Seeking advice on Modo

Hi all -- I wasn't entirely sure what the best forum area was to post this in, but UG seems to be a catch-all if it isn't listed...

I'm on my first major game which I'm developing for mobile. The game uses Mechanim and bone rigging (though not to the same degree as a major title). The modeler I'm working has been pretty solid and I'm mostly confident I'll be working with him on the next project as well. However, I wanted to be sure I could make small tweaks to animations as needed while programming it.

He prefers Modo, so I said I'd give the 15 day trial a shot and see if I could work with it -- at least with regard to the animations. Thus far it's been a pretty good experience. I was able to make a number of tweaks I wanted and didn't hit too many learning curve roadblocks.

I also found a number of game shops seem to like the Modo to Unity pipeline for their development, so I'm hopeful it would be a mature choice in that regard as well. But given pulling the trigger would be a $1,500 hit, I wanted to check in here as well.

Has anyone been using Modo that can give a pro/con overview with regard to developing to Unity?

 

I use Modo and the workflow to Unity is very smooth, animation will feel a little clunky if your are coming from Maya though you can still get the job done in modo and 801 has improved the animation tools some as well.
If you want some basic Modo to game engine workflow examples you should check out the modo steam edition to DOTA2 tutorials as they are packed with good info (Note: you will not set up textures for Unity the same as for DOTA2).
The modo steam edition is missing animation tools so you will have to look up animation tutorials for the full version to get a better feel for all it can do.

 

I have 701, personally whilst it's not bad at anything neither have I found it particularly good at anything either. Sculpting is much more refined in Z-brush, not to mention UV mapping / retopo / poly-painting and texturing is quicker in Z-brush alone or you can use other tools like Quixel / DDO / Topogun. Animation and rigging is better in 3DSmax or Maya. Rendering isn't on par with V-RAY and much as I dislike the UI in Blender, for some things I prefer it.

Where Modo shines is quick and simple base mesh modelling, decent UI and most of the ground covered.

Nothing I've found yet can beat the 3DSMax / Z-brush workflow with GoZ for games, Modo lacks up to date tutorials (actually decent tutorials in general for games) compared to 3DSmax and Blender. In essence if you can't stand blender and can't afford Z-brush / 3DSmax then Modo will be perfect. Otherwise there are much faster / better and creative tools in the market (if you can afford them).

 

I've been using modo for rougly 2 years now coming from Cinema 4D and having used 3DS Max for half a year in a company on a project therquired it.

Personally I can't confirm everything you've said. modo's modeler is excellent and extremely fast. It's the main reason for me to stay in modo most of the time. The UV tools aren't as fast as ZBrush's but so much more precise. I would never recommend UVMaster over any manual approach - ever. Retopology feels clunky in Zbrush as well as in modo to me - I am using Topogun for that (another 100$). Can't comment *much* on animation and riging since I am mainly a modeler/texture artist. So I'd prefer not to comment on that, too much. I have rigged and animated characters inside modo - though that was for rendering and not games. Worked - wasn't particularly pleasant but then again so far to me rigging never is

Diving deeper into modo I still like the program and plan on using it for some time to come. Yet at other times it feels pretty frustrating as the flexibility they want to have modo to have at times also get in the way usability wise. As a user you sometimes don't really know if a feature that behaves wrong does so because it is actually buggy or you just don't understand the right way The Foundry wants you to use it. For example I had a problem about particles a few weeks ago:
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=33&t=88200

Nobody was able to help me to this day. I haven't found a solution to it. I filed a really extensive bug report that disappeared from my bug reports page nur the last update didn't change a damn thing. THAT and when it crashes every once in a while for no damn reason - these are the times you better not have a weak heart or high blood pressure. It's really frustrating. But then you use it for some time and everything works - and that again feels so damn pleasant again that I keep using it on and on.

So it's mixed bag, really. You can use it for everything but don't expect it to be a one-stop solution for EVERYTHING. You can do a lot of things in it but for everything more specialized you probably start using specialized software. That's true for every major 3D package which isn't the reference in its field, though.

