Search TipsWhat's New in Modo 13.0
This topic documents the updates included in Modo 13.0 and links to the appropriate page of the documentation so you can get the information you need and start working with the new features right away.
Animation and Rigging
Animation Layers
Animation Layers allow for nondestructive editing of specific actions. A Layer at the top of the layer stack can either override or be applied additively on top of preceding animation layers in accordance with our order of operations