File I/O Preferences

Alembic Export

Exports specified animated frames or ranges into the Alembic file. This is a useful option when exporting scenes containing many keyframes, deep item hierarchies (for example ACS scenes), and replicators.

The following options are available:

• Current Frame - Selects the current frame to export.

• Current Range - Selects the current range to export.

• Scene Range - Selects the scene range to export.

• Custom Range - Selects the custom range specified in the Custom Start, Custom End, and Custom Step options to export.

Allows you to set a custom start and end time to export.

Allows you to set a custom value for each animated step to export.

Specifies whether to export all items or selected items (includes their parent hierarchy item) to the Alembic file.

Export All - Exports the entire animated frame range to the Alembic file. When disabled, only the current frame is exported.

Export Selection With Hierarchy - Exports selected items and their hierarchy parent to the Alembic file.

Controls which items are exported. When enabled, meshes are saved to the Alembic file.

Controls which items are exported. When enabled, procedural items are saved to the Alembic file.

Controls which items are exported. When enabled, Locators and groups of Locators are saved to the Alembic file.

Controls which items are exported. When enabled, Cameras are saved to the Alembic file.

Controls which items are exported. When enabled, particle systems are saved to the Alembic file.

Controls which items are exported. When enabled, replicators are saved to the Alembic file.

Specifies the type of data exported to use in DCC applications. The following options are available:

• Geometry - Exports only the fully baked geometry. Each replicator is baked as a separate Alembic mesh, subdivision, and other objects. Use this option for rendering purposes. This is the default setting.

• Particles - Exports only the particle systems. Use this option to conserve space when exporting replicas to other DCC applications, for example Katana and Houdini. Particles and geometry can then be connected to native replicators and easily modified.

• Particles and Geometry - Exports both the particles and geometry.

For more information, see Exporting Alembic Files.

Controls which parts of geometry are exported. When enabled, mesh UV sets are saved to the Alembic file.

Controls which parts of geometry are exported. When enabled, vertex normals are saved to the Alembic file.

Controls which parts of geometry are exported. When enabled, material tags are saved to the Alembic file. Material tags are exported as a standard face set with a material_* prefix.

Controls which parts of geometry are exported. When enabled, part tags are saved to the Alembic file. Part tags are exported as standard Alembic faces.

When enabled, Modo's fully unique item names are used, including the suffix (usually numbers in parentheses, which are grayed out parts of the names in the Modo's Item List). Disabling this option, omits the suffix whenever possible, allowing you to keep the same names of the Alembic file you imported into your scene.

Note:  Alembic has a built-in limitation of not accepting two children items of the same parent with exactly the same item names.

Removes all spaces, parentheses, and other non-standard characters that cause problems with certain importers, making it compatible with other applications (for example, Katana).

When this option is enabled, Modo writes all link references (such as those to images, MDDs and IES files) as absolute paths, referencing their location to specific areas of a disc drive when saving files. When disabled, Modo uses relative paths to locate linked files.

When utilizing scene reference items, enable this option to embed the referenced items into the scene file when saving, instead of having them remain external entities.

You can choose your preferred measurement units system based on several options. Once set, this is the measurement input method Modo uses for all numerical input values. This value is also exported in the COLLADA scene's Asset tag. The following options are available:

• SI - The International System of Units (abbreviated 'SI') is the modern form of the metric system, complies to universal base units.

• Metric - A universal system of measurement based on powers of 10 -millimeter, centimeter, meter, kilometer.

• English - A historical measurement system based on Imperial Units -mils, inch, foot, yard and mile

• Game Units - An arbitrary unit of measurement (defined by the Meters per Game Unit setting).

• Unitless - An arbitrary decimalized unit of measurement based on cubic meters. 1 unit = 1m.

This option is dependent on the Unit System and determines the default unit used when no unit is specified.

When utilizing the arbitrary Game Units system, use this value to determine the scale of a single unit. This allows you to work with even whole numbers. So if a 1 m equivalent is really 1.375 real world meters in Modo, you can enter 1.375 here and then specify units normally in the numerical input fields.

This option determines the major axis that is considered the default up direction for Modo. 3D programs typically use Y as up, whereas CAD applications typically use Z as the up direction. When importing geometry, if it is always 90° off, changing the up axis to match the originating application may resolve the issue. This can also be set separately for each scene in the Scene Item.

Saves items that are hidden in the Items list (that the eye icon next to the item's name is toggled off).

This controls whether or not cameras, lights or locators are saved with the scene.