 

Modos modeller like every other 3D package is as quick as the time you put into using it. I personally think it's logically laid out but I'm sure many would debate that with me. UV tool precision depends on multiple factors, the main that spring to mind are effort put into it and your skill with Z-brush. If it's good enough for some of the most impressive renders I've ever seen, then it's good enough for anyone else.

Manual mapping should be used for touch ups, when you have an art quota and you're splitting out thousands of meshes between a team then nobody has the time for that dinosaur approach. I made a rigged char model in 23 hours, then used the base template to make about 20 different NPCs in a couple of weeks, there are no issues with them.

Most of this depends on what you're doing, I aim for AA / AAA segment game market and doing the high poly to low poly workflow with Modo is painful. Nothing wrong with using Z-remesher and churning out normal maps for a low poly version. But I agree, you can't really beat Topogun.

 

Modos modeler is at least quicker than Cinema's. Which was my main deciding factor to switch back then. No matter how much time you want to put in - some systems do tend to get in your way. And some others simply don't feel right.

The thing about the UV Maps and ZBrush renders is not the 'quality' of the unwrap - meaning the relax algorithms. Those are really good in ZBrush and I rarely have any problems with them. You can hardly beat the speed, either. When it comes to UVMaps I dislike the level of control ZBrush offers. If you remain strictly in Polypaint mode that's a non-issue but when it comes to getting the last out of your maps and also stacking/mirroring UVs or even laying out and maintining UVs over several UV Maps then there's no real alternative to manual editing, yet. Also low poly mobile and hard surface. But ZBrush rarely is any factor in that anyways.

My personal Workflow for sculpted models often uses modo for UVMaps only - UVMaster for not so important meshes or mass meshes. Since dynamesh tehre's no need to create a lot of basemeshes either. UV Map baking ... xNormal or Substance Designer.

My workflow is not realy suitable for OP, though. I use quite a variety of tools in the meantime.

When I said I would not recomment UVMaster ever - please ignore that. I should probably not answer on public forums when I've only had 4 hours of sleep. Sorry about that.

 

If it's working for you and for you artist then I say stick with it.

However, I have to agree with @ShadowK that it gets weaker and weaker as you step away from modeling. I also found the UI to be extremely clicky, as in requiring a ridiculous amount of mouse clicks to get things done. It gives RTS games a run for their money as far as mouse abuse goes (The peripheral, not the rodent. No animals were harmed during the writing of this post).

 

@shaderop

I'd agree with that, keep a spare mouse in the draw (obviously computer based yet again )

@the_motionblur

As shaderop says, if it works for you that's great. But I'm always trying to find ways to speed up / improve the process and not just adhere to what's given. More of a time / desperation thing as opposed to anything else..

I just find Modo hard to undoubtly reccommend when there are either better tools at a cost, or similar tools at no cost at all.

 

You may want to look at Maya LT as well. Get the Demo before you spend any money on anything.

http://www.autodesk.com/products/maya-lt/overview

 

This right there is the most important sentence in the whole thread!

 

I love Maya, but I'm also interested in checking out Modo. In unity's docs it lists more things as supported for import from Maya, such as blend shapes, than it does for Modo. So I'm wondering if there's any issues with exporting to Unity for some things.

And yeah I was seriously turned off by the excessive clicks in Modo. I was told it's a common complaint and that you can change settings to improve that issue. I'll just have to try a trial of Modo soon and see for myself if I like it more than Maya for modeling. At the very least I think it will help me with my feature request list for Maya and allow me to help others decide between Maya and Modo.

 

On the excessive click issue - watch this video here. I guess that is what most people are referring to and it's what turned me off the most as well:

In fact if you want to give modo a serious chance look through all of Richard Yot's quick video tips. There's a lot of information in there that The Foundry should make available to everybody in their official videos, I think

I have no idea why they chose to hide this functionality so deep and so obscurely. Actually - this is my major complaint about modo. Some things are hidden way too deep. Also since there are not as many users of course you are often left on your own with figuring out certain problems.

