Modo 601

[paulius-st]

Hi to all.
i would like to hear your opinions and personal experiance about luxology; Modo.
courently we are working with autodesk max but we ran in to option of having modo cause its about 4 times cheaper than 3d's max and has all functions we need.
so is it worth having 3d's max and pay 4 times more than we would pay for modo??
thanks in advance .

[Kage]

I switched completely to Modo, and I'm glad I did.

Offers a lot in the toolset, and for alot cheaper, and the rendering engine is pretty damn good too.

You will need some transfer time though. It's not pick up and play after getting used to how Max works. It took me a good few months to get to grips with it.

[paulius-st]

thanks .

[pables]

Hum... At least you should give it a try.

But I switched to Modo 2 or 3 years ago, and I'm happy with it, of course it has his weak points, but the Modo community is great, and Luxology seems to be a company that actually listens to it, that's something you don't see very often.

They're making the software evolve step by step but with solid updates.

The learning curve is very nice, you will feel a bit lost the first time you open Modo, but there are a lot of tutorials and soon you should feel comfortable.

It's internal render is very good and has preview render, though you can actually change it to render at full quality.

It's very comfortable for modelling and painting textures, once you get used to it(I won't take long).

Well, I don't know if you saw the 601 tour, but they explain a lot of new features, you can watch it at Luxology's.

Try it, if you have doubts we can help you.

[Thad]

i too have some interest in switching to modo (going to business for myself soon), but i´d like to know a couple of things before really investing on trying to learn it.

as an archviz professional, i use a lot of stuff in max like multiscatter + proxys or speedtree, and its also somewhat easy to buy nice textured models (vegetation) already made for max+vray. well, i guess the question would be, is constructing a varied complex vegetation scene in modo as easy as it is in max with its current avaiable tools, plugins and online avaiable models?

would like some experienced input, thanks in advance!

[pables]

Well, modo can import a lot of formats, like 3ds or obj, for example.

Here you have some examples of vegetation renders done in Modo some of them done by gelmi, a brazilian Modo user. http://www.luxology.com/gallery/imag...Category&id=25

And just in case you don't know there is also a 30 days Modo trial. http://www.luxology.com/trymodo/

You can try converting one of your scenes from max to modo, that way you can learn and test at the same time.

[poopipe]

I much prefer it to maya as a modeller and was tempted to adopt over max for a while due to things like viewport painting. i didn't because of a few infuriating ui design decisions but that's purely personal taste.
However.
imo you're not going to be able to run a studio without a big suite like max or maya. you need the legacy compatibility and you need to be able to work with other studios data.

If costs is an issue just tell the bosses to subscribe to max - at 400 quid a year its a no brainer if you ask me.

[Thad]

thanks

i guess ill have to try it out anyways for myself, and i intend to.

[RHedendahl]

Tried it once, disliked the strange rotating so much that I closed it.
You could probably turn rotating settings to "normal" though :P.

[pables]

Strange rotating? You mean the viewport navigation or actually rotating and object?

[Thad]

Originally Posted by kirgan

Tried it once, disliked the strange rotating so much that I closed it.
You could probably turn rotating settings to "normal" though :P.

i was looking around luxology´s forum and found out that modo supports conexion´s space pilot, so i guess moving around the viewport will be pretty much the same for me, which is a plus.

ill see if i give modo a proper try this weekend.

[poopipe]

The viewport navigation was one of the big turn offs for me - i get very pissy about that sort of thing.

[pables]

Mmm I think I get your point, but, in Modo, you can choose Maya's viewport controls (there is a preset for that) and a lot of people who come from Maya tend to turn off the trackball rotation. That way the viewport navigation is just like Maya's.

I simply chose to get uset to Modo navigation.

[poopipe]

I remember trying that but it still annoyed me a lot (Maya annoys me a lot you see).

I'm very used to max's orbiting around selected subobject setup and anything else makes me lose my **** quite rapidly - I am a very angry and impatient person so this shouldnt be taken as illustrative.

[pables]

Haha, ok, it's a matter of feeling comfortable with your software, so everyone's opinion is valid.