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MODO 801 Release


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Watched the presentation stream last night, and I'm glad to see animation is coming along as (at least from what I tried in earlier versions) thats an area Modo really is playing catch up on. Anyone have impressions of it yet and how it stacks up to the animation toolset in Maya/Max/Blender ?

 

My main disappointment was the lack of paint tool improvements (guess they're just going to push Mari instead) and still no custom viewport shader support. But it still seems to be a solid release overall.

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I also watched the Modo presentation last night. It seemed like nobody was asking questions in the chat room, and nobody responded to any of my questions. In contrast, when I watched the Maya 2015 release presentation a few weeks ago, the chat was active and they answered all of my questions (some answered by the presenters, and some answered by other Autodesk employees who were in the chat room). I'm not sure why the chat room was so empty for the Modo presentation. Maybe they didn't like any of the questions that were asked there? Also the Foundry did not give much time for answering online questions, and only briefly answered two or three from somewhere else...Twitter perhaps?

Personally I was hoping for animation layers in Modo 801. Maya has animation layers, and so does Lightwave, and Blender. I'm guessing that many other DCC apps have that as well. Apparently Modo does not yet have that feature.

However, I did like how they added the new "traditional animation" workflow to the timeline (easy-to-add/edit breakdowns and inbetweens), and a really nice onion-skinning feature!

I was also hoping for some kind of fluid/smoke simulation, but apparently that hasn't been added yet either.

In general though, I was still impressed by the presentation and all of the features and improvements that have been added. I think it is a really great app for only $1500!

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I watched the 801 Live presentation, and I would have preferred those guests to simply demonstrate the new features they really liked, rather than just talk about how they do stuff in Modo and basically keep saying how awesome it is. We get it. You like it, but what's NEW in 801? I think Brad did a pretty good job trying to do that, initially, but after his shpeal, it kind of meandered a bit. I'm sure they'll learn from it and adjust accordingly, in the future.

 

What I took from the release is that it wasn't the big left hook to the jaw of Ligthwave we all thought might be coming. It was more about refining what was already in Modo. Lot's of little, everyday improvements. The Wrap, and Lattice Deformers was a nice step toward Modo being a legit Character Animation production toolset...but yeah...animations layers would be equally important, IMHO. The nodal shader network was a big deal to Modo users and that's nice to see...but I didn't see any material/shader balls to show interactive updates as you set up your nodes. Having the IPR visible while making those adjustments is there, but shaderball changes are usually real time.

 

I too hoped they would have come out with some kind of fluid/smoke/fire simulation system, to pair with their particles and dynamics introduced in 701. Seems like it could have really helped them get a foot in the door into the VFX industry...which Nuke heavily serves. I also think they are purposely trying to dodge requests for After Effects interoperability...because of Nuke. The Foundry doesn't want to promote AE any if they can help it...as many studios likely have a mix of AE and Nuke in the pipeline. The more interoperability you have between AE and Modo, the fewer seats of Nuke a studio might use.

 

I also hoped Modo 801 would have seen some kind of GPU acceleration involved in the renderer. Mental ray now uses the GPU to calculate GI and AO. I've got two render engines in Max that are either GPU/CPU hybrids (Thea) or all GPU (Cebas' new Moskito renderer), and both of them update interactively so fast, that it boggles the mind...and both are Unbiased or have an Unbiased mode. GPU rendering is the future, folks and the longer Brad...and Rob (Powers), too, sit on their hands...waiting for all the GPU limitations to be removed, the further behind they are going to be, in this industry.

 

There are so many springing up everywhere, that are putting their excuses to rest.

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I like the update. Will keep an eye out for future versions and see how the pricing goes. WIll buy in maybe modo 10.0.

Right now I'm fine with my modo steam edition just to keep me updated to the workflow.

The one at work is 501 and never going to be upgraded and used by one guy who prefers to model in modo and work in maya.

There's just no modo projects in demand at all everything is AD projects.

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Yeah i probably will skip this release, too, since im just bought 701 on new year

and instead invest the money in hardware this time.

Although i was impressed by some features and could use them in my work.

 

Glad, that the upgrade price is same for each preceeding version, hopefully it will remain so.

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