If this is true, then everyone who talked about Modo declining are going to have to retract their words, as it looks like The Foundry is finally taking user complaints to heart and are making a serious and focused effort to win them back. What surprised me even more is that the premier video does not have a single shoe in sight.
What it also means is the return to an atmosphere of competition in the 3D industry, it may soon be coming that the Blender devs. can no longer rely on the mistakes of commercial vendors and their licensing shenanigans to hold on to users and therefore will need to start place serious focus on longtime usability issues and requests (not to mention the features mentioned in blogposts, social media posts ect… finally coming to reality in full).
Now to conclude, there are people here who picked up Blender after using Modo, I would especially like to know if they now have plans to switch back if this kind of focus goes on for the entire year. Either way, it looks like releases in general from commercial vendors are starting to look better, so if only perpetual licensing starts to make a comeback as well this will be good for the industry as a whole.
…and pay $500-700/yr for the rest of your life, if you want the software to work.
They really should consider selling perm licenses again. So few other companies are, so I’m sure would be of interest to the customer base.
Not hating on Modo specifically on this, BTW. I was never a full user, but back when i tried their demo I thought there were a lot of nifty things there.
This looks awful tho. Even improved performance demo looks too old and slow. It feels like it was made by someone who has not seen modern 3D software and believes people will return to classics and internet is a fad
So as a newbie I only wonder what are the major core differences between Blender and Modo? Is it really all that significant? Especially when Modo is asking $485 for a single user license.
Not to rain on your slightly bombastic sounding doom and gloom parade here, but even Modo users are very very muted about Modo 17. There is hardly any mention or marketing on the side of Foundry. According to first reports it is still rather prone to crash.
And performance should have been addressed a decade ago.
Relying on the free Octane edition to replace their own rendering solution is a fragile decision: with single GPUs becoming so powerful that a multi-GPU solution is often no longer required for acceptable render times, it is a matter of time until the free edition is limited or replaced by a paid version.
Nah. Too little, too late. At least, that is how I see it.
Wut? Why all the apocalyptic doom-thinking? And who has stated that the Blender devs are relying on the mistakes of commercial vendors? Wild conspiracies? And that statement rather plays down the efforts of the devs.
Perpetual licensing is over and out. Not happening. Company managers like it too much and it provides a steady influx of $$$.
Sorry @Ace_Dragon: I like you. Generally you write interesting bits and I do appreciate the heads-up on Modo 17. Sometimes your posts are rather veering off into doom-thinking. “The End Of Blender Is Near! Repent!”
Modo 17 is interesting. Too late, though. Once users have left (it takes a LOT to leave a DCC) users tend to stay away unless over-the-top valid reasons or benefits lures them back. I don’t see too many Modo users return to the fold over this version or the next. (I was one, and here at work Modo was phased out last year…)
But regarding the topic at hand, yea, it seems a little late to the party… I’m happy for Modo users who are getting these performance improvements, because it’s terrible when your work & art is held back by poorly performing software. I should know !
I tend to agree with the speakers above. It’s probably too late for a return or at the very least it’ll take years and lots of innovations and good decisions to accumulate strong user base again.
It’s very difficult to leave a work app for another. I don’t think people will switch back.
Also, Foundry was neglecting the product and abusing its users for far too long with bad licensing and shitty development progress each release.
Modo is probably not that far from the Lightwave’s position. It’s most likely in a better shape from the code base point of view but the mind share is miniscule now. The few hardcore Modo users will be happy about the progress but pretty much no one else cares.
But you have to at least admit that prismatic boolean modeling looks quite powerful (because while we do have automatic vertex merging and edge-splitting, no one on the team has yet been willing to go the whole way with this kind of workflow, even our manifold extrude is only enough to tick a box to show that Blender has it and has a use or two).
The last version of Modo I own was 12, while 17 looks like a good step in the right direction, it’s too little too late, I’ll stick to Blender. I wish them the best though. Integrating Octane is a good move though.
