Product Reviews

Luxology, creator of Modo, has taken a gradual approach to its product's development. Version one saw the basic modelling tools in place, while its successor added texture painting and beefed-up rendering. Now the latest offering has added animation capabilities - and a bit more beside.

The interface looks broadly unchanged - it can still be a tad intimidating for new users - but lurking at the top is a new Animate tab. This gives you access to the Animation interface and a setup not unreminiscent of LightWave's Layout module, with the all-important transport and timeline controls running along the bottom. As you might expect, animating something can be as simple as moving the timeslider, changing a parameter and hitting Add Keyframe. Basically if it's a property in Modo, then it can be animated as well as other things.

Any of the modelling operations can be animated. And this, combined with Modo's extensive tool fall-off options and tool Action Centres can make for some interesting effects. For instance, Modo's modelling tools are great for sculpting different phases of a morph such as changing facial expressions - and morphs can be animated one into the other in Modo. This allows them to be tested for 'tearing' or undue deformation before being exported to other animation packages.

But why to other animation packages? Well, at the moment Modo doesn't yet support the full rigging and controls required for full-blown character animation. However, what it does offer is .mdd file support.

Mdd files are an exchange format for motion data - they basically track the position of every vertex in a mesh over time.

Applying an mdd file is like applying a 'baked' animation to an object. Thus the motion can be animated in another program (most high-end animation packages can output mdd files), then be imported into Modo where the

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rendering can take place - you may want to take advantage of Modo's 50-node network rendering licence, for example. And on that note it's a pity that the program doesn't let you get on with other jobs while it's rendering. At least not yet.

Version three also gives you the option of rendering out OpenGL preview animations - useful for quickly doing 'thumbnail' tests of animations. And with Modo's support for Advanced OpenGL (OpenGL 2.0), these can also contain quite a bit of texturing detail - certainly enough to be useful for games character animations, for one. There's also a special render/animation mode for workthroughs that use Global Illumination/HDRI. This maximises the efficiency from frame to frame (Global illumination is notoriously processor-intensive) and helps to reduce the noise and mottling associated with this illumination model.

From the start Luxology's application has been about modelling, and this version sees the biggest upgrade yet. Sculpting. Subdivision Surface modelling, which Modo excels at, is currently the de facto method for producing flowing, natural, organic forms. However, most modellers would agree that it reaches a limit when surfaces become really complex and variegated - the underlying mesh has to become equally complex, losing the advantages of Subdivision.

Enter Modo's Sculpting tools. These come in two forms: Mesh sculpting and Image sculpting. The former simply deforms the limit surface described by the poly cage. The latter is entirely new to Modo and lifts the toolset into another league. It applies - in real time - a sub-polygon displacement map to the model's limit surface.

In effect this means that any detail you can paint, you can transfer to a model. This isn't entirely new - Amorphium and ZBrush have offered this - but Modo's implementation of it is sublime. It's also extremely fast in operation. Essentially, you can define a brush shape and use that to paint on detail.

These brushes can be grey-scale bitmaps but you can also define 3D geometry as a brush and use it to 'rake' over the surface. It still needs artistic flair, of course plus a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet to get the best results.

Version 3 really is a landmark release for this product. The sculpting tools alone would probably justify the upgrade for most - and you get the beginnings of an animation system thrown in. Here's hoping we don't have to wait too long for the full package.