I can't say anything on Blendshapes, so far. They are supported, apparently but I've never used them.

@wesm (now from Allegorithmic) also wrote a few books about modo and he's also a regular modo user for quite some time now. Let's see if I can page him to this thread for more help
He also has a very extensive character rigging series about modo available online. I haven't checked that one out yet but it looks very good.

 

Yes that's one of the excessive click issues. Another is when you click on modeling operations, like the bevel button, you then have to click in viewport to apply it. I'd rather skip that needless click and have it applied after pressing the bevel button with my next click being on the bevel manipulator to adjust the bevel.

Here's a reply given to me in The Foundry forum on how to change settings to fix that annoyance:

"Many people complain about the extra clicks Modo requires to do things, so that's quite common. Thankfully, where modeling is concern you can save preset for each modeling tool(i.e. edge.bevel). Activate the bevel tool, go to the toolpipe(Lists>Pipeline) then right click on the bevel tool, set to "Auto Activate". That should automatically activate the bevel tool saving you one click. You can save that as the bevel preset and override the existing one. So everything you load up modo and use the bevel tool you get the desire result.You need to save preset with auto activate for different component mode(edge,vertex,poly)."

Yes I think I will try a trial for Modo soon.

 

And yes - sometimes you need an extra klick while on other ocasions tools are dropped and made unparametric really fast so that you sometimes deactivate the options before you actually want to. Also there is no numeric input option for polygonal and edge based selections. And I was told on the forums very often that this is eithe not needed or that I could easily script this in myself. Yes modo sometimes is a really mixed bag but when it works it just works and it's just so much fun to work with, again. Also it's currently the most complete solution for an extremely fair price you can get. Aaaand - the licensing/activation is absolutely painless. That's something yo don't find with some of the competitors.

That's the problem I'm referring to, BTW:


You only have a corrdinate system for complete items. And I am not nearly important enough as a single user to change the minds of the programmers or enough other users. Unfortunately. Or maybe my problem is really absolutely unimportant. I don't know.


edit - BTW for the Bevel tool have you ever tried while holding down the b button on the keyboard and klick/dragging in the viewpot? Thtat's pretty fast and not really as klick intensive as you might expect

 

Well not really, 30 days isn't enough to accurately decide if an application like Modo is worth a long term investment time and training is always important. Maybe some others can weigh in, I know farfarer is a big user. I personally found rigging / animating to be clunky / time consuming and unnecessarily complicated. You have to understand how to do things the "Modo" way, or you'll hit issues with repeating actions and getting different results.

Hair / Fur is meh, they have only gotten around to node based shading in 801 and still a fair way behind Autodesk in general. But it's cheaper, so one can kind of justify and finally I miss all the 3DSmax stack modifiers, it's so simple to clean a mesh for game import (especially with stringent demands from engines like CE you NEED 3DSmax). Sure 3DSmax is funky in a lot of weird ways, but you never find anything "lacking".

Modo is THE best box modeller I've come across, so it's a toss up really. As for the OP if I could get away with using Blender I would do..

 

Yes - of course! I also never meanto to say that modo is the best one and only solution for everybody. In the end every major software can do certain things better than others. If I was more familiar with the recent iterations of 3DS Max I could certainly point out things to you that Max does good and things Max does bad. Partly I wanted to save some face with this statement because my first post here really was somewhat flawed. But this really IS important. At least one has to try some software to see which one you maybe like or dislike imediately. From there you can and should go on to see which one to settle for in the longer run. Commiting to any software is never a decission to take lightly except if you have time to play around and try new things. As soon as the time has come to be productive you need to be able to hit the ground running. Period.

In the end OP asked whether modo is suitable for game development because he wants to use it for minor tweaks from his artist. Yes it does. Modo so far was for me able to export anything to Unity I nedded or my clients or colleagues at work needed.

