Zen Modo Interface

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MauricioPC
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Zen Modo Interface

Post by MauricioPC » 20 Aug 2014, 22:11



The idea behind is really cool. For me I still need the default layout for tutorials, but I'm sure I'll try it out later.

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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by Hirazi Blue » 20 Aug 2014, 22:32

I don't know if I could work that way, as I am very old-fashioned, but I could easily think of at least one other DCC that could definitely benefit from such a treatment..
;)
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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by Mathaeus » 20 Aug 2014, 23:52

well any 3rd party improvement is welcome when it comes to Modo ergonomics, or visual design of Blender interface. It seems it's easier to do own layout in newest Modo, which is nice. Don't see the timeline in that Zen thing.
Anyway gives me idea to publish my custom Modo key mapping, and call it "zero", as it consist around 30 XSI like shortcuts, all the rest deleted. Enough for rendering the imported stuff and a bit of instancing, as that's all what, very personally, I'm doing in Modo, after more than two years.

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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by Hirazi Blue » 20 Aug 2014, 23:56

Ahi, Blender. Hadn't even thought of that one, TBH. ;)
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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by MauricioPC » 21 Aug 2014, 00:24

Visually speaking, I still find the C4D UI the more pleasant to the eye. But ... can't only be UI because if it was, I would never have learned Max. :P

/I wish Maxon made C4D $1k more cheap. The same price as Maya is insane.

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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by angus_davidson » 22 Aug 2014, 21:38

People are starting to create very useful things for modo.

One that been around a while and very worthwhile is http://pushingpoints.com/v2/pushing-poi ... -for-modo/
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MauricioPC
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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by MauricioPC » 22 Aug 2014, 22:27

Thanks for the link Angus, it looks like a good set of scripts. Proton's work is really cool. Been a fan from the LW days of him.

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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by El Burritoh » 25 Aug 2014, 15:54

It's important to realize that the guy behind Zen works primarily, if not exclusively, in the design industry. Thus the Zen layout lacks special 'zen' treatments for other CG-related workflows, like animation and lighting.

One of the coolest aspects of Modo, at least in theory, is its malleable interface. Indeed, it's very easy to customize your UI in pretty creative ways. But sadly it can be difficult to properly edit, save, and share these customizations, because they require that you get in and monkey around with XML files at some point, and in doing so it's all too easy to break something. I really really really hope they can straighten this stuff out because Modo's customizable UI should be one of the main signature attractions. You can do some cool stuff.
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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by Mathaeus » 25 Aug 2014, 20:41

I still feel tempted to create a sort of "Inverse Zen" interface for Modo, related only to lighting and rendering. Somehow, I believe the malleable thing is better accepted by Lightwave people who already knows for two interfaces in same time. For me, born in Max and grew up in SI, there's simply unacceptable jumping of 3d view, whenever I change the Modo room. Who knows, maybe middle solution is the key, like Blender's "region overlap" which keeps the same format of 3d view, regardless of presence ( or not) of property views.
Anyway, maybe it's better to wait for possible customization improvement in 901.

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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by Rork » 25 Aug 2014, 21:44

Agreed, the visual differences between the several parts of the UI are very distracting. And I'm being nice here......

Luckily the UI is very flexible, and creating a whole new UI or the addition of (scripted) buttons or panels is quite simple.
But nonetheless, Modo is still very geared toward design and print.

Simple stuff like workgroup support as a central hub for several users are a pain to set up. A bit less pain as for Maya, but a pain. Also due to the fact almost nothing is properly documented.
And documentation, jeez.... What are they thinking? Some pages go back to 601 and aren't even properly updated between versions??

The one thing i -do- like in Modo is modeling, but -due to the schizophrenic setup of Modo- often a pain when you need to wrap your head around action centers, centers, pivots, snaps and more.

Rendering is nice, up till a certain point. Than it all crumbles down. Not to talk about a proper way to split up your scene for compositing, as Modo's Passes don't even come close to what SI is offering. It quickly becomes a jumbled mess of groups, shaders, outputs and more. And no real visual cues of what's been driven by the active pass.

I really wanted to like Modo, but after testing, prodding and tweaking it's innards for a month, I'll revisit when 901 comes out.

So far, for 'proper' VFX work, Modo has a lot of work ahead and just doesn't 'fit' in our workflow atm.
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by El Burritoh » 25 Aug 2014, 22:50

Mathaeus wrote:I still feel tempted to create a sort of "Inverse Zen" interface for Modo, related only to lighting and rendering. Somehow, I believe the malleable thing is better accepted by Lightwave people who already knows for two interfaces in same time. For me, born in Max and grew up in SI, there's simply unacceptable jumping of 3d view, whenever I change the Modo room. Who knows, maybe middle solution is the key, like Blender's "region overlap" which keeps the same format of 3d view, regardless of presence ( or not) of property views.
Anyway, maybe it's better to wait for possible customization improvement in 901.
I along with a several Modo users agree with you: we'd prefer to have a more 'unified' UI. I have been working on one, but creating a full UI from scratch, editing it, maintaining it, updating it.... currently all that is extremely difficult to do and will test anyone's patience. There are a couple of steps in the process that are particularly problematic and I hope the devs can resolve them.