Saves Mesh Items that are constructed of triangles using the COLLADA <triangles> element, instead of the more general-purpose <polylist> element.

Enabled by default, this option organizes Vertex Maps into alphabetical order.

The COLLADA format can represent Modo's stack (or layers) of multiple transform elements, so that more than one rotation, position, or scale can be applied to a single item in series. For compatibility with other applications, Bake Matrices reduces such a transform stack down to a single transform by pre-multiplying the results before export.

Enables the saving of normals for each geometry vertex.

Enables the saving of one or more UV texture coordinate maps for each Mesh Item.

Enables the saving of the Color and Weight Vertex Maps.

This option enables or disables the output of animation channels. When Save Animation is disabled, all item values are sampled at the first frame of any animated channels.

Creates a keyframe value at every frame within the range specified by the Start and End Frame settings. This option is useful when exporting to applications that can't interpolate all of the animation channels in a given file.

The Z-buffers on 3D graphics cards have limited resolution, and so these settings describe the closest and furthest points that may be displayed for a given scene. Z-near and Z-far are not applicable for the types of rendering performed by Modo, but they are useful for interactive 3D applications where this information can be used to optimize the resolution of the hardware Z buffer.

This option provides a human-readable form of all of Modo's items and their internal channels and animation envelopes, and also allows the Modo COLLADA importer to re-import assets with the same Modo-specific items and their channels and envelopes. A full description of the Modo profile is beyond the scope of this document, so please refer to the Collada I/O documentation included with the File I/O SDK for additional details (available in Modo's help directory as part of the SDK).

Determines whether application-specific tags are exported or not.

This option breaks up long lists of values into related groups on separate lines, which makes the output text easier to read.

This option, when enabled, reads and applies the unit's information from a COLLADA file to the imported Modo scene.

Add the file contents to the scene without removing existing items. Uncheck this to overwrite the scene.

Load the model geometry.

Load Vertex Normals. If unchecked, the normals are calculated by Modo.

This imports any smoothing information. Modo uses this to create a subdivision map.

Loads any blend shapes that are in the model.

Note:  Blend shapes are a way of animating a mesh through capture of deformations and subsequent interpolation. They are equivalent to morph maps.

Loads any parts that have been defined on the mesh. See Polygon Set Part for more information.

Loads all Using Selection Sets.

Loads all Materials. See Material for more information.

If transparency is used in the source materials, invert the transparency amount. (Some applications use a reverse transparency scheme to Modo.)

If the source materials use transparency color, convert this to Transparency Amount in Modo.

Note:  Modo uses the intensity of the red component in the transparency color to determine the transparency amount.

Change a Diffuse Color effect (see Layer Effects) to an RGBA effect for textures with an alpha channel.

Loads all cameras as Camera Items.

Loads all lights. See Lights for more information.

Restores animation if used.

• If the file uses animation, check this to re-sample the animation curves with continuous keyframes defined by the Sample animation rate.

Note:  Sampling is recommended as Modo has a different method of computing the animation curve compared to FBX. This difference results in different animation curves, and therefore different animations. By using sampling, this can be avoided.

• Select the rate at which to sample the animation curves:

• 1x FPS - Sample at the frame rate.

• 2x FPS - Sample at twice the frame rate.

The factor by which the imported items are scaled. This is useful if you want to restore geometry at a different size to the source geometry.

Select the FBX preset to use. The following preset types are available:

• (none)

• Maya 2017

• Unity Animated

• Unity Static

• Unreal Animated

• Unreal Static

You can also add, store, and remove presets.

When enabled, Modo uses the Autodesk FBX 2015 plug-in for import. Leave this unchecked to use the Autodesk FBX 2018 plug-in. For more information on the plug-ins, see FBX Import.

Choose which .fbx version to export when saving .fbx format files. The default is set to Use Latest.

Choose which elements from the scene are exported:

• Export All - All items within the scene.

• Export Selection - Only the selected items.

• Export Selection with Hierarchy - Selected elements and their children.

Generates human-readable TXT formatted .fbx files. When disabled, Modo binary encoded .fbx files are generated.

Note:  TXT readable files can be many times the size of binary encoded FBX files.

Export animation only, excluding other content such as geometry, camera, materials and so on. This overrides all other Save checkboxes.

Tip:  This is useful if you want to export the animation separately to the other content.

Export all polygonal geometry (mesh) items.

Export materials at the best compatibility that can be achieved.

