Product Reviews

Time was when there was a dearth of 'real' 3D software on the Mac. Now, though, everything in the garden is rosy - a situation that can only be improved by the arrival of Modo. Luxology, the company responsible for this polygon and subdivision-surface modeller, is the brainchild of three of the head honchos at NewTek, the company that makes LightWave.

At first glance, there appears to be a family resemblance: similar sculpted, grey look, familiar-looking workspace, and even a lot of the same keyboard shortcuts. However, Modo has leaped ahead by offering one of the most customisable interfaces available. Interface elements can be dragged around to create layouts specific to a particular task, and Modo comes with three layouts: Default, Simplified and one for UV texture mapping.

The main workspace looks similar to LightWave's, but with the addition of a lighter-grey grid perpendicular to the x-z (floor) plane. This is a 'live' working plane, and all object creation and editing takes place relative to it. However, the plane snaps between the three perpendicular orientations of 3D space according to the orientation of the Workspace view. This means there is often no need to jump to a four-view to perform object and mesh manipulations. Moreover, unlike LightWave Modeller, Modo sports RGB manipulator handles for most editing functions, again obviating the need to jump into a four-view. Orienting the workspace view also provides a pleasant surprise: Modo's OpenGL implementation is fast. Very fast. Taking a reasonably complex LightWave model and applying three levels of subdivision to it produced no noticeable slowdown - and this was with a lowly ATI Radeon 9000 with 64MB of VRAM.

Like LightWave, Modo is a polygon and subdivision surface modeller. Unlike programs such as Maya, NURBS do not form a part of its geometry creation. This is not a criticism, though, as subdivisions are arguably easier to use for the creation of complex, organic forms. Modo uses true subdivision surfaces, unlike the SubPatches in LightWave.

As such, Modo can derive

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subdivision surfaces from polygons with more than four sides, which is a real boon when working with complex meshes. Subdivisions are more complex than SubPatches, however, so Modo lets you use SubPatches as proxies before converting to subdivisions and exporting. Modo even uses LightWave's native .lwo object format as its own file format, but we did have a repeatable problem with LightWave models crashing Modo when we used the Save As command. Luckily, the 'Export as .lwo' option circumvented this.

Modo's modelling toolset will be immediately familiar to LightWave users: tools such as Smooth Shift and Bevel do what you expect them to, but Modo has taken the application of tools to a whole new level.

Tools can have a wide variety of fall-offs, from reasonably common options such as None, Linear and Radial to more exotic choices such as Airbrush, which allows you to paint any deformations onto a surface.

Other new tools include Sculpt, which treats the mesh like deformable clay. This is similar to Maya Artisan and Sketch Extrude, and allows you to bevel out tubes of polygons on the fly - great for creating tentacles! Sketch Extrude contains loads of options that enable you to scale and spin the polygons as they are extruded to control the shape of the swept path, the number of segments swept out, and even to straighten the path after it is created. However, these must be done while the tool is active; once it is dropped, the changes are committed. In fact, there is no Construction History feature in Modo that enables you to 'reach in' to the model's structure and tweak elements such as sweep paths and lathe profiles, but there is a Command History viewport much like Photoshop's History palette. Modo also places great emphasis on Action Centres, the points about which any action is performed. Action centres can be user-defined and set on the fly, greatly increasing control in modelling operations.

While LightWave users will feel familiar with Modo, Luxology has not skimped on the Help system. Hitting F1 and clicking on almost any interface element will bring up the HTML help page for that function, and many of these are linked to tutorial videos. There is also the PDF user manual and the HTML hyperlinked reference, but, unfortunately, this is not searchable, which is a real omission.

Luxology has a winner on its hands with Modo. It is approachable and intuitive, and many of the new modelling tools are great timesavers. Of course, models still have to be exported to LightWave Layout for animating and rendering, but we suspect it will not be too long before Luxology has that angle covered as well. Watch this space.