Modo 13.2 released

Modo 13.2 has been released. Read more about it here:

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Well impressed by the IK solver and the new chamfer tool. To be honest I quite fancy Modo, but I simply can’t abide by its very poor 4k support. To my knowledge they still don’t have a proper 4k mode. You’ve got to go adjust many different settings to get a poor, half measure result.

Soon as they man up and join the 4k club with everyone else, I will happily switch over for a number of my 3D needs.

But Blender EEVEE has got me by the pelotas right now. It’s exactly what I need for rendering.

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The release thread in their forum is currently dominated by reports of a crippling bug in the area of shading, which is unfortunate for The Foundry because previous releases had many of the users happy with the improved stability and the direction in general.

Oh, did anyone notice yet another major feature demo featuring shoes? :upside_down_face:

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That is really not significant bug that could affect stability, come on man :smiley: It is corner case, that happens in really specific situation.

Mpath renderer sounds to be like a nice addition.

The chamfer tool in Modo is still a work in progress, based on this user’s Blender/Maya/Modo comparison:

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I would be surprised if The Foundry couldn’t find someone who would make their chamfer tool work without issues.

Look at the somewhat crappy results Blender 2.6x saw in various situations and look how those same situations appear now. Though we may very well have custom profiles added on top once they get the remaining cases fixed :blush:

I really can’t be excited about whats coming out of Modo anymore. The foundry as a company has just let me down. Modo was in a better position when they were just Luxology.

Still, Modo has such a good modeling–>UV–>Baking workflow. Its all so unified. Blender could learn from this.

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saw this (image comparison), dropped on the floor with convulsion spitting foam by mouth just remembering my time in Modo. Because of this and poor support for animation and hellish convoluted schematics, I left my job at the time (licensed seat) went to Blender, and have never regretted looking back.

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Holy shit, it STILL sucks?
A couple of years ago when i left C4d i was searching for an alternative and i considered Modo among others. I think it was version 10. I saw the end results of the bevel tool and said nope, turned 180° and went in another direction. I was already learning Blender by that time, and i remember having a good laugh about it.
Still i was impressed with how fast somebody like Tor Frick could model in Modo. I wanted to be as fast as him.
Couple years later facilitating the power of many useful Blender addon’s, i can say the speed advantage he had has slimmed down to nothing. He still is the better designer, but i can easily keep up with the modelling speed.

I would have been a sensation if it came out 3 years ago, now i guess the reception is more like “meh”.

True, but why does it take so long? Maxon had created a better bevel tool a couple of years ago and C4d isn’t known for being a great modeller, but still they got a very solid tool there. It’s kind of embarrassing that Foundry can’t do it faster.

Ever since the Foundry acquired Modo, their priorities have been all messed up. Some of the most requested improvements go ignored, unwanted features get pushed forward, sometimes its a half arsed job. There’s a trend of non-user friendly improvements, clearly being lead by someone who is not an artist or a user, such as the case of the parametric modeling. The workflow and UI is godawful, you can tell it was designed by a programmer with no understanding of the target audience the software is supposed to appeal to.

The old legacy parts of Modo are still great, but damn I have no idea what they are doing over there anymore. They seem to be focusing all their efforts onto product design for shoes. I can’t see any future for Modo anymore with Foundry ownership.

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Yet one major shoe brand (Adidas) decided they would sponsor Blender development instead :grin:

That is quite a contrast from the general excitement of the first year or so of development by The Foundry, because Modo saw some serious stability and performance issues cleaned up.

Yes, my friend. It’s slowly becoming non-Autodesk 3DS MAX.
I must say I was quite disappointed when I came to the realization.

Oh Modo, I hardly knew you.

I think Modo is in a difficult place now. I have 801 which I use quite a lot. But so far have not been tempted to upgrade (even got a 20% off offer in my pocket for a few more days but that is still not tempting me enough). It is one of the very few perpetual licences (but now with a phone home periodic validation a lot don’t like). With low subscription cost for Maya Indie, Houdini Indie, and C4D, and pace of Blender development they need to do something radical. At the moment it seems more of a slow burn to get better and better - but that will take years - by which time they will have only caught up to where other applications are today.

Modo Indie is also a big disappointment. The restrictions are fine for the price point - but it is now be clamped at 1 year behind the current version, and they have left it drifting on Steam. I was happy to subscribe to that rather than update 801 until the lack of uptodateness got too annoying.

It is also interesting to note that there has been no (visible) synergy in develoment roadmaps between Nuke Mari and Modo. It is like Foundry brought it, and now don’t know what to do with it. I sometimes wonder if their best play is to sell to Adobe. I think Adobe would like a modeller then they could sell a 3D creative cloud subs: modelling, texturing and comp.

Modo is fun to use, and I would like to see it get it act together.

All this shoe stuff is really unimpressive. I accept the sales of trainers is a massive market - but I am sorry 3d for films and games is where the excitement is.

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Exactly.
I remember back in the day Brad P. (former CEO of Luxology) promised more features and improvements to the texture painting tools in Modo. They never delivered.

There are so many parts of Modo that just go ignored. They are like tacked on features that they have no interest in making good, in part because it might cannibalize other Foundry software. For example, they want to push people onto Mari, so why would they improve or even fix a lot of the issues with the texture painting in Modo? There is so much potential it just needs to be further improved.

Same goes with sculpting. They added a half-arsed auto-retopo which can be used for sculpting or scan data, but the implementation is so bad no one wants to even use it. The sculpting tools which are closely integrated with the painting tools are left decaying, with absolutely no love what so ever. Many in the community have asked for better sculpting, competitive features that would keep them in the software rather than have them rush to zbrush or mudbox, but no the Foundry is not interested.

Their solution? Develop a separate stand alone sculpting application they can charge money for, yet it was so bad/under developed they just killed it not long after it launched on steam.

All these upgrades are promoting their new render options so they can show off more shoes. Its really sad.

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As of today, those yearning to go back to Modo will have to take this into account…

Modo 13.2 gives you a bevel/chamfer tool that actually works in some cases, Blender raises custom profiles in the next buildbot build. :sunglasses:
https://developer.blender.org/rBba1e9ae4733ae956331c7e8899f6939997205298

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Woohoo! Finally! Awesome! I downloaded the latest 2.82 build, and custom profiles are great! I waited so long for this since my C4D days.

Good times ahead indeed.

All Blender as to do now is fix the UV editing workflow or find a way to turn it into a mode that works exactly like the 3D viewport. Modo still has one of the best unified UV editing workflows i have seen in a 3D app.

Modo dosnt have NOTHING over Blender that Justify 1800$ price plus a maintenance cause after 1 year you already one version behind. Plus they devaluate the software,i mean, After you buy the software is worth pennies,…why? …Try selling it at 1000$ ! , foundry want 100$ transfer fee and a MANDATORY Maintanance of 400$ … People selling lastest version at 400$! what cost you 900$ at the end with fees and all , Nahh, in such a company i dont invest and modo dominate nothing in the market. They almost had me with the indie version but even there they screw it up, not only with subscription-ONLY but also alienating the user-base and basically telling INDIE-users: We dont want you on the foundry server, stay on the steam boards… SHi* Company, invest in Blender.

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