Rork wrote: But nonetheless, Modo is still very geared toward design and print.
Yes it has been for years. Many of us in VFX lament this. You "can" do some VFX and animation type work with Modo, but it's fairly obvious that Modo was not designed with animated productions in mind. They may have thought it was. In any case, I think they see things a bit differently now and I'm optimistic about the direction they're going!
Rork wrote: Simple stuff like workgroup support as a central hub for several users are a pain to set up.
I find this actually fairly easy... There is no mechanism in the UI for 'connecting' to a workgroup like we have with XSI, but it's pretty trivial to push a simple config file to workstations that imports an arbitrary location on the network. Probably not going to make much difference for you at this point, but lemme know if you want more info. It's really little more than a config file that says 'import path\to\our\plugins'.
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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by Rork » 26 Aug 2014, 08:47

Hi Tim,

Regarding the workgroup thingy, I found only 2 very outdated pages on the subject tht discussed this in more detail.
But nonetheless I couldn't get it to work. I might have made a mistake in all the system paths to change the NEXUS environment variables, or in one of the scripts, or folder setups.
But any tips would be appreciated for others a well I guess.

These small things are so annoying, as there are some nice things to be found in Modo. My feeling is still that Modo is a bit of a mix between Lightwave and Maya, where the nicer things have a LW heritage, and all the 'less nice' things are borrowed from Maya ;-)

cheers,

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by MauricioPC » 26 Aug 2014, 15:28

I'm still waiting on Dan Ablan to release his 801 training to download the demo and give a 2-week crash course on it. Until then, I've been reading a lot about Modo.

So far, like any other software, there's some trouble. But it appears that TF is in fact addressing it. But I do agree with the UI comments. I would prefer to work on only one interface than changing all those tabs. I still prefer the AD way (don't know it that is a good thing). :P

But it looks like Modo might just be the perfect solution for a freelancer, coupled with Houdini on the long run. I'm slowly tending more to Modo than I was to C4D at the beginning.

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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by El Burritoh » 26 Aug 2014, 15:38

@Rork,

I expect the NEXUS envar would be the way to go, but in case you can't resolve that... Drop the attached .cfg file into C:\Users\<userName>\AppData\Roaming\Luxology\Configs and restart Modo. The code for that file is very simple and looks like this:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
    <import>path\to\our\scripts</import>
</configuration>
At launch, Modo will load whatever is at the root of that directory. Please note that with this config Modo won't search recursively through any subdirectories at that location, so it's not as powerful as the NEXUS envar. If you want to nest scripts within directories, or load kits from the workgroup, then you'll need another config at the root of your workgroup that looks something like this:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <import>subfolderName1</import>
  <import>subfolderName2</import>
  <import>subfolderName3</import>
</configuration>

I agree with you that this is another area in which Modo needs some workflow refinement, but once it's all set up it works well enough. Kits are another thing I'd like to see documented more. They're actually quite simple to implement, they just have a bit of a mystique around them. I might do a tutorial on this in a few months.
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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by El Burritoh » 26 Aug 2014, 15:41

Also, I'll wait for 901 to do this, but I'll try to pick up my 'unified UI' project again and see if I can't get something out to people who are interested.
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Re: Zen Modo Interface

Post by Rork » 26 Aug 2014, 15:48

MauricioPC wrote:I'm still waiting on Dan Ablan to release his 801 training to download the demo and give a 2-week crash course on it. Until then, I've been reading a lot about Modo.

So far, like any other software, there's some trouble. But it appears that TF is in fact addressing it. But I do agree with the UI comments. I would prefer to work on only one interface than changing all those tabs. I still prefer the AD way (don't know it that is a good thing). :P

But it looks like Modo might just be the perfect solution for a freelancer, coupled with Houdini on the long run. I'm slowly tending more to Modo than I was to C4D at the beginning.
Yes, the whole juggling of UI's is aggravating at times. I just don't understand why a basic UI is such a hard thing for Modo. The UI's atm forces you into a 'step for step' workflow, where you finish one thing, and go on with the next one.

We all know that just doesn't work, as one tends to be all over the place while working.
A small tweak on the model while animating, arr... go back to Modoeling.. Now scrub the timel...... crap, back to the animation UI. Rinse and repeat.... ;-)

@Tim: Thanks! I'll have a look at it soon!
Also, from what I've seen Modo can be cut up into parts for UI assembly. It might be interesting to see several people contributing to a part of the UI. Interesting project indeed.

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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