After the demise of Softimage, we tested and invested in MODO in the hope that many ex-Softimage users would leave Autodesk and find a new home with a committed and trustworthy developer.
Back then Luxology looked good and the head of Luxology was the smart and charismatic Brad Peebler.
There were a lot of promising concepts and a lot of promises for the future on top (node based workflows etc.). There was light and there was shadow but it looked like it could gradually replace Softimage in our pipeline (which was mainly for product visualization and TV commercial stuff).
Then came theFoundry and took over which reminded us direfully of the Softimage-Autodesk-Apocalypse™.
Then Brad Peebler left.
In the meantime we completely committed to Blender (and Houdini for the heavy lifting jobs) and haven’t looked back since.
Every now and then I watch the “What’s New” videos when a new release comes out and always think, hmm, meh!
And this time when I read “with Octane” that caught my eye. Until I kept reading “Prime!”
Wow, you now get a renderer that Blender users got for free for a long time now (except us Linux users, hint hint we need an updated Prime version plz).
No Blender character animator (like myself who needs to rig an animate speaking Characters with facial & body mocap capabilities for Games and films.)
is going to consider this new MODO at any price
And the hard surface modeling faction wont either considering we have hard Ops & Box cutter, Random flow etc.
hm… to me it sounds more like luxology maneuvered themselves into a dead end. they couldn’t deliver what they overhyped and then they were like “we have to sell it quickly as long as someone still gives us money for it”.
Back in 2014 I had a student license of Modo.
Around that time Groboto was integrated into Modo. Groboto had a bad ui but good ideas and Implementing those features into Modo showed promise in a new creation paradigm.
Modos strongsuit was Modelling and they fumbled it.
Thankfully I stayed with Blender since it was and is my primary solution.
Modo won´t get a leg up nor will it “soar”, in my opinion it makes me at best indifferent till I forget it even existed. similar vibes to Lightwave. they orbit the radar of morbid interest
All in all I am thankful for the posted News even if I don´t need the product.
Subscription vs perpetual is tiring, to make it short;
Subscriptions can be imo good for “use once and forget” products, for throwaway products and use only a couple times stuff which you don´t need necessarily.
What does that subscription offer which Blender (and other tools I use) can´t do?
currency strengths variation and political relations between countries can sour.
Subscriptions means, you can be easily barred from further access.
Subscriptions are stupid and dangerous when you have variable income.
For such fluctuations (time between and amount of payment), your money making tools need to be readily available and perpetual. Otherwise, you are quickly barred from your own projects and files.
Whenever possible, I “vote with my wallet” and choose first opensource and then it is always perpetual over subscription.
There has been a healthy resurgence of (new) Products which thankfully offer perpetual licenses.
Why can’t the BF give us nice, polished modeling tools instead of a bunch of haphazard ones that were abandoned halfway through development and were only tested on the default cube or suzanne?
I am aware that not all of the modeling tools are like this (with some like bevel, shrink/flatten and inset actually being pretty good), but there are many which just miss a certain amount of polish which would’ve been discovered if they were tested on high-quality production models. There are too many times where I end up feeling like a rookie as Blender messes up and I make a mess (though Blender is free so I take what I can get).
0:00 - 0:17 Boxcutter
0:17 - 0:28 Built-in
0:28 - 0:57 This one is neat, I wonder if someone has already done a falloff addon like this though. Some of it can be done with proportional editing.
0:57 - 1:09 LoopTools (maybe not the hexagon bit, geometry nodes solution perhaps?)
1:09 - end MESHmachine
Yes, Python addons (one of the slowest programming languages you can learn since BASIC went EOL). It might be good enough for office-style operations, but you feel the impact when a DCC is involved. A good quality development scene should not expect users to rely on addon purchases to finish what there is otherwise no will-power to do.
Geometry Nodes is really a lifesaver in many cases, but I have since had to remind myself that the old destructive way still exists due to how difficult things can get (now we have matrix nodes, but I have always had trouble trying to make sense of those things if you have to perform the calculus manually).
No offense Ace !!
we need an updated Prime version plz).
