Would modo work for indy graphics pipeline?
Author
I'm trying to find an alternative to Blender for the project that I'm currently working on, and after looking at a number of the <$1000 options in the stickied thread I came away relatively impressed by modo.
What I'd like to know is how well modo works in practice for creating game assets. My initial impression of it is that it's a really nice modeling and texturing tool, but is relatively weak on the animation side of things.
Does anyone have experience with trying to use modo as a one-stop-shop graphics pipeline? If I only need to do very basic animation, will I be hampered by its limitations in that department? Is modo worth the price? ($695 for Modo 302 right now..)
Thanks!
Dan
Modo is a very nice application for modeling and texturing. You're right though that the animation side of things is very weak, as in you're only got basic keyframe animation. They don't have any sort of skeletal support or anything else of that nature. You'll also run into some issues with the number of formats you're going to be able to export to, so you may have to wind up writing your own custom exporter, depending on your needs.
I was thinking about the same thing you do, but have not made a decision yet.
However one interesting thing to consider is: They offered me a discount a few days before my evaluation expired, so if you decide to buy it and want to save some money, wait for their discount offer.
Best Jochen
However one interesting thing to consider is: They offered me a discount a few days before my evaluation expired, so if you decide to buy it and want to save some money, wait for their discount offer.
Best Jochen
Author
There looks to be a pretty good 3d party Collada exporter that I'm planning on making use of if I go with modo.
The lack of skeletal animation support is annoying, but not a dealbreaker, necessarily. I think I've read that there are some ways to fake skeletal animation with the tools they do offer (vertex map deformers and vertex weight maps?), so I may be able to work with those and figure out some way to write or modify an exporter to export those deformers as bones.
Alternately, from what I'm reading modo->Blender->modo->Collada may work (using Blender purely for rigging and animation) since I'm reading that modo can import a file with skeletal information without losing data...
I guess I'll see how it works in the trial.
[Edited by - dopplex on January 15, 2009 10:38:59 AM]
The lack of skeletal animation support is annoying, but not a dealbreaker, necessarily. I think I've read that there are some ways to fake skeletal animation with the tools they do offer (vertex map deformers and vertex weight maps?), so I may be able to work with those and figure out some way to write or modify an exporter to export those deformers as bones.
Alternately, from what I'm reading modo->Blender->modo->Collada may work (using Blender purely for rigging and animation) since I'm reading that modo can import a file with skeletal information without losing data...
I guess I'll see how it works in the trial.
[Edited by - dopplex on January 15, 2009 10:38:59 AM]
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