BTW - the workflow problem is something common in every software to some extend.
Sometimes people seem to forget about "their" best software that it's just their best and most beloved software because they are acustomed to all the quirks and usage.

You have to understand how to do things the "modo" way just like you have to understand how to do things the "cinema" way or even the "Max" or "Maya" way. The technical basics are the same across nearly every plattform. How to use it differs.
With some experience you will probably settle for a mixture of verious tool from which you cherry pick the toolsets you need. If there really was one tool to rule them all there would be no others any more. Just look at Photoshop - except from maybe GIMP for the Open Source users there is no real competition in the field and Adobe knows that.

Max and Maya have a real advantage in how unbelievably widespread they are and how long they've been on the market. They had a really long time to evolve and people incorporated them in their tools and engines. A large portion of tutorial materials will also be either Max or Maya for this exact reason.

 

@the_motionblur

I think it's partially due to me still trying to make my mind up about it as a product, trying to figure out exactly where it sits in the art workflow and how it can benefit me as a tool to speed up workflow. Mainly I'm drawing blanks and I think for most people new to Modo there should be more complete guides as to how everything works. I wasn't impressed with the earlier 701 service packs, they were buggy and highly unstable.

Question I got to ask is it worth the $1500.00 price tag, when you pay a bit more for 3DSmax and you have the likes of Blender around. Modo's just a bit of an odd product..

 

If you don't need it for your production or already have and use Max or Maya then you are absolutely right in not wanting to use it. Modo is odd and I guess in the foreseeable future will remain odd.

It has all the necessary features for games and rendering but it shows that it is a very young software. Maybe that is part of what makes it so odd - that Luxology took the opportunity to make a fresh start from the ground up and place it in the mid-price range.

Seneca Menard from (then) id Software used it extensively and was featured by Luxology in a video showcasing what he's doing. Farfarer here on the forums uses modo as well - and he's also very good in what he's doing and has made a few rather useful plugins available on the Modo forums. "Modular Master Class" from Tor Frick uses Modo and UDK - and that learning series is friggin' awesome if you want to dive deep into modularity - setting up a whole scene with only one texture.

Then again I find that getting help on modo is sometimes extremely difficult. As I've said numerous times now: some things are hidden very deep or are referenced very obscure for my understanding of things. These roadblocks can really kill productivity if there's no one to help or no other way to bridge the gap (different program or whatever). Also this can be a very hazardous thing for rather inexperienced users as they might just not know why things don't work as expected.

So - what you are saying is absolutely correct. And if it sounded like I was saying otherwise it just came across wrong - so yes: Everybody needs to find their software (combination). The thing that works for everybody and the things they can afford.

So if someone is starting to learn a new software and needs to get a lot of help from communitites then Max and Maya in the Student version (non commercial) are a pretty good point to start as they do offer the most help and training from the community. Modo is the most feature complete software for the most competitive price I know (which is part of why I am using it). I started out with Cinema and at least in the beginning had people I could ask for help until I figured out Maxon's way of thinking. Then I became the one to give people advice for weird behaviour in C4D. Available help consequently is another important factor.

For commercial usage the price difference varies from country to country, though. Autodesk charges 3900,- EUR + VAT (19% in Germany) for Max or Maya. The Foundry charge 1150,- EUR + VAT.
Upgrades for Maya cost 2700,- EUR + VAT - for Modo it's 370,- EUR + VAT. That is a difference. Especially if you just want to use it for minor things.

That is also the reason I usually stay away from these discussions - there are just SO damn many factors that it's not easy to make recommendations and to say which program is better and for which reason.

 

At the end of the day I want a piece of software that is tailored to the needs of a "Game Artist". Modo, Max, Maya C4D all are spread out feature wise to cover ALL industries like Movies, Architecture, Mographers, etc. and by doing so they spread themselves too thin. Autodesk has been smart by creating Maya LT which is exactly doing one thing - cater to the game artists. That is something nobody else currently does and hence why I am a bit more excited. Offering it for $30 (or even cheaper) is also a smart move in my opinion (I know that some folks don't like subscription based models). To each his own but currently Maya LT has everything I need.

