For those who have been interested in modo...

[seven]

They have a promotion that knocks 200 bucks off right now. You can get modo for $695 (http://www.luxology.com/).

My opinion is that it is worth every penny. I can't tell you how my workflow has changed for the better with it. It has made me faster as a modeler and faster when I lay out uvs. :flag:

They also have a 30 day trial so you can make up your own mind. :D The trial comes in two flavors... you can spend 25 US dollars on training materials that will get you up to speed quickly or you can go the completely free rout and thumb around yourself. Personally, 25 US dollars is a bang up bargain for a boost in productivity with a piece of software considering most training materials cost $45 USD + but again... that's just my opinion. :thumb:

30 day trial (http://www.luxology.com/trymodo/)

modo for $695 (http://www.luxology.com/)

I'm not sayin, just sayin. For those who have used modo, let people know what your experience was bad or good. I of course am only one person and my workflow may be vastly different than yours. I'd like to hear what challenges other people may have come across :)

[Codeman]

I have often wondered about modo. What did your workflow use for 3d before modo?

[seven]

primarily I used maya. Now keep in mind this was around 6.5 so some of the features have changed and the uv system had not been redefined. Also, maya didn't have a bridge tool... or very robust modeling tools. The UI had not been organized yet and moving around was "clunky." At that point I was highly interested in modo's uv tools because as a student a. I didn't have a lot of money and b. I wanted to know if there was a better way. I had to make a decision to upgrade or try something else.

Pelt mapping was around but modo's "click drag done" solution seemed like the best way. However, "click drag done" ended up being "click drag, sort of done." I realized that my work flow had sped up but it wasn't an end all be all. They have since added more robust features to the uv layout that really tickled my fancy. One of which was to select an edge in the uv window and by a click of a button have the edge that is attached to that edge in the 3d window be sewn automatically with it's size and relation to be 1 to 1 (or damn near close) with the island you are wanting the piece connected to.

This was an awesome feature but what felt best was that the keys w, e and r translated directly from the 3d viewport to the uv layout window. There was no clicking a special uv translate tool or special uv scale tool as maya and max has. This sped things up for me significantly because I was now simply using the same tools that I would normally use to push verts around. This made sense.

The last thing that sold me on the modeling end was the action centers. This allowed the scale, translate, rotate widget to be altered to move along edges, polys without a whole lot of fuss. Later I saw something like this pop up in max but it was highly convenient at the time.

Now don't get me wrong, modo isn't an end all be all solution but it's a damn good tool. Currently it doesn't have character animation tools but if you just need to pose a character it has tools for that. In the upcoming 401 (release date unannounced) they will be implementing a fur system (the president of luxology has mentioned that it has started to be expanded to a full hair system). There are some rendering features that is also going to be included in the new release and you can find information on this in the news section (http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/forum.aspx?id=2) of their forum.

I hope that answered your question.

[Codeman]

Thanks for the info. I currently am a Maya/ZBrush addict. Always interested in new tools, though.

[elte]

I myself used Modo a lot :) There are some tools that Maya doesn't have such as flex tool (good for posing), and some of the alignment tools. The UI is very flexible, and the best is realtime preview renderer, although maya IPR now support mental ray. It isnt supporting character animation yet, but I believe that's the purpose of their software development, started from 101 where you can only model *LW modeler replicate, then in 201 you can paint, and render, and sculpt, although buggy. Then in 301 they improved what's behind and added new features. This helped a lot for users to follow the features instead of being thrown with bunch of features and lost.

And I love their friday update, Brad always give tutorials/ sneak peek/ teaser for their upcoming product.