Modo 701 around the corner

[brudney]

My thoughts exactly, Sil3.
While I never considered Modo as my main app, I'm starting now:) It's come a long way and I think it may soon be able to replace pretty much anything as an all-round DCC application. Every release is huge and exciting. For me personally, it's definitely high time I started learning it:)

[angus_davidson]

http://www.itsartmag.com/features/modo- ... UkWjhz9pBl

Do the happy dance Bo yaH!

[jamination]

does modo have anything like Maya/Softimages character sets and keyable parameters. These seem absolutely necessary for character animation. I am wondering how modo animators key all the characters controllers on a frame, plus does the dopesheet have the ability to move all those character set keys at once for timing (and can this be done on the timeline (is there a timeline dopesheet))?

the motion tools look really nice, i like how modo is adding things that Softimage users have been asking for years.

[Sil3]

does modo have anything like Maya/Softimages character sets and keyable parameters. These seem absolutely necessary for character animation. I am wondering how modo animators key all the characters controllers on a frame, plus does the dopesheet have the ability to move all those character set keys at once for timing (and can this be done on the timeline (is there a timeline dopesheet))?

the motion tools look really nice, i like how modo is adding things that Softimage users have been asking for years.

When I tried the demo of 601 last year It wasn't on par with Softimage or Maya for Character Animation IMO. Everything felt slower and I couldn't discovered a way to have CKSets. Not sure if they have added it or I simply couldn't find them. They have release several Service pack but I haven't touched it since I tried the demo.

Rigging wise it was very similar to what I seen in Maya tutorials with some nice Shadow Icons addition that mimic Softimage ones, although the offer is very limited and not as vast as we are used in Soft. There was no way to Mirror Envelope Weights (yeah WTF...)

Hope they don't take months to release a Demo this time. From the videos it seems they made huge updates on Animation side of things and it got me interested again.

[Mathaeus]

does modo have anything like Maya/Softimages character sets and keyable parameters. These seem absolutely necessary for character animation. I am wondering how modo animators key all the characters controllers on a frame, plus does the dopesheet have the ability to move all those character set keys at once for timing (and can this be done on the timeline (is there a timeline dopesheet))?

the motion tools look really nice, i like how modo is adding things that Softimage users have been asking for years.

Well I have it because of renderer, and improvements in this area are looking nice, especially "per item shader", which I hope allows to avoid their "shader tree" thing, at least in some cases.
Back to question, it has "character", I think it's also able to set or filter keys, based on "character". It also has a kind of node-based expression editor (more functions than old XSI expression editor). However, 601 has no quaternion rotation, has no lattice deformer, has no cage deformer. Envelope is more a set of operators, instead of one. Let's say, like a bunch of SI "cluster with center" ops, in normalized set. But, speed and maintenance of this "envelope" is somewhere at level of having 100-200 SI cluster with centers, each one controlled by own weight-map. No way for GATOR, automatic envelope re-assignment, or so.
On top, there is humiliating "setup mode", with his own rules... At the end, what's called "dynamic parenting", acts just like hard switch between pose constraints, and it adds about two or three ops, on different places.
I also expect demo - good number of advertised features in 601, were disappointment for me.

BTW, when we already talk about keyframe animation, did you tried Blender? IMHO, beside SI or Maya, it has a very good tools, some of them really "SI like", for example ability to key the global transform onto local, or call globally driven local SRT in expressions. Not nearly consistent as SI standard kine, but with a lot of public available experience. "Support" is great, Python gurus on Blender Artists are always ready to help, authors aren't bounded by NDA (at least they don't shy to admit, that they just forgot to implement this or that). Sometime is really easy to customize it, let's say if you want different shortcut for horizontal - vertical move in their fCurve editor, so on...

[Mathaeus]

and.... just a few words more about Modo renderer, instead of phrases - of course, it's very personal view.
Good:
1: fast area lights, I think about 3-5 times faster than in out-of-the-box SI render engine.
2: very stable irradiance caching (similar thing to final gathering).
3: ability to have both interpolated and brute force radiosity in same render, based on, let's call it "master shader"
4: detailed displacement without issues
5: fast motion blur
6. details are very consistent through frames

I'd say, 1 and 2 gives a new level to lighting, user is not afraid to use area lights. For many tasks, a few area lights, irradiance caching and built in procedural environment is enough.

Bad:
1: at least in 601, renderer is able to pull out much more than Modo can display. Exactly opposite to XSI, before external renderers. However, this seems to be solved in 701.
2: a bit too ambitious skin and hair shader in 601, great looking, accurate, but slow. Anyway, hair shader is one of only few public available implementation of dual-scattering Marschner model.
3: a bit wild implementation of Fresnel reflection - not by IOR.

[nicoM]

Hi,

here are two more sneak peeks of modo 701:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHw5ZWga ... r_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euzsStWI ... r_embedded

[Rez007]

That Progressive Refinement feature is pretty impressive - how you can mouse-over the areas you want refined to give them priority, and that you can save the refinement phase and return to that phase at a later time, is very nice too.

[jamination]

what are the net rendering options, can Royal Render be used to net render?

how about shape animation, any good?

[Richy]

Am i wrong, or modo still has no nodal render tree?

[Nizar]

No, no nodal shader. Modo using a sorta of Layer system, very similar to photoshop. Many hate it, I find it very simple to use to be honest. When you have very complex scene, where materials are up to 50 and more, this layer system show its limits. You can organize it with groups, also, right mouse click onto preview window permit to select directly the material under your cursor

[Sil3]

No, no nodal shader.

That was (and is) a big show stopper from various places I have been. I was hoping they would had address it by this release but it starts to seem
they never will.

Funny thing is that MOMA (Modo render inside Maya) deals with that, since the workflow seems to be Nodal inside Maya.

http://www.jacobobarreiro.com/jweb/moma/


I find it brilliant and seems like an amazing "convertion"

[Nizar]

IMHO is not a so dramatical issue. Sure, you move away from what your are used, but modo shader tree is nice after struggle a bit .

[origin]

Modo my favourite software that I don't intend to use in next 5 years

[wireframex]

Modo my favourite software that I don't intend to use in next 5 years

hehehe

EDIT : I'm sticking with SI ...(nevertheless I own modo since 201)

[Nizar]

Modo my favourite software that I don't intend to use in next 5 years

I using it sporadically and only for render task and some retopology (goz workflow is very handy)