 

I'm 50/50 on it, the poly cap limit alone for high quality models is going to be an issue. If they raised it to 50K+ then we might talk, for me it seems like a strip out version for low poly games. Great for certain things sure, but not all of us are going to get any use out of it.

 

LT is unlimited in poly count. So you can create models as high as you want. When you export to FBX, it has a limit of 65k polys per object. If you send the model to Unity, there is no poly limit on export.


Thomas

 

Here is some text taken directly from their website. So in reality there is no poly limit for MayaLT/Unity users.


Send to Unity FBX Export
Use Autodesk® FBX® to simplify moving 3D content from Maya LT into Unity. An improved workflow between Maya LT and Unity lets you export 3D assets with unlimited polygonal resolution from Maya LT directly into a target Unity project folder. For other game engines, you can now export models and environments with up to 65,000 polygons in the FBX format.

 

Well it seems to be all over the place with it's limits:

It seems 65K for some engines:
Unlimited for Unity:
25K for anything else:

What are the modeling capabilities of Maya LT?

The modeling tool set of Maya LT has full parity with Maya and has the powerful NEX modeling toolset. The primary difference in 3D models will be at the time of export for game engine: Maya LT enables FBX export up to 25,000 polygons.

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...ticles/sfdcarticles/Autodesk-Maya-LT-FAQ.html

Anyway thanks for that Thomas, I might check it out. It's cheap enough, I'd need to acually do some proper research on it as I'm unsure at the moment if you'd have any problematic limitations. If it supports Go-Z integration I could be seriously interested just for HumanIK alone. I've used the full Maya but not touched LT yet.

 

Maya in general has subpar modeling tools.
And Maya LT in particular has some serious limited rigging and animation (the things where Maya actually shines). You will have a hard time, if you try to make something from scratch that is not a biped.
It also does not support Python which is important for several plug-ins such as GoZ.

What does unlimited Unity FBX export help me, if I can't export high poly OBJ's for baking in xNormal, or further sculpting in Zbrush?

And in case you need to render something, i.e. for promotional purposes or whatever, you're screwed with LT because you can't use MentalRay for rendering.
All you get is turtle for baking, which is also subpar at best ( no custom cage option for example)

There is also no option for simulating things like cloth, or fluids.
That might not sound a huge important thing for game artists. But in some case, you want those functions to bake simulations for game use.
Such as cloth folds, water surface movement, a waiving flag, or a moving tarp (the latter ones can you see quite often in games)

There is also no PSD support.

Autodesk strips down Maya and sells that as "tailored for game artists" and some people drinking that kool aid.

I can't decide, whether I should find that funny, or incredible sad.

Long story short.

Go with Modo, or Blender if you're on a short budget.

 

@nipoco

Well we are mainly a 3DSmax house with a couple of modo licences thrown in, but I'll never turn an eye to cutting costs if it's worth doing. Seems from your description it's not, really appreciate the insightful overview.

It's not a matter of money, it's a matter of what's simplest and most effective to use.

 

I was using Modo 701 for games. Got stuck in several places and now switched to Blender. Certainly Blender is a better tool for Game Production than Modo.

Why? Several Reasons :

1. In 801 Modo still doesn't support transparency and Mip Mapping in viewport. So texturing for games is a real problem.
2. It's save selected and fbx was broken all over the place in 701. 801, it didn't get any better. UV's, materials etc are all broken when you take them in Unity. Resulting in higher draw calls and heavier files.
3. It's animation pipeline is no cool. No playblast makes it difficult to preview animations. The pipeline seems innovative, but I'll stick with Maya workflow for animations. SI follows that workflow, Blender follows that workflow.
4. It's texturing is buggy. Airbrush gives glitches at edges when you do projection paint. Very difficult to work with.

