Feel free to live in this unproductive and negative mindset. A tool is a tool to me and if it works, I’ll use it to get things done.
It doesn’t sound like Modo has been a “good quality development” for awhile according to this thread.
Also, aside from the extremely tired “addons should be built in!” argument, no company has infinite resources. I don’t think any tool available in Blender was intentionally built halfway and then the dev said “That’s good enough for now, I’ll come back to this never.” It was built to some purpose and that purpose has now been exceeded. Blender’s development has become a lot more considered and formalized in the last few years vs. the first 25.
The background threads improvement looks pretty good. These are good improvements, however the current market conditions are in favor of more free alternatives like Blender, Unreal when it comes to DCCs etc.
Cuz there is almost no one with both good coding, modeling and designing skills sufficient to develop new tools without total design freedom (like addons have), also is willing to work (i guess it is still the case) for below market value or even for free and simultaneously being critiqued for every controversial or wrong decision made since development is so open and ppl are emotionally invested in piece of software.
Also Foundry probably have higher budget for modeling tools than whole BF have from fund.
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Lucky node tools can mitigate some of that problems. But I guess that would only work for less complicated things.
This is the third time (first the push to the games industry. Then the bizarre push to the footwear industry, and now this) Modo has tried to reinvent/reinvigorate itself in the last x years. I used it a bit back in version 8 and it was a really exciting time for the program. It was pretty much all down hill once Luxology sold it.
I couldn’t imagine anyone that left it for Blender going back to it. Aside from the financial cost, there’s the ever-present risk that it could be ‘XSI’d’ at any time.
The DCC game has moved on since the days when Modo used to be relevant. I don’t see it regaining lost users or gaining many from the newer generation of artists. This could be its ‘last hurrah’ before it heads for the history books.
Dude. Modo apparently doesn’t have a render engine that anyone finds useful, so they’re going third-party with it. (Is it even the free version of octane? Dunno. I don’t know the particulars of octane subscription.)
It’s easy to spend your dev cash on modeling code when you don’t bother writing a render engine, animation tools, etc.
Not saying Modo SHOULD have their own renderer; that’s sort of a thing of the past. But wishing Blender made everything in-house, while wondering if Modo is going to take some marketshare - note some irony here.
It is interesting to see that people who do not use these DCCs start getting somewhat angry at these companies. I used Modo for over a decade (and I was a tester from the early days of Modo all the way to Modo 8) , it was a decent performer. I had to use it for a project couple years ago again, and I found the performance to be relatively good, I even used the internal renderer.
This update is looking good to me a as hardcore user of the past, however it won’t be enough to convince new users or even the existing users, probably.
The media and the entertainment industry are going through a fundamental shift, there will be bigger purges (on top of the existing/ongoing ones) in the job market which means that a big loss of software sales is in the making. Even Maya could be in trouble in the coming year. As far as I can tell there will be a consolidation towards cheaper or free alternatives like Blender and Unreal. Foundary should think about using Unreal/Cycles (there was even a AMD ProRender for Modo at some point) as their backend instead of Octane. Most of these commercial render engines will see the doodooo days in the coming years as well.
The obvious way forward is VR. That is the next niche and the next stage of evolution for 3D DCCs. It’s taking a while to catch on, and will probably take years yet, but eventually 3D developers and users will start to see the potential. Once you get used to navigating and building in a 3D world in VR you soon realise how antiquated, unnatural, and clunky it is to work in 3D space on a 2D screen.
It certainly isn’t for everyone. I used to feel the same until I experienced it. Now that I have I find it painful to go back to using programs on a flat screen.
It also depends on what people are doing. For tasks like modeling/sculpting/texturing/animating characters the environment and navigation is light years ahead of desktop. As I mentioned, it could be years yet, but as the headset technology improves and more and more artists see the potential - and companies start to invest in VR dev - it will be an inevitable shift.
I don’t think you’ll have to wait as long as that. I’m on quest 3 at the moment(my 3rd headset) and it’s an improvement on Q2, of course, but the tech still has a way to go. Streaming makes a huge difference in UX though. It’s still in its infancy so I’m confident that it will become a lot more common in the coming years.
There’s a very early VR beta addon for Blender called Freebird. It only has basic functionality, but there’s potential there.
VR is definitely one of those things that you have to experience for yourself, really.
And to bring it back on topic, didn’t Modo have some sort of VR functionality a few years back?
Comfort is definitely a factor, especially a decent aftermarket headstrap for Oculus headsets. I’m often in VR for 10-12 hour days. No issues. I sit on a sofa though so I’m never fatigued. I wouldn’t be doing it standing while waving my arms around.
Even if we work in 3D space, interface in 2D. I found it irritating that UI jumps around and you have to chase it. It also has the problem that it can’t support orthographic views, and quick jumps between them, split screens. No saving camera angles. It’s interesting for sculpting and painting and that’s about it for potential. For the rest of the stuff we’ll still have to rely on 2D screens, and jumping between 2D and VR will be weird, so we’ll ultimately stick to 2D with maybe some AR mixed in.
This is all currently being worked on in Substance Modeler. You will be able to place cameras anywhere in your world as you would physical cameras in the real world, including orthographic.
It’s definitely a mindset switch, and we’ve been doing this stuff for so long on 2D screens that we fear what we don’t know. It took me a while to warm up to it too, but when it clicked my modeling/sculpting output went up exponentially.
I just don’t see it. Once the hardware/software makes it approachable for the masses, modeling on a 2D screen will be like riding your horse and cart down the motorway in the age of the motorcar.
And you’ll walk up to the camera? How will that work? Can’t imagine it being nearly as fast as pressing a button.
Do you do hard-surface modeling in VR? How does operations that need orthographic view work? Aligning reference images? Looking down on model?
What is truly happening in 3D modeling, and what is not just speculation, is the rise of nodes and proceduralism. How do you envision something like geometry nodes interface in VR? Are they floating bubbles that up walk up to? Do they stick on your screen always?
i wish there was a super like button
