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modo

Screenshot of modo 302
Developed by Luxology, LLC
Latest release 302 / April 3, 2008
OS Mac OS X , Windows
Genre 3D computer graphics
License Proprietary
Website www.luxology.com/modo/


modo is an advanced polygon, subdivision surface, modeling, sculpting, 3D painting, animation and rendering package developed by Luxology, LLC. A software developer is a person or organization concerned with facets of the software development process wider than design and coding a somewhat broader scope of A software release is the distribution whether public or private of an initial or new and upgraded version of a Computer software product An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination Mac OS X (mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn is a line of computer Operating systems developed marketed and sold by Apple Inc, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Computer software can be organized into categories based on common function type or field of use 3D computer graphics (in contrast to 2D computer graphics) are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer A software license (or software licence in commonwealth usage is a Legal instrument governing the usage or redistribution of copyright protected software Proprietary software is Computer software on which the producer has set restrictions on use private modification copying, or republishing. A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages A subdivision surface, in the field of 3D computer graphics, is a method of representing a smooth Surface via the specification of a coarser Piecewise linear The program incorporates advanced features such as n-gons, 3D painting and edge weighting, and runs on Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms. Mac OS X (mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn is a line of computer Operating systems developed marketed and sold by Apple Inc, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft.

Contents

History

modo was created by the same core group of software engineers who formerly created Lightwave 3D. LightWave 3D is a high end Computer graphics program developed by NewTek. They are based in San Mateo, California.

In 2001, a rift developed between senior management at NewTek (makers of LightWave) and their key Lightwave engineers. Newtek's Vice President of 3D Development, Brad Peebler, eventually left Newtek to form Luxology, and was joined by Allen Hastings and Stuart Ferguson (the lead developers of Lightwave), along with most of the Lightwave programming team.

After more than three years of development work, modo was demonstrated at Siggraph 2004, and finally released in September that same year. SIGGRAPH (short for S pecial I nterest G roup on GRAPH ics and Interactive Techniques is the name of the annual conference on Computer graphics In April 2005, the high-end visual effects studio Digital Domain integrated modo into their production pipeline. Digital Domain is a visual effects and animation company based in Venice Los Angeles California. Other studios to adopt modo include Pixar, id Software, Eden FX, Studio ArtFX, The Embassy Visual Effects, Naked Sky Entertainment and Spinoff Studios. Pixar Animation Studios is a CGI animation production company based in Emeryville California. id Software (ɪd officially is an American computer game developer based in Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The Embassy is a Visual effects studio located in Vancouver, Canada. Naked Sky Entertainment is an independent game development studio based in Los Angeles, United States.

At Siggraph 2005, modo 201 was pre-announced. This promised many new features including the ability to paint in 3D (ala ZBrush, BodyPaint 3d), multi-layer texture blending, as seen in LightWave, and, most significantly, a rendering solution which promises amongst other things, physical-based shading rendering, true-lens distortion, anisotropic reflection blurring and built-in polygon instancing. ZBrush is a Digital sculpting tool that combines 3D / 25D modeling, texturing and painting. modo 201 was released on May 24, 2006 living up to Luxology's feature-promises and also enhancing many of the features found in the previous version.

modo 201 was the winner of the Apple Design Awards for Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics for 2006. The Apple Design Awards is a special event hosted by Apple Inc In October 2006, modo also won "Best 3D/Animation Software" from MacUser UK magazine. In January 2007, modo won the Game Developer Frontline Award for "Best Art Tool".

modo 202 was released on August 1, 2006. It offered faster rendering speed and several new tools including the ability to add thickness to geometry. A 30 day full-function trial version of the software was made available.

modo was recently used in the production of the feature film Stealth, Ant Bully, and the video game RoboHordes. Stealth is a 2005 action / adventure Scifi thriller starring Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel, Josh Lucas The Ant Bully (ISBN 0590395912 is a 1999 Children's book drawn and written by John Nickle

In March 2007, Luxology released modo 203 as a free update to its user base. It included new UV editing tools, faster rendering and a new DXF translator.

The release of modo 301 on September 10, 2007 added animation and sculpting to its toolset. The animation tools include being able to animate cameras, lights, morphs and geometry as well as being able to import . mdd files. Sculpting in modo 301 is done through mesh based and image based sculpting (vector displacement maps) or a layered combination of both.

The current version of modo, version 302, was released on April 3 2008 with some tool updates, more rendering and animation features and a physical sky and sun model. modo 302 is a free upgrade for existing users.

Workflow

modo's workflow differs substantially from many other mainstream 3D applications. While Maya and 3ds Max stress using the right tool for the job, modo artists typically use a much smaller number of basic tools and combine them in novel ways using the Tool Pipe and customizable action centers and falloffs. Maya is a high-end 3D computer graphics and 3D modeling software package originally developed by Alias Systems Corporation, but now owned by 3ds Max (formerly 3D Studio MAX) is a modeling animation and rendering package developed by Autodesk Media and Entertainment.

Action Centers

modo allows an artist to choose the "pivot point" of a tool or action in realtime simply by clicking somewhere. Thus, modo avoids making the artist invoke a separate "adjust pivot point" mode. In addition, the artist can tell modo to derive a tool's axis orientation from the selected or clicked on element, bypassing the needs for a separate "adjust tool axis" mode.

Falloffs

Any tool can be modified with customizable falloff, which modifies its influence and strength according to geometric shapes. Radial falloff will make the current tool affect elements in the center of a resizable sphere most strongly, while elements at the edges will be barely affected at all. Linear falloff will make the tool affect elements based on a gradient that lies along a user-chosen line, etc. The word linear comes from the Latin word linearis, which means created by lines.

For example, imagine a situation where a flat 8x8 plane must be transformed into a mountain. In Maya, the artist would use the specialized bulge or soft modification tool to raise the center polygons more than the surrounding ones. A modo artist would instead use the basic move tool combined with a radial falloff to ensure that the polygons were raised at differing rates. In this way, modo emphasizes re-usability, meaning that the smaller selection of tools and actions can be combined in ways that mimic a much larger toolset without its complication or memory footprint. Memory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program uses or references while running

3D painting

modo allows an artist to paint directly onto 3D models and even paint instances of existing meshes onto the surface of an object. The paint system allows use to use a combination of tools, brushes and inks to achieve many different paint effects and styles. The paint tools in modo are things like airbrush, clone, smudge, blur. These tools are paired with your choice of "brush" (such as soft or hard edge, procedural). Lastly, you add an ink - the most interesting of which is image ink - meaning you are painting an existing image onto your 3D model. Pressure sensitive tablets are supported. The results of painting are stored in a bitmap and that map can be driving not just color but anything in modo's Shader Tree. Thus you can paint into a map that is acting as a bump map and see the bumps in real-time in the viewport.

Renderer

modo's renderer is multi-threaded and scales nearly linearly with the addition of processors or processor cores; an 8-core machine will render a given image approximately eight times as fast as a single-core machine. modo materials assignment is done via a shader tree that is layer-based and not node-based. modo supports network rendering on up to 50 workstations with any number of cores.

There is a preview renderer in modo that updates as changes in the scene are made.

Select features

Key modeling features

Key Sculpting Features

Key painting & texturing features

Key Animation features

Key rendering features

modo once included imageSynth, a plugin for creating seamless textures Adobe Photoshop CS1 or later. X3D is the ISO standard XML -based File format for representing 3D computer graphics, the successor to the Virtual Reality Modeling This bundle ended with the advent of modo 301. imageSynth is now sold as a separate plug-in for people who do not have modo.

Books and learning materials

External links

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