Modo is wonderful in..
1. Rendering, normal baking, lightmap baking with GI etc.
2. Poly Modeling, UV layout.

Modo is not showing any love for game developers. Their main user base is product designers, it's mostly geared towards that industry.

 

There are just so many things wrong with your post I don't even know where to start.

Maya LT is a serious approach to satisfy game artists. Surely it's not perfect and has some limitations but Autodesk does listen to the complaints/suggestions. You can find it funny or sad but it won't change the fact that this is a good piece of software which I am happy to say I am using myself.

Lastly, to state that Maya has "subpar" modeling tools made me laugh. Are we talking about the same Maya that has been used for many feature films and games? Ah well, good one. Good day.

 

Could you please elaborate on this a little more?
Especially the things you've encountered in regards to drawcalls and heavier files.

 

Sure.

Do an experiment.

Get a model, anything, a cube may be, done in Modo. Apply more than one material over it and apply textures. Now export that to fbx. Open that fbx in Modo, you will see the material names are messed up and UV is duplicated. Sometimes the fbx just won't export.

Import this to Unity. The same weird names would be carried around. No way to identify them.

Now, let's talk about getting the Modo scene into Unity Directly and see how it's fbx importer works. The materials seems ok. No, wait, the material names are replaced by the texture names. Also, the unnecessary things like lights, cameras, texture groups, render settings, all are imported. Deleting them from your scene will break the prefab connection and your scene won't updated.

All of these things affect production. Modo is a fine software by itself. I really like many features of it. Opening multiple files, cut paste etc. But it's pipeline with Unity sucks. I hope they will show some love to Unity devs and make this pipeline workable.

I had high hopes for 801, but seems that none of our concerns are addressed.

 

Feel free to disagree with my opinion of Maya LT and use it if it fits your needs. Whether Maya LT it is a good piece of software, or not is debatable

Maya is known for a lot things, but not for a efficient modeling workflow. Even with the integration of NEX.
I'm not sure if that is really laughable as a Maya LT customer.

Maya's strengths are it's tools for animation, rigging, simulations and lastly -and not less important- a vast library of great third-party plug-ins. Needless to say that lot of that is not available in Maya LT.

But if you're happy with it, fine.

 

My last sentence was not aimed at you Shadow. Just a general advice for a DCC package, without spending a fortune.
I know you have not to worry that much abou the funds

 

I need to give the other things you've written a go with some more tests but I may be able to help you on two things:

1. Unity by default names the materialy after the textures - not the material names. That's current default and there's a survey going on for some time here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/survey-material-import-default-for-unity.193676/#post-1665333

This may not be a modo problem after all. Did you get other applications to import the material names instead of the texture names? That would be pretty cool, actually. If so please let me know. I haven't experimented with this too extensively. Ususally if something does not import with the name I need to I just sigh and rename it myself

2. You can set up whether to export lights and locators along the FBX in the system preferences for FBX I/O.
There you can even set up only to export the selected items or selected hierachy.

I did have a few problems with pivots/object centers since SP1, though. Originally I thought it was a bug. Then I thought it was my fault. Maybe I've got it narrowed down now, though. I'll keep you updated if yo want to.
Short version so far: don't move the pivot away from the Object center if you plan on exporting right now. Otherwise you need to reopen and re-save yor FBX.

 

Well, I only have 2 more application, blender and softimage. Both of them import mat names.

Also, the locator problem is when u import native modo files. Not fbx.

And these are only static meshes. For animated, its a different story.

 

You clearly seem to want to have the last word on that topic. I am not sure what you base your assumptions on but so be it. I am a 3D Artist for the last 15 years and I have used pretty much all of them for periods of time so I think it's fair to say that no software package is perfect but nitpicking because you personally dislike it is wasting my and everybody else's time now as you have stated your opinion on that plenty of times already. Let it rest. You don't like Maya ...we get it. Move on.

Lastly I think we need to stay on topic here.... which isn't Maya but Modo.