Before I begin this review I want to take this opportunity and thank everybody at Luxology for giving us the exclusive review of the modo 203 update.

The buzzword today for most 3D applications seems to be ‘Customizable’. While some companies try to make their application fully customizable they don’t quite get there... Luxology delivers. Sure, changing colors or icons in an interface is all fun and good but when it comes down to adding new layouts on the fly  
modo simply reigns supreme. You have access to various tools to alter your workflow quite easily. Form editors let you create new tool bars so you are able to take your favorite tools and have them conveniently in one place. Shortcut key mapping is a solid feature that makes transitions from other modeling applications a breeze with modo.

Learning Curve

All  applications have a learning curve of some sort which is unavoidable. However, with modo you are able to start working right away after familiarizing yourself with a few basic tools. Since modo 202 there has been a front end  ‘modo Exploration’ menu that gives you an introduction to general 3D topics and quick ready-to-render projects to get you started.

The help file that is supplied by Luxology is very informative and easy to understand. Luxology also includes over one gigabytes worth of video tutorials.  The collection of videos in the installation includes various artists along with Luxology giving tips and techniques in modeling, lighting, painting, and rendering.  Lots of basic and advanced topics are covered to get you started so you are sure to find the help you need without stress. The user community on the official modo forum is fantastic with kind and knowledgeable users whom are more than happy to offer help where they may. You will also find developers frequenting the forum offering help as well.  The Luxology staff is a very pleasant group of people to work with and are eager to answer any questions concerning their products.

Modeling

The heart of modo 203 is of course the modeling tools. Whether you are modeling organics, characters, architectural visualizations, or hard surface modeling, modo will have the right tools for you. modo offers the standard modeling tools you would expect from a subdivision surface modeling application. Slice, spin edge, bevel, extrude, edge loop selection and cutting, it’s all there. Additionally, the standard set of tools in modo gives you some fantastic methods to improve your workflow. Sketch extrude is a particularly fun and a cool function that lets you basically draw your face extrusions on the fly. Click, drag and let your creativity take over.

Macro creation in modo is a huge time saver. If you have to bevel, inset, bevel, rotate, extrude multiple faces for a model it could take a while. With modo you can start recording a macro and do all of your edits to one single face and then just call that macro after selecting all of the faces you need to edit. Once you’ve tried it you will wonder how you lived without it.

modo has a slew of modifiers to allow you to tweak and reshape your models with ease. The main tweaking tool is, hands down, the Element Move tool with which you are able to select and move any element of your model be it a vertex, edge, or face without having to change selection modes; or activate the move tool. The element move tool is perfect for character work or creating random dings and dents in an object to avoid perfect symmetry. A complementary tool to the element move is the soft drag tool which acts as a magnet or soft selection which any organic modeler should not be without.

Another key aspect to modo modeling is the falloffs. Falloffs is a fantastic (yet hard at first to embrace) way to influence how tools affect the mesh within a 3D or 2D ‘falloff’ zone. Falloffs also allow you to interactively tweak a portion of your mesh without wanting to hide areas of the model. It’s really a time saver and fun way to tweak and change up a model.

After spending some time in modo you will see that the tool pipeline is hard to beat. In the command history you are able to see what you have done and what items modo has called. You are able to remove tools from the pipeline as you work or reactivate tools - or even type in direct commands for modo to execute - which makes for an extremely flexible modeling experiece that can be adapted to your way of doing things..

Other honorable mentions for modo's toolset is the great symmetry which has undergone quite a bit of improvement over 202. For larger scenes demanding 'extras', geometry instancing is another great modo feature. Instancing in modo takes one object and creates as many "copies" of that object into your scene without creating new geometry. This makes it great for modeling tank treads, hair on a close up shot of an arm, anything you would need lots of copies of your object.

As you can see, when it comes to modeling anything modo has your covered. For organic modeling you have nice falloffs and soft selection tools, and for hard surfacing work you have intuitive loop slicing and element move tools that work nicely within symmetry mode in modo 203 (modo is able to work well with beveling and different cut methods without breaking symmetry).

Input/Output:

Being a program that works well with any other program out there modo handles a variety of common 3D and 2D formats. With modo 203 you are fully able to import DXF files and modo will automatically create the layers of the file for you with no fuss. Native DXF import is new with modo 203 and will make many of those dealing with AutoCAD or mainstream archvis CAD tools a little easier. For example, it is handy to get a 2D floorplan imported to use as a guide. modo supports the typical standard file formats like wavefront .obj, lightwave .lwo, Maya .ma files, as well as standard illustrator .eps and .ai files. Simply put modo plays well with others.

Rendering

With modo 203, Luxology has created a fantastic render engine. I would have to say that modo 203 has one of the best render engines that I have used lately. The lighting tools are spectacular and require little to no initial tweaking. One aspect of lighting I enjoy the most with modo is the area light. I am willing to say that this is the best application for area lights I have had the pleasure of using, and I’ve used a lot. These lights give very realistic results with no effort and hardly any time spent on the light rig. I am not saying that modo doesn’t give you lots and lots of ways to tweak your lights to make your render stunning but it’s just so easy to drop a light in, size it up and render away.

As we are discussing rendering how can I not mention global illumination? I hate having to wait ten to twenty minutes for a render just because I’m using global illumination, and I’m sure you all do too. Now, to avoid sounding like a commercial here I will say that no global illumination is going to give you instant results but modo does come very close. I have been rendering away with blurred reflection, transparency, subsurface scattering, displacement maps, and bump maps with the results showing up in a matter of minutes. That does depend on the resolution of course but at 640x480 you are able to see how your final render will look in no time. modo also has a real time render preview that allows you to see a quick representation of your render as you tweak, model, light, and paint. That is incredibly handy for all of you who like to tinker and get under the hood to see your changes update near real time. Also note that the modo 203 update has significant improvements with the rendering memory management and raytracing speeds making what was fast even faster.

Currently however, with 203 there still is no functionality for advanced rendering effects like caustics, final gather or volumetric lighting. There has been some trickery to create pseudo-caustics but at this time there is nothing native. To appease those that may be disappointed, modo does have subsurface scattering and there have been some impressive renders using this effect.

modo has a very unique material editor that acts very similar to layers in Photoshop.  It's very easy to take a basic color material and give it more defined detail by adding bump, displacement, noise, gradients to the base material bringing your shaders to life with modo's various layer options.    

People using layers in XSI may find some correlation but for most people, modo's material system is a little different than what you are used to if you have been using nodal systems or a standard editor similar to Cinema 4D or Lightwave. However, after a few tutorials you will be making some awesome materials.  modo also comes with some nice pre-made materials for use on any project and they are also selling a very large set of materials from their website.

UV Mapping

modo has very easy-to-use UV mapping tools that anybody will be more than pleased with.  There are the standard ways of uv mapping by selecting faces, detaching and placing but most people are going to be very interested in the UV unwrapping tool.  In the picture shown you can see by selecting a center seam you can easily unwrap your model with good results.  Luxology coined the phrase 'Click - Drag - Done' and they stand by it with their product.  There are various tools available to help out with mapping to make sure your final UV maps are perfect.  UV Relax will take tight areas of your uv map and "relax" them so the polygons in the selected area will be spread more evenly making it easier to paint on with better results. 

UV cut, copy, paste, and rotate are pretty self explanatory but handy nonetheless.  If you have a set of UV's and you have instanced a model before you created the UV set, then you are able to copy the UV information and paste it repeatedly from your clip board to the other objects.

3D Painting

With UV mapping tools included with modo 203 there must be a worthwhile reason - other than for exporting your mesh to another application? Most definitely, because with the modo 201 release Luxology introduced 3D painting.  Having an integral painting system is another reason modo is a great application.  With the paint tools you have access to various ways to create great textures for your model.  The tool pallete of the paint layout has all the tools you would expect from a paint package.  You get the air brush, paint brush, smudge and blur tools, stamps, image based painting, bump map painting, jitter brushing (random spacing).  All in all a the 3D painting toolset is awesome complement to the modeling and rendering tools to give your workflow more efficiency. Since it's initial release modo's paint system continues to improve.

Conclusion
modo is one fine application that is quick to pick up and being productive with. Using modo allows modeling to be fun and fast, rendering snappy and the global illumination results are quick to satisfy. The interface is a joy to work with, however diehard Maya and XSI fans will have a bit of transition time but modo accomodates this with an adjustable interface, compatible navigation modes (Max, Maya, Cinema4D, XSI presets) and key mappings. I recommend modo to somebody seeking a modern and easy to learn modeling application and to those looking to supplement their 3D pipeline with a tool that offers a proven modeling package and 3D painting. Really, modo is sure to fit in most any pipeline due to its strong feature set and an application environment that allows those coming from other modeling applications to transition easily. Furthermore, modo is available for both Mac and PC's and supports multiple cores. Each license allows you to use the software on either a Mac or a PC and requires no dongle which means you will be able to adapt to any computer environment.

Patrick Noland, March 2007