Hair
It’s so much more than hair: fuzz, grass, fibers. Like modo’s painting tools, the hair is easy to create and easy to customize. There are a couple of ways to create it. The fastest is by simply assigning the fur material to surfaces in the texture hierarchy. The second way is by selecting from a single polygon to as many as you’d like to select and then create guide hairs. This allows for a tremendous amount of control.
Styling is easily accomplished by using what behaves like a hairbrush but looks like your normal painting tools. Just select what you want it to do: push, comb, curl and more.
What is just flat out awesome is how the hair renders. That sheen highlight that hair displays when lit is a product of what techies call anisotropic lighting. Modo renders that effect beautifully.
Supplied Content and other Improvements
Virtually all 3D packages come with content and textures that you can use. Big deal, right? Well, modo 401 has a reworked and vastly improved amount of content that is optimized for itself. The supplied models are well crafted and UV mapped. Using them is fast, easy and doesn’t leave viewers thinking, “Fake.”
Light sets are way cool. Have you ever noticed how spot lights and various bulbs light up a room differently - you know, the weird little patterns they make? All of that information has actually been cataloged by the lighting industry and is available in digital formats called IES profiles. Not only does modo read IES info for its lights, but there are some of these lights in the supplied content. So, dropping in one these to your indoor scene actually not only helps illuminate it, but illuminate it realistically.
There are new HDRI environments for realistic scene lighting, cameras, brushes and more. All of this serves you well when creating realistic scenes quickly. Oh, and if you need to render stereoscopically for a little stereographic 3D boost, modo can do that too. Also, if you’re working in multiple 3D formats, data import/export has been expanded to include COLLADA, FBX and 3DM.
Modo 401 is designed for Mac and PC systems. If you have a nice and shiny new 64 bit PC system, you’ll really like this edition. (Sorry Mac, only 32 bit for the time being) While it behaves admirably on older PPC, Intel and PC systems, to fully capture its interactive preview capabilities and accelerate replicator and hair rendering, newer systems are better. Duh.
The rendered output from 401 is just fantastic. Luxology has set up a priority of focus: Rendering, Modeling, Texturing and now, Animation. With each release, all of these areas see both user experience, quality and speed improvements.
If you already have modo, then an upgrade is a no-brainer - it’s that good and that significant.
With it’s new animation features, modo has kind of moved into an awkward spot. What it does, it does very well. However, animation also brings with it, some different expectations - especially regarding organic morphs and soft-body objects like cloth. These are out range right now and requires users to compartmentalize what modo can do in your workflow pipeline. So, by virtue of including some new animation options, it reveals the lack of more mature animation options. Modo is not a one-size-fits-all solution at this point in time.
The truth is, most studios that require 3D work use multiple software packages. If this is you, you’ll also appreciate that modo plays very nicely with other packages you may have in the pipeline.
If you’re new to 3D in general or modo in particular, the expense of the software should be weighed against your expectations, studio goals and what modo does or doesn’t do. Do you need a single 3D solution - then yes, this can do it. Do you need explosions or particle effects - then no, it can't. Is realistic rendering important - then yes, this would be a good fit. Is an artist-centric v.s. techie-centric interface helpful - then yes. Do you need to do character animation - then no. Do you need architectural environments and mechanical animation - then yes.
As a user of multiple 3D packages, modo, in my experience, is very stable and provides one of the easiest, fastest ways to model, set up and render high quality photo real environments. That’s worth something here. But it may not be for you, especially if your environments will only be seen fleetingly or in a defocused presentation.
