MODO 901

[Kadri]

There are users that like modeling more in Lightwave then in Maya, Modo,3DSMax etc in the Lightwave forum.
Kinda normal it is the Lightwave forum of course.

Anyway i am not trying to lure you to Lightwave I like conversations like this.
I hate when somebody thinks that when you don't use Maya (for example) that you have to use it too for good work.
It is a little of a snowball effect. When big houses use Maya everybody wants to use it too. That is understandable.
But just because the industry standard is kinda Maya,3DSMax doesn't mean anybody can not do acceptable work in Lightwave or in other smaller ones .

My problem is i have used it since 21 years i think. Money factor aside hard to use other software after so much time.

[Kadri]

...The videos of the house building have depressed me...

LOL! Sorry

[efflux]

The first comment here really underpins the problems with Modo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-A8xCJWlXM

I don't even have a standard Meshfusion layout on the Linux Modo. Only the schematic view. I can not see ANY of what he is working in here. I'd have to construct the UI layout myself. It's just insanity. They seriously need to get to grips with this at The Foundry. This release is a disaster area.

[Kadri]

Not good yes.

[efflux]

The manual isn't right about a bunch of things. This is very frustrating.

Also, for anyone trying Modo 901 Meshfusion. It is now like this:

This video is the only source explaining how Meshfusion is now integrated into the UI. The online manual points you to older videos and then you are completely confused.

Modo is a hell of a difficult program in terms of it's modeling if you are a new user. The Foundry needs to bin all the older videos and do a series of new short videos about the basics. How hard is this or does nobody actually know enough about how Modo works to even do this? I suspect this is actually the case. They do huge updates and nobody knows what the hell is there even when it gets released. It seems the only really good videos were ones done by Brad Peebler because he obviously knows how it works.

[TheBadger]

LOL
Well, uh hem.
It was pretty hard to get started with TG for quite awhile too, wouldn't you say?
In fact, isn't this a running joke with software in general? Seems to me this is why people make money with companies like Digital Tutors and some others. No one wants to share knowledge for free I guess, sept maybe here in this forum, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. I do though agree with you about the MODO forums, most forums are not as open and dedicated as this one is.

By the way, when you buy MODO you get some free Digital Tutors tuts.
I like digital tutors but it is not free. Its a very good value if you are going to really use it pretty much every day, but I canceled my membership because I was not using it as much as you have to to make it a good value. I spent to much time doing tuts and not enough time doing work. But if you are able to get the balance right, its a very good service.

I understood it that there are now 901 tuts available. You should look into that, being that you said you were going to stick with MODO for a while. They also have blender tuts now I think.

[efflux]

Planetside didn't provide enough info at the start. It's better now but Planetside have an excuse. They are essentially only three people.

The problem with Foundry training videos is exactly like that guy commented under that youtube channel. You have to already know the basics of Modo to fully follow a lot of those tutorials. Modo has some quirky ways of doing things in the modeler that you have to understand. I've now got to the point where I've isolated what I need to find out which is a step.

Where are the getting started with Modo videos or at leadt ones relevant to new versions? There are actually not really any useful videos of this type except ones made by some people on youtube. Yes, there is an online manual but you can't possibly read all of that so hence you miss stuff.

Also, I hate when they call it "training". Training is for monkeys. I want to learn. You teach people. You don't train them.

There are a lot of people slating this release. It may sound over the top but I think the way they release this software has become a consistant shambles.

I truly believe that nobody really knows Modo properly. Many of the "training" videos look like the person doing the training is also missing things on what can be done in Modo. The constant keyboard dancing of selecting tool, performing edit, then dropping tool, then selecting again to perform another edit is ridiculous, at least to be doing all the time. However, I now know that this isn't needed. For example there are key commands to keep the tool active for the next edit.

I often wonder how much developers look at other software. If you were an expert at Modo for example you might think it was all the obvious way to do things but if you went to Blender, you'd be totally lost for doing the simplest things. Not because Blender is difficult but because it's different.

Terragen actually has a very useful convention for dragging and dropping colours just by simply dragging and dropping. Blender does this as well. It's not uncommon. Modo doesn't do this. I have seen people mention the concept years back on the forum. Going to a menu to copy and paste colours is just too slow. When you get a build up of this type of slow down, then no matter how many fantastic features you add, the program becomes slow to use.

[efflux]

The best tool approach is that you select a tool, perform an action and the tool gets dropped. Blender does this. You learn the key commands and one press to activate and perform the action. I don't undestand the Modo convention of dropping the tool manually because unless you want to perform the same action again on the same polygons why have the tool still active? Sometimes you may want to perform the same action on another polygon selection. There is in fact a way of doing this. Once again Wings is king because you can have a key command but every selection type has a context sensitive right click menu with all the tools. It's so obvious. Wings understands all the way through your process what you will be doing next. Right down to selections. It seems nobody looks at that program. I'm not the only one going on about it in other 3D forums either. Other people understand why Wings is good. Pity other developers don't.

[efflux]

So in Modo what you essentially do is use a key command to perform the edit but keep the key depressed until the edit is finished. Then the tool drops. Find me a video where anyone does this? No, they will hammering away on the spacebar every time and reselecting the same tool. This is what I mean. I won't buy the tutorials because the people doing them make everything unbelievably long winded. That guy commenting under the youtube video summed it all up.

[efflux]

That Lightzone program that I've mentioned was designed by people with brains. They thought through what a photographer is likely to want to do to a photo and made the UI as clear as could be to do the task and nobody bought the app. Crazy. Everybody is copying it now though.

[efflux]

Another thing in Wings which other developers do not seem to get no matter how you go on about it is the select similar. This cuts out so much work. I'm watching people in Modo having to make materials and save selection sets while they work so as to be able to make the selection again or even make macros so as to apply a series of actions on eachrelated polygons which you can't multiselect anymore. With Wings this is hardly ever needed because Wings can intelligently work out what polygons you want to select by analysing other that are similar and you can refine this. Usually you will want to later perform the same actions on polygons that are similar.

It's the same with most software. Just not intelligently designed at all. One thing I've harped on about on multiple forums is Gimp's ability to use MIDI. Nobody gets it. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Somebody had the genius idea to add this to Gimp. What this means is that you can add any MIDI device to control anything in Gimp. This simply devastates any other method. Keyboards are useless in comparison because MIDI can send continuous controller messages. You set up knobs to increase blue, red, green or control your brush size etc. It's genius but actually obvious. Keyboards can not send a continuous control.

[efflux]

This is why Modo doesn't auto drop the tool. Modo has lots of stuff that you can do on every tool action. One particular thing is incredibly powerful fall offs. In other apps, fall off tends to be more basic so you can control it with the mouse wheel for example, as it works in Wings while you perform the action. The tool dropping method in Modo is there because each tool action can have a bunch of other edits. You do all this then drop the tool. However, if you aren't performing a complex procedure you use the toggle type key action and it becomes like most other apps. You won't find a single explanation of the hows and whys of what I've just described even although this is what makes the Modo modeler different.

Also, because everything in animatable, it's good to not have the tool drop because you may want to create another animation key with for example the fall off adjusted differently.

[efflux]

I'll not post anymore about Modo here, except to say that it is generally a brilliant app. The main problems are lack of clear info for new users and the bugs.