with them. It's a small company between cheaper tools like Cheetah and the big ones like 3dsmax or Maya and they are very innovative in this range. It's more than you have to pay for a tool from the cheap sector but it's also less than those thousends of bucks you have to spend on the big ones. It's crossplatform, super sweet licence, for newbies they sell it for $900 and the last update went out for $300 if you preordered it. Counting in the € to $ exchange rate this is something about 214€ which is a very good price for what you get. Whatsover nice in Modo is that it makes fun rendering something out just out of curiosity. I'm always amazed by the physical based rendering outputs and the procedural materials, alone for this was worth the price for me.

Hope it helps...

 

Just wanted to add that if you are a student, you can buy the student license, which lasts for one year, after that you need to renew it.

It costs between $99 and $149 (good/crappy student sort of thing ), and the good thing is that whenever you decide to buy the software the money you paid on student licenses gets deducted.

I've been trying to find a good animation alternative to Blender, but it is getting kind of hard. As a programmer, I just found that Modo is great, very simple to use. The only problem is my artistic vein... At the moment, one of the options for animation that I'm considering is Cheetah, although I haven't really gotten into it yet. Can't wait for 401 (also I'm a bit curious to find out about what IP they exchanged with Pixar that is going to be part of 401).

Regards,
Afonso

 

After taking some time and sleeping on it, I've decided that there's still a lot I can learn with Blender, and considering I'll never have to pay to upgrade that, it's a worthy tool to know well. I'm going to continue down that route for now.

Catie (my partner in crime) is taking online classes at the Academy of Art University, and I'm piggybacking to learn all that stuff without having to worry about grades . They use Maya and Zbrush in her program, so I'll probably learn those along the way as well, but it will be a year or two before we start getting into that stuff.

I really hope modo keeps going the way it seems to have been. I guess I have to wait for a later version for it to be a worthwhile investment for me, but the interface is the best I've ever seen, and I had some amazing things going on within a few minutes with it. The company seems wonderful, as well. I would love to be a part of this, when it is reasonable for me to join in on the action.

 

As you've said updating. That's another sweet thing with Modo as they do not care from which version you upgrade, it always costs you the same. So if you bought Modo 103, lost interest till 301, it's still the same price. Easy, userfriendly, hassle free. Thumbs up for a company doing these sort of things right with a product in this pricerange.

 

@Nafonso
If i remember a modcast correctly than it sounded like nexus vs. renderman tech...