Note:  Due to the nature of different rendering systems, complex material setups can't be transferred, but baking can be used to create image maps that can be transferred.

Export all camera items.

Export all light items.

Export keyframed animations.

Note:  If the animation is not saved, the currently selected frame in the timeline is exported.

Specifies how to refine surface on export. The following options are available:

• None - No surface refining is used during export.

• Save Mesh Smoothness - Modo saves subdivision surface weights to FBX.

• Triangulate Mesh - Triangulate the mesh during file export. This may be required for certain engines, and it avoids manual, temporary conversion to triangles prior to export.

Note:  
• The Exporter stores triangulated versions of the original geometry and does not change the scene in any way.
• You cannot apply the triangulation selectively during export, every mesh is triangulated.
• The results cannot be influenced or previewed.
• This option allows quad-based meshes to be directly baked to, and exported to, real-time engines (such as Unreal or Unity).

Export polygon Part tags.

Export defined selection sets.

Export any smoothing groups that are assigned to the geometry.

Export morph maps as compatible blend shapes in the .fbx format.

When enabled, the tangent and bitangent normal basis states are written to the FBX file.

Note:  If both the real-time engine (or other 3rd party applications) and Modo support compatible tangent basis algorithms (like Mikk or Unity), it is not recommended to export the tangent basis to FBX, since they are automatically created when the FBX file is imported into the 3rd party application. This option should be used only if the destination application does not support Modo's provided tangent basis algorithms, or if there are problems when rendering normal maps in the 3rd party application.

The unit of measurement that the exporter converts values to. By default, FBX values are measured in centimeters. This option allows other units to be used.

The factor by which all scene objects are scaled. This is useful if you want to export geometry at a different size to the source geometry.

Convert all RGBA texture layers to Diffuse Color. (FBX does not have support for Modo's RGBA texture layer type.)

Note:  File import can convert the other way around (from diffuse color to RGBA). See FBX Import.

Export Physically Based Rendering (PBR) materials for use with the Unity and Unreal Engines. This feature invokes a Python script to generate an .xml file, which describes PBR material properties.

When enabled, Modo re-samples the animations, resulting in a baked type of animation, with continuous keyframes defined by the Animation Sample Rate.

Select the rate at which to sample the animations:

• 1x: Sample every frame.

• 2x: Sample twice every frame.

Specify the export type. The following options are available:

• Export All - Exports the whole scene with hierarchy.

• Export Selected - Exports selected items in the scene without hierarchy (all items are considered as nodes without parents).

• Export Selected with hierarchy - Exports selected items in the scene with hierarchy.

Controls which items are exported. When enabled, geometry is saved to the .glb file.

When enabled, materials are saved as either a glTF V2 (GL Transmission Format) (*.glb) or a glTF V2 (GL Transmission Format) (*.gltf) and (*.bin).

Note:  Due to the nature of different rendering systems, complex material setups can't be transferred, but baking can be used to create image maps that can be transferred.

When enabled, animation is saved to the .glb file.

When enabled, exports weight vertex maps. This option is also used to disable and enable skinned animation.

Applies mesh transformation matrix to mesh vertices during export and moves them to bind position in world space. World space mesh vertices are transformed by inverse bind matrices of joints and their vertex weight influence correctly.

Tip:  Enable this option for skinned animation in glTF v2 for compatibility with external previewers ( for example, Babylon.js).

When enabled, the tangent and bitangent normal basis states are written to the .glb file.

Specify a data type for geometry indices data for GLTF exporter. This option is used for compatibility with older GL implementation. The following options are available:

• Unsigned Short - Exports polygon indices as 2 byte arrays per element.

• Unsigned Integer - Exports as 4 bytes array per element.

Enables more animation samples per frame for better interpolation results.

Since HPGL is a flat, 2D format, the Projection option defines the plane that it is converted to for the final export. Automatic tries to determine the best guess plane, with options to define a specific plane or the UVs for the object.

This option determines the image/compression quality of images saved from Modo into .jpg. 100% is maximum quality possible with .jpg, lower values reduce the file's overall size, but also degrade image quality.

The JPEG file format compresses images by separating the color and luminance (brightness) information. Most people are more sensitive to contrast than they are to color variations, so this information is separated into channels, where each can be compressed differently. This compression amount is expressed through the sampling or sub-sampling value. The default save option, 4:1:1, represents each channel where the luminous channel has four times as much information as two combined color channels. This can make image files quite small, but produces softness on areas of high color contrast. The 4:2:2 option provides double the amount of color fidelity, and the 4:4:4 has the highest quality, saving the same number of data samples for each channel, but also produces the largest of the JPEG compressed file sizes.

When this option is enabled, Modo limits the size of large bitmap images when imported and rendered, based on the setting of the Maximum Image Load Size. As large images are loaded, they are resized, so they take about the same memory as a square image with the given dimensions. This can be useful if you're editing a model that's been textured with very large maps and don't need to see them in detail.

Warning:  This preference affects rendering.

Determines the maximum pixel length for any image imported. Images larger than this setting are resized to fit the specified value.

The amount of space dedicated to holding resized images in memory. The more images get loaded and resized, the more memory is necessary to hold them all.

You can use this option to determine the default format when saving Modo-generated bitmap images. You can select alternate format types in the file Save dialog, this option only determines the default when you use Save as.

The .png format uses a lossless compression scheme similar to ZIP. Values span from 1 to 9, with 9 being the greatest amount of compression. The compression amount doesn't affect the visual quality of the images, but it affects compression and decompression performance, which can be useful when playing back image sequences.

When saving OpenEXR images, you are provided with a number of different compression offerings: uncompressed, lossless, and lossy compression types. It is best to test the setting for the intended purpose to make sure the format chosen is compatible with the intended target.

This option determines the amount of lossy compression applied to the EXR image when saved, the higher the value the greater the compression. but also the more likely to introduce visible artifacts. The default value of 45 should be visibly lossless, but with a smaller saved file size.

When the Generate Mip Map Levels option is enabled, the Tile Size option defines the size of the pre-generated tiles of the resulting Mipmapped EXR image. 16 or 32 sized tiles are good values for textures ultimately used in Modo.

If this option is enabled, mip map levels are generated when saving OpenEXR files from Modo. Mipmapping is an optimized collection of pre-calculated image maps that are filtered and scaled, and used to reduce image overhead when loading and rendering high resolution files. When disabled, only the full resolution file is saved.

When this option is enabled, you can use the EXR Tile Memory Limit setting to define a maximum amount of memory that Modo uses to load all EXR images into a scene. When disabled, Modo fully loads all EXR images into memory.

When the Limit Tile Memory option is enabled, you can define an upper memory limit used to cache OpenEXR mip map tiles. When the maximum amount is reached, the EXR image loader discards the oldest tiles based on when they were last used. If a tile is required later on, it is reloaded into memory and older tiles get discarded, if necessary.

When this option is enabled, any geometry generated in LightWave using SubPatch geometry smoothing technique automatically converts to Modo's standard Subdiv when imported.

Any geometry modeling Modo as a Subdivision Surface can be converted to LightWave's Subpatch mode upon export to LightWave format.

LightWave supports a content directory structure to make moving scene files around easily. When loading scene dependent on Content Directories, it is helpful to specify the LightWave equivalent path prior to loading and saving the file to aid Modo in locating the appropriate assets (namely image maps) into and out of Modo.

Saving full Modo scenes to LWO object files means saving out all the meshes to mesh layers. Typically, the item transformations applied in Modo are not applied to the mesh, so it is positioned as if the item mode rotation, scale and positioning were all reset. Turning on this option freezes all the layers of item transformation, so the entire hierarchy is exported as if modeled in that pose. This behavior may be undesirable if you are rigging the layers later on.

This option attempts to reproduce the LW texturing in the Shader Tree. Use this if exporting textures unchanged back to LWO is not important.

The STL file format has no inherent scale information, so systems generally default to several standard values. Depending on the target, you can use the Interpret units as option to define a scale unit when exporting STL format files.

When the Save as ASCII option is enabled, saving a file generates the less common ASCII (human readable text) format. When disabled, resulting STL files are saved in the more common binary format.

When this option is enabled, OBJ geometry is imported as non-editable static Mesh Items. This is useful when importing huge geometry files that can slow down scene interactivity.

When this option is enabled, defined groups within the OBJ file generate multiple Mesh Item layers for each.

This option, when enabled, suppresses the pop-up window that opens when importing an OBJ file.

You can determine a scaling amount for imported elements automatically, by choosing from the various Import Units.

When enabled, the export utilizes the G group tag to define geometry sections within the file. When disabled, the export uses the O object tag.

When this option is enabled, an additional MTL file is generated when exporting OBJ files that contains the basic surface definitions and links to textures. When disabled, the MTL file is skipped.

With this option enabled, Modo freezes the current deformation state of the exported element at the current Timeline position, producing a deformed mesh.