www.si-community.com

Hello..

I'm thinking of using Modo for my modeling, but Softimage would still handle rendering and animation. My question...

Modo has edge weighting for hard surfaces.. Would that hard edge, (edge weight) tranfer over to Softimage for rendering?

Modo also touts Pixar Sub D... Would anybody know the big deal about that, and how it could help?

I appreciate it... thanks

Things like edge weighting, or hard edges often don't come across while exporting/importing.
If it's sub-d models, be sure to add it into the model by extra edgeloops etc.

The Pixar sub-D isn't supported by SI either, so it's all in modeling before export, or re-doing some parts of the edge weighting in the new app.

You could do some FBX tests, hopefully most of the attributes will come along in the export/import process.

rob

ahhh, thank you. i wanted to make sure. So I guess its just safer to model in the detail, instead of relying on the feature.

Thank you

Yeah, the Pixar sub-D is interesting when all 3D apps implement it.
So -in theory- it would be easier to move models across applications.

I guess it will take a while I guess.
But .exr, .alembic etc. were accepted very quickly through the entire industry, so one can only hope.... ;)

rob

From Maya to SI you can export hard edges with smoothing groups.

I don't know if Modo FBX has something like that nowadays but when I used it a few years ago it didn't. We had to disconnect all the edges in Modo before exporting to easily select those edges that needed to be hardened in Softimage.

it's always safer to model the hardness of the edge.

But isn't that Modo option the same thing as XSI's edge creasing?

if you use hard/soft edges in XSI, it's render correctly in Mental Ray, but not sure about other renderers.

thorsnuts wrote:Hello..

I'm thinking of using Modo for my modeling, but Softimage would still handle rendering and animation. My question...

Modo has edge weighting for hard surfaces.. Would that hard edge, (edge weight) tranfer over to Softimage for rendering?

Modo also touts Pixar Sub D... Would anybody know the big deal about that, and how it could help?

I appreciate it... thanks

I think Modo Pixar subds are an older version from 2010 or so, I'd believe Modo wanted them for things like displacement, perhaps sculpting. Best way should be to ask on Modo forums, how Modo people prefers them. Anyway, even newest Open Subds seems to be more a playback feature, I'm afraid you'll get little or nothing from them when it comes to modeling. I think it's only Max 2017 who has their edge weighting on same level of usability, compared to SI subds. Maya can do Open Subd creases, but can not shade them properly, you see hard edge on wire frame but still some weird smooth shading, so for proper shading in Maya, one has to switch back to old Maya Catmull Clark.

Generally, subds are transferring around, almost everything has some sort of Catmul Clark subdivision, but when it comes to hard edges...... since times of XSI 4 and a lot of hard surface models I've made for use in Max, got habit to use only ''absolute'' hard edge in SI (what you get by 'mark hard edge'), only in cases where edge disconnect and hard edge are showing the same result, plain loops and so. So, before exporting, I just selected all hard edges and disconnect them, did checkout does it looking same, and that's all about creases.

thanks for sharing. I appreciate the time.