Since we are also talking about Modo viewport performance, theres a thread at the TF community about Gavriil Klimov work with Modo and Mesh Fusion and his return to Max. Somebody posted about some work he did with Modo and he decided to go there and answer the reasons for his workflow. I'll leave the thread link after a quote from him.
Hey guys, I am glad some of you liked my youtube video about mesh fusion :) Rob linked me this topic of which I wasn't aware, so I'd like to reply to some of the things I saw posted around. Quote from Polygon Monkey : "I wonder what kind of hardware he's using. From watching the video, Modo is getting crappy frame rates with just a cube. I'm assuming his hardware isn't too powerful. If you have a decent computer, Modo should have no trouble with frame rates displaying a cube even with a bunch other apps running in the background." - You're right, it wasn't super smooth due to the live-event capturing the screen at high frame-rate and in fact it was lagging under a condition in which it would never usually lag. I have 2 machines, one is a 32 cores with 98GB of ram 1600mhz, quadro 6000G, tesla 2075, 2 ssd and 1 regular 10k rpm and another one is a 12 core 48gb ram 1600mhz with titan black and as well 2 ssd and 1 regular hd. I have extremely powerful hardware; for work I was able to smoothly navigate a scene in 3ds Max with 128 mil polygons and as a test I did in Mudbox, I can sculpt with only 1 sec delay on a mesh with over 100 mil polygons. Capturing video tho, especially at high frame rate, always kills whatever you're doing, that's the only reason why it appeared choppy :) Quote from Martin Oberg : "It's been ages since I used Max but back then it was pretty crappy compared to what XSI could handle. I don't understand why you would want to use polygon modeling for the type of stuff he posted on Facebook though. Something like MOI / Rhino or indeed Mesh Fusion is much better suited." - Some other 3ds max users and I, found a way to do basically 'mesh fusion' inside 3ds max (and it work with any mesh, doesn't have to be all quads) the performance is way smoother and faster than MODO's MF and while it only has very few settings for the edges compared to MF, I'd much rather take the ability to do MF with any type of mesh (the quad thing is really a pain) and improved performance. So what you said is somewhat true, but Max actually allows for that too. There's also been some guys that inspired by MF coded scripts that help recreate the same things, check out one called "multimesher" for 3ds max. This to me, just shows how robust is the 3ds max core is, and something that I wish was improved in MODO. Quote from Andyjaggy : "I question that Max is better than Modo with dense meshes. I use both on a daily basis and Max isn't much better. Max can move around dense objects better, if you are moving them on an object level. Once you edit the polygons directly and try to drag all the polys around instead of the base item, then Max is just as slow as Modo." - I don't know what hardware you use, but I guarantee you with heavy meshes, polygon selections and hard-surface modeling tools, 3ds Max has nearly perfect to almost perfect smoothness in the viewport, MODO starts to chug down a lot and eventually lags out. Quote from mathaeus : "Not really, especially when compared to latest Modo versions. Don't believe in words of hard surface modelers :) ( I am one, from time to time). Most likely, he already have necessary habits, somewhere in his backbone, to avoid Max's glitches - but not for Modo, yet. However, what's annoying in Modo from my, very personal XSI and Max perspective, it's lack of non-destructive modeling operators, bevel for example. New ones, like lattice, in Modo belongs to setup room, instead to be accesible from everywhere. Also, too much of options in Modo when it comes to simple tasks. Tool pipe, what not. Anyway it seems all that modeling story is very personal. With all due respect, don't know why all that philosophy about such kind of forms. I'd also try to do something like this, using some automatized filleting, in MoI, Mesh Fusion, whatever." - I have been using MODO for a while, since the 501 release and have got all the upgrades along the way, I am currently running the last version of 801 with MF and while it did improve a little, it's still light years away compared to the viewport of 3ds max or XSI. You're right, a big issue I find is that MODO doesn't have a modifiers stack that greatly helps the modeling workflow and non destructive nature of it. Lastly, I would like to add few things: - I do like MODO, but the VP is terrible at high density scenes, I do not really care to argue with people that claim otherwise because I run multiple PCs with very high specs and I can see for myself how the same scenes are being handled inside 3dsmax/XSI and inside MODO. I think one of the main issues is that, MODO tends to be ""OK"" with high density models when you have everything separated into different layers, if you have say a 30mil poly or a 50mil poly object into 1 layer, modo lags like crazy. So you would have to cut and paste all the different pieces into different layers to have it go faster, and sometimes (almost always) this is simply not viable. - I am not a "modeler" in the traditional sense, I do not model others people concept work, I am a concept designer that uses 3D as its tool and hence I model my own creations, as a concept artist you need to work x5 as fast as a regular modeler, which means using all tools and techniques necessary. Sometimes I get to model something entirely in quads and clean, and in that case, MODO can sort of do its job, if you start the model 100% inside of MODO and finish it, it's OK. But in 3D concept design, you often also have the need to kit-bash at some parts or receive meshes from the client and/or other 3d designers on the project. Importing a 30mil poly model inside of MODO as an OBJ and inside of Max it's 2 different worlds.Unless you cut up the object in the different layers, MODO can't handle it, but Max does. The ability to work with high dense meshes imported from the outside is what really makes a huge difference from me in MODO and 3ds Max. But then again, I once reached an almost 40 mil poly inside of MODO and it did start to lag down. I think the performance at its core, is not as robust as it should be. XSI and MAX viewport feel so much robust and smooth than modo, I wish they fixed it. - I was extremely excited about MF and still am, because I love things that push the way we create shapes in a more intuitive way, however, I tried to use MF for work for a recent project and it's simply not viable. For me the strength of mesh fusion should basically be that you can generate shapes almost in a CAD way, by going nuts with booleans and unions - but the more cuts/unions you do and the bigger the object, again, the worse the performance gets and it starts to chug down a lot. I tried to do a mech robot using a ton of fusion and it was viable for one arm, once I started to do the chest and the upper part it was so laggy I realized I had to change plan. Modeling everything 'regularly' and then using MF for few things is not how I envision MF to be a badass tool- I envision MF being ultimately awesome when you're able to use it on massive objects and cut tons of parts without massive lag occurring. Some feedback / thoughts about MODO and MF. - I wish that The Foundry took care of MODO's VP performance and performance at high poly, especially with imported OBJs from other programs. - MF output mesh is crazy, especially when you have a lot of details and were required to increase the fusion subd level to a high amount- the outcome is way too high poly for the details that you get, basically if you really look at the mesh, you then think it would have been better to do it in regular modeling with booleans due to the fact that it would have been 20 times lighter. In this regard, I think that to make MF REALLY advanced and useful, especially for 3D designers that don't care about the topology, there should be an option/algorithm that allows you to choose to bake out the procedural mesh as it currently does, with mostly quads and then tris/whatever faces around the cuts/unions - and then one similar to the decimation master of ZBrush, that keeps the highest density of the polygons near the details and tries to have the least amount as possible in areas with no details. This way I feel, one could go crazier with MF and be OK knowing that the output mesh is going to be actually pretty light because its gonna be all dirty-tris topology like the DM in ZBrush. I would much rather thave all my parts like that than with the current output, they are so heavy they're basically unusable with a scene with a ton of other MF or heavy items. - When I started using MODO in the 501 version, the reason why I was dragged in, is because everyone was talking how intuitive its modeling tools were and how smooth it felt modeling. And I still agree, Luxology did an amazing job considering the team they also had back then, but then, the more popular MODO got, the more they started to spread thinly trying to cover everything; animation, rendering, etc. Now, don't get me wrong, surely modo needs its own animation, rendering and whatnot, but MODO is also so new that it will take a huge amount of time before it actually can catch up to how advanced Maya's animation tools are (especially the modded version of Maya) or programs like Vray, Arnold etc. that focus entirely on rendering and have only been doing that. The modo renderer is nice but it's not a match for things like Vray'Arnold. IMHO Luxology/TF spread too thin trying to cover too many areas in which they're already behind anyway, and the one that made MODO popular (modeling tools) has been left behind. The last updates 601, 701 and 801 had not many crazy updates modeling wise. MODO is STILL missing something like the FFD Box modifier from Max, or the Shell modifier, and there's many more missing, and overall a lack of depth to some features (i.e. the bride tool is very weak compared to Max, and it's one of many). If you ask me, I would have expected MODO to have these modifiers and many more modeling tools added in 601, 701, 801, instead we got a lot of updates which are not relevant to modeling. And while some people animate or render in MODO, nearly no major studio is using MODO for these 2 particular tasks (animation, rendering) I think mostly MODO was popular for modeling and now it's being let behind. MF was the really only addition to it, but while I am extremely excited about it, I still find it unreliable and unstable performance wise to actually do professional work for clients. I have successfully used MODO and MF to create some 3D concept art for some new upcoming games, one of which is COD 2015 and one is an announced IP from Sony, and will post them once those games come out (it will be a while) but they were almost 'exceptions' that I was able to make work since they were small-ish props and I really wanted to use MODO. I love MODO, but lately I was too frustrated by the VP performance with high dense meshes, especially using MF.and went back to Max, which is actually able to do its MF equivalent, with ANY mesh type and has better performance. I just hope that The Foundry will address the performance issues (in general) and expand MF to allow users to choose the density of the output mesh and add more features that I'd like to see customization wise.. and last but not least, I truly hope that they focus A LOT of their energies in the modeling tools for the 901 release as I felt let down by the last 3 updates modeling wise. I can see myself going back to MODO if all the things I said are addressed, especially because I hate AD, their customer support, their upgrades and their mentality. The Foundry / Luxology is a cool company that I hope will pay attention to its user base needs. Gavriil Message edited by Gavriil Klimov on 8/23/2014 - 9:18 AM Today - 9:09 AM http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=4&t=91552&page=2 P.S.: his workstation is a beast!!! Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 13:06:18 -0400 Subject: Re: Rigging and Animation in Modo From: sergio.muc...@gmail.com To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com I've been rigging in Modo for over a year now, after years of doing it in 3ds max, Maya, and Softimage. I can tell you that Modo has been a joy to use, although it still has some way to go. Workflow-wise, I'd say Modo is closer to Maya than anything else. I LOVE Modo's schematic environment. It's really comfortable to work in (in spite of its complete lack of grouping or layout features... which I'm guessing will be addressed soon), and it has a lot of really useful nodes (I wished 3ds max had this for many years). It's not as deep as ICE (yet), but I can already replicate pretty much all my ICE Kinematics setups in Modo. The schematic can also be used to create/manage particle systems and (Bullet) dynamics, but I can't compare those to ICE, since I didn't really explore that side of it in my brief time with Soft. Modo still lacks some bread-n-butter tools, and in some parts, the workflow is rather rough. However, where it really stands apart is in the way deformations are treated. It's a very open-ended system, that can achieve very complex setups with ease, using something commonly referred to as the OOO stack (or Order Of Operations). I've been able to do some very interesting things with it. Modo is not a very procedural application, but when it comes to rigging, it does accomplish pretty much anything you could think of. It still needs to better support some data types (such as matrices), but I think that it's headed in the right direction, and having ICE-like workflows is just a matter of time. Yes, Modo still doesn't have the performance Soft or Maya provide. It's something that's known. I really hope this gets solved, because it's one of the most pressing factors I've seen that stop people from using it for animation. If you're doing bipedal characters, you definitely want to take a look at ACS. It's a Kit (add-on) for Modo that provides some really nice rigging/animation features. The downside to it is that's currently limited to bipeds. I'm looking forward to this becoming a more Gear-like system, although it already excels in several areas. I guess I'd sum it up in that Modo does not yet provide the depth of Maya or the polished workflows of Softimage. But my hopes for it are high. If The Foundry continue to invest in the animation side of things, I think it could become a serious viable alternative. For those also interested in scripting (lots of riggers I know are), be prepared to go through some headaches. Modo has the most unorthodox Python implementation I've used so far. I understand it's mainly due to the architecture of the application (it was written in C, not C++, so there's not an object model the way you'd be used to find in other applications or languages). TF is working on making this a lot more Pythonic by wrapping parts of the Python API in user classes, which do provide a much more "OO" approach at scripting, but these classes are still WIP, so some areas are still not there, and you'll have to deal with the raw Python API (or the legacy services, which once you wrap your head around, are actually quite useful). Anyway, I'm not gonna turn this into a long thread. If anyone has any specific questions, do shoot. We'll do our best to answer. I not have enough Modo rigs to update my demo reel. If I post anything soon, I'll let you guys know. Jason... we should get a Montreal Modo User Group going! I know there are a few Modo users over here... maybe something could be done ;-). Cheers all! ----Sergio Mucino On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 11:54 AM, Jason S <jasonsta...@gmail.com> wrote: Performance and/or stability issues, or not rattling over 40mph, seems to be what keeps either of them from being more widely used as main pipeline apps. Currently, at least in my part of the woods (in Montreal.. being not exactly in the middle of the woods except physically :p ) .. virtually no studio runs with either of them, and even worldwide, job posts seem to be scarce to say the least. And would be delighted to see one, or even more *BOTH* overcome their relative limitations enough for them to be more seriously considered, otherwise not at-all lacking in really great things. On 08/22/14 10:25, Tim Crowson wrote: I can tell you that voices are pretty loud on this topic (i.e. everyone agrees with you vehemently), and The Foundry can't help but hear us. There are performance issues that need to be dealt with, and I sure hope they get them resolved. -Tim On 8/22/2014 9:05 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: However, in my opinion and from my perspective rigs need to be fast and able to load high resolution geometries with full deformations. If that isn't a super high priority for companies in the next 2 years, you're missing the boat. Eric T.
