Modo’s fur function for 401 seems to get pretty good.
modo is one of those tools that are just fun to use… (like Photoshop and that other one, I think it is called Unity or something).
I understand that they are going to focus on rendering for the next release, but I secretly hope they’ll slip in some simple bone animation stuff soon.
beeing a ex modo user (just not useful without bones for game development) i double that, they should rather invest time in bones, especially as there are better fur implementations available that what i see from the screens
I bumped into Brad Peebler from Luxology at a small conference last year and asked about the future of modo… his response was that they don’t see it as a standalone solution, but more as a program that fits into an existing tool chain to better tackle specific tasks (right now modeling… and rendering since they just licensed that out to 3rd parties). They want to do less, but do it well, and grow slowly.
On our Downhill Bowling game we had very few character animations, so I could get away with a hack… but I need to figure out a smoother asset creation pipeline. I’d like to continue to use modo and add a dedicated animation program, but using standard apps (Maya, 3DS, LW etc.) might make more sense to work with freelancers. I need to do more research.
I guess not for 40x but at some point Animation/Bones/… will also make their way into Modo.
Anyway computers, software or 3d aren’t often topics which make you laugh and let’s face it most games aren’t funny either but with this hairy demonstration i had quite some fun:
Gah - I keep hearing more and more good things about modo. I really need to check it out. If only they would not have you fill out two registration forms, download three drifferent files that need to be installed and create a license key just for the demo.
I’d rather have a demo with no save function as to go through a registration process that is more thorough than some of the full verson licens software bundles. It’s a DEMO damit - and I hate reistering for everything :evil:
When i got into Modo they offered a 30 days trial, which you could easily renew if you wanted to but due to that it’s a great tool, crossplatform, comes with a very nice licence and is affordable, i bought it.
If i remember correctly they changed the trial conditions because they had more users who were asking of how certain things work and so they also made a content/training pack which you get when you’re demoing the software. I don’t know if this has been changed again but it brought them more customers who were serious about the product and those could get better into it. I forgot why they didn’t want to make all this without a registration. Don’t know if this has been changed again.
Yes, but it cost $25 or $30 to demo the software, then. People hated this, including me, so…
…they stopped doing that. Brad Peebler stated in a modcast that the percentage of people downloading the demo, and then purchasing the software, went down drastically, but sales improved greatly.
Well, if they now offer it for free they should have the best of both worlds. Maybe it also was due to bandwith issues as these files are not that small and i remember that until a certain point downloading major updates wasn’t this fast.
As were talking of bandwith and accessibility the unity fourm speed went down drastically from here. Today it’s a little bit better but for instance yesterday evening it took me approxiamtely half a minute just waiting for postings getting in.
Same here.
You can get it for free again, if you want to. They are offering a bitTorrent Download of the install package.
Despite the very anoying signup and install process I tested it now. And I love it. I am tempted to buy it as soon as I’ve got the spare money.
Is there anything known about a release date for Modo4?
Nothing official as far as i know but it seems to be around the corner, maybe a month? I think they wanted to reveal further news next week.
I’m banking on character animation in 401. After seeing the Setup tab, and hearing Brad beat around the bush in the modcast yesterday, I’d say things are looking pretty good for a complete modo + Unity pipeline. 
Oh, wow … that would be awesome. I had just added Modo to my toolset recently and am still learning (and trying hard to get over its lack of SpaceNavigator support 
).
It seems much harder to learn than Cheetah3D - but also much more powerful.
Eh, one man’s simple is another man’s complex. I couldn’t understand Cheetah, but I was flying with modo after a short time.
Cheetah’s SpaceNavigator implementation didn’t utilize all six of the axes (you couldn’t “turn upside-down”) when I tried it, and it also “broke” quickly. Has it improved?
Are you the Jashan in this thread? A lot of us modo users have been asking for this for a while.
Yeah, that’s me
Originally I wanted to not get Modo until it has SpaceNavigator support but then they had this cool offer ($200 off) which “bought me”, I have to confess
I think in that same thread one of the devs replied a while ago that it’s unlikely that they’ll integrate it. But I also remember Nicholas saying they wouldn’t add .NET 2.0 features to Unity 2.0 (or at least that it was unlikely, don’t remember the exact wording), so I think there’s still hope left for 401
I saw the same thread, but the SpaceNavigator has gained a lot of popularity since then, and has been adopted by several other companies. I’m not as confident that it will happen for 401, as I am on character animation (bones, that is, because 301 added the animation timeline). I’ll wager 402, and hope to be proven wrong by an earlier release!
I’ve only been toying around with the demo for a few days now but I somehow can’t shake the feeling that there’s still some (few) vital features missing I haven’t yet needed but might want sooner or later …
The workflow is really cool, though and I especially like the sculpting tools. No matter if they can’t reach ZBrush’s polycount. The idea of painting a vertex displacement map directly on the model is pure genius. 8)
I’m really torn whether to buy yet another 3D app or not… 
I would wait for 401, see what’s in there and if it’s good and something you need or want, then buying it, otherwise i wouldn’t. It’s not running away, at least not this soon.
I’m a die-hard Lightwave user and friend of NewTek. But I wanted better ways to make texture sheets and at the urge of an artist friend I got the trial of Modo.
It feels a lot like LightWave (there’s a story behind that) and has a lot of nice features. Just like what someone said easier: fun to use. Definitely easier to learn for new users than LW.
BUT I will still having problems making texture sheets with it. I discovered some Modo video tutorials ($25 each) that explained a lot of how to make Modo work for games: rendering multiple textures down into a single texture sheet, generating normal-mapping from high-res models, etc.
http://www.luxology.com/store/training_series06.aspx
I bought both tutorials but have only watched the first set. Man I can’t believe how underused video tutorials are for products! Still, if you don’t know Modo at all, I suggest a “basics” tutorial to help you get through that (there’s got to be some out there for free).
The good:
What I absolutely love about Modo is it can save and load FBX – NOT export/import, but actually save and load scenes as FBX.
This is amazing! It allows me to just make changes, hit save, switch to Unity, and see them in the game. No clumbsy export steps. Save my scenes right in my assets folder.
The bad:
No support for character animation. For me, this just means I finish the process for characters in LightWave.
I love both applications (LW and Modo)