MODO 901

[efflux]

One of the reasons for the price rise is this which is now included:

https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/plugins/meshfusion/

Basically it's just non destructive booleans but the Foundry like to hype as if they have reinvented the wheel. It does look good but I'm not interested in modelling watches. There are some more creative possibilities with this. You won't see much experimentation on the Modo forum though.

You can do this in Wings as well, it's just destructive (or maybe it isn't - I'll have to check) but Wings isn't £1200.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?276683-Wings-3D-Booleans-similar-to-groboto

[Oshyan]

Modo is great, but Houdini does seem ahead as far as landscape-type creations. Here's a whole tutorial set on various types of landscape creations using Houdini's node network:
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3095&Itemid=410
Some very cool stuff in it, some things TG can't do, but then some of the things that TG *can* do are way, way faster, easier, and more controllable in TG.

- Oshyan

[efflux]

OK, I take back what I was saying about the sculpting. It's really good now. Massively improved since 701. I'm going to get a graphics card which will utilise this properly along with 3D Coat's sculpting. I have a Quadro but it's an older one. No more Quadros though. The expense is insane.

Also, mesh fusion is brilliant. A bit complex to learn but it fits Modo's way of working perfectly. This seems like a really mature product now. I can see why the price is higher.

The only gripe I have is the huge complexity of basic modelling tools but limits within each tool. It needs to be much more of a process rather than having to select numerous tools.

[efflux]

Modo is great, but Houdini does seem ahead as far as landscape-type creations. Here's a whole tutorial set on various types of landscape creations using Houdini's node network:
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3095&Itemid=410
Some very cool stuff in it, some things TG can't do, but then some of the things that TG *can* do are way, way faster, easier, and more controllable in TG.

- Oshyan

I'll watch that but just by skipping through the video, it looks interesting.

I think Modo has finally come of age now. This 901 seems awesome.

I had an issues with 701 recently on this Linux system. 901 has occasionally given me the same problem but it recovers much quicker. I think it's window manager problems which will also connect in with my too slow graphics card. One thing I can say though is that I've used Modo a lot on Linux and it has never once crashed.

[efflux]

As for Terragen. Leaving asides the fact that you can work on a whole planet, the thing that shines is the surfacing. You can't build up multi layers the same way in any other app. I'm less into the idea of doing everything procedurally on planet scale. Smaller scenes are fine with more content of heightfields, imported meshes etc.

Modo has good atmosherics and natural day lighting. Also, you can definitely create good clouds. This is very difficult because you have to create huge boxes to emulate cloud layers and then control density in terms of height. You're involved with all this kind of thing:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,10582.0.html

Because you have to set this up by default in Modo. There is a reason you don't see many great clouds coming from standard 3D apps even if they have the engine to do. It's very technical. The clouds have to have the right amount of lighting etc. You can out do Vue clouds in Modo. I'm sure of that. I don't like the Vue clouds.

[TheBadger]

Terragen does do wonderful clouds. my only big gripe is the 3d Preview, which slows down the whole creation process to near unbearable. It is slow enough for complex terrain, but atmo takes me beyond my patients ability. Default scene and basic setups are plenty fast though. I am still not sure why no love for GPU rendering as far as the preview goes.

I am glad you are liking 901 now Efflux, I was rather surprised by your initial review.

And as far as left handed, don't they make keyboards that are partially reversed, for some keys?

You should also take a very close look at at UNReal4, Efflux. If you don't mind not having photo real like in TG, then you will probably love it.

The main complaint I have about TG is just not enough built in time savers/tools and such. But with plugins coming, I think that may change in a big way. Or I hope so.

Modo is not just a modeler anymore. Its the full monty, and the least costly of the big names. Add to that the power it gives you, and I don't see how anyone can compare the others.

Renting soft is not for me either!

[Oshyan]

I'll believe realistic clouds from other engines (without a bunch of extremely limited hacks) when I see them. Shaping can be better than TG, sure, but the shading still seems to fall far behind. Daylighting is good in many renderers, but most - if not all - use fairly simple and limited atmosphere simulations that create less realistic results. Efflux, I know you've experimented with clouds in Modo, but the last results I saw of yours still seemed, well, experimental. I'd love to see more realistic results if you've achieved them.

- Oshyan

[efflux]

It's a lot of work, that's the problem because the volumetric shader has to have the right level of lighting interaction. This is why you often see kind of dark looking clouds like smoke. It can be better than Vue though. The way Vue lights atmospheres is good but the clouds always look like soup suds wich ruins the effect.

As for Modo. I've been messing with the nodes.

This is absolutely mental. Here's a screenshot of a few Modo nodes. One fractal is distorting the position of another and this is driving displacement value. The material node is selected and on the right you see the list of channels that can be procedurally driven. As you can see from the scroll bar, I can't fit them in the screen. You simply drag them over onto the node and it's there to hook up. You can hook up nodes for absolutely everything in Modo. Even modeling tools so when you move them and they alter values in the nodes. It's literally everything and all animatable as well. You can put in the curve graph of course which is the curve graph to end all curve graphs. There are hundreds of node types. Instead of using a material node you can use a constant that you place in the shader tree which you can't see here then you can save the node setup for later use.

[efflux]

There are also 36 channels of inputs on the multifractal to be driven by any other function. This is just the multifractal. There are of course dozens of different procedural nodes. Thousands upon thousands of functions all accessible by the user. It's completely mad.

[Tangled-Universe]

As for Terragen. Leaving asides the fact that you can work on a whole planet, the thing that shines is the surfacing. You can't build up multi layers the same way in any other app. I'm less into the idea of doing everything procedurally on planet scale. Smaller scenes are fine with more content of heightfields, imported meshes etc.

This is really interesting, because I have the same idea for quite some time. Planet-wide scenes are seldomly depicted/made.

Limiting TG's functionality to smaller scale scene might be shooting themselves in the foot as it's a unique feature, but given the limited use of it I can't really say it's a unique selling point!
I don't know, but I think my observation that planet-wide scenes are rare is a correct one. The assumptions I make following that, well...I don't know for sure of course.

If you limit TG to smaller scale scenes I'm pretty sure that more is possible in terms of erosion simulation and such.
Of course Daniil Kamperov's erosion is told to be planet-wide (where is he??) and thus lessen the need for smaller scene scales, but there are more natural erosion phenomena which are likely only feasible to be simulated on smaller scales than planet scale.

Also this would allow for easier terrain manipulation with brushes/sculpting etc. Less to deal with.

And with less to deal in terms of scale and geometry, there's likely also more possible with the renderer.


Secondly, about the layering of displacement and such:

I think TG would greatly benefit from allowing a user to let fractals apply their displacement in 'tangent space' instead of 'object space'.
In TG you always displace outwards from the centre of the object. From then on (after a compute) the surface is evaluated in a 2.5D fashion, where it is *always* dependent on the underlying surface. With a tangent space based surface interpretation you don't have this limitation.

With a completely tangent space based system you can have your vector-based shapes become independent of the underlying surface. This will prevent those weird stretching of your noise function on parts of the terrain which quickly change in slope.
See it, if you like, as a more volumetric interpretation.

[efflux]

The main advantage of the planet scale is that you put less important stuff in the distance  if you use heightfields, models etc for you main focus. That's a plus although in Modo you can put displacements in the background to fill out or replicate yor meshes.

I've been through that first Houndini video. Most of what he did could be done in Modo and you could use 3D Coat for voxel sculpting. Houdini is able to optimise a mesh very nicely though. I've yet to experiment with that in other apps. Blender dynamesh is cool. That gets you a semi decent mesh and it's very cool to sculpt terrains. However, I'm half way through the second video and this interests me much more. In particular the way Houdini can create controls lessening the need to delve into the nodes all the time. That's like a part of Mojoworld which if I remember right was called the hypermixer but it wasn't very good so everybody just delved right into the main UI with nodes etc. I like the way Houdini can mix up all sorts of stuff to get an output. That's very interesting.

What I'm interested in doing is creating assets that aren't Teragen, Modo or anything else. Terrains being the main thing but also things like rocks etc and ways to get populations between various apps. It also extends into particular scenes. Compositing certain aspects to use in different apps. I don't think trying to do everything in one app works that well. Modo is probably the only app that kind of allows you to do anything but some things will be very long winded and complex like clouds if those were to be created inside Modo.

For example I have lots of experiments with hoodoo type rocks. I've tried to incorprate these into full Terragen lanscapes but there are all sorts of masking problems because it's all one material. Basically, it's a technical nightmare so you might as well create this content in other apps then import to distrubute.

[attach=1]

There is a learning curve with these other apps. It's different from Terragen though. There is not much learning curve in working out how to use Terragen. The learning curve is how to hook thing up. These other apps have huge learning curves in getting around the UIs etc.

[Tangled-Universe]

Modo Houdini is probably the only app that kind of allows you to do anything but some things will be very long winded and complex like clouds if those were to be created inside Modo.

Believe me, Houdini can do way more than Modo.
Only exception I can think of right now is sculpting-wise, but else, it's unimaginably powerful.
There's a reason every serious VFX house resorts to Houdini as soon as something becomes moderately to extremely complex.

Reason I'm being a bit pushy here is because I think you're the right guy to check this out as to me you seem to have an aptitude for this kind of stuff.
So I hope you understand the positive nature of me being pushy

[efflux]

It does look good. I like the control you have with everything and non destructively. I did see that guy in the videos doing things and I thought the same tasks could be done in a fraction of the time in other apps. You'd lose the non destructive pipeline but for example, when he sculpts terrains with arches and tunnels, that could be done in both Modo or using 3D Coat's sculpting tools in a fraction of the time. Both would get different styles of results but much faster.

At the moment though I'm getting into Modo. This is my second phase with it. First phase was working out if it can generally do what I want. Now I'm getting into the details of properly learning it before the demo of 901 runs out. This is no easy task though. Modo is immensely complex now. I got quite far with this in Blender but ultimately I'll be waiting for features not there yet so I have to use Modo. Modo is better but that's no critique of Blender. It's amazing for open source.

[Tangled-Universe]

Ok cool, I'll shut up for now then about Houdini

Looking forward to see your Modo doodles with the same interest and enthusiasm

[efflux]

Ha ha. I'm just playing with Modo's new rocks. Read this from the manual. This functionality may well be available elsewhere in Modo. I saw some clues to that but need to investigate further:

"The displacements are applied sequentially, meaning that each subsequent layer that is enabled displaces the geometry using the normals from the prior layer. There are three separate Displacement layers that all have identical functionality."

I wonder, do The Foundry staff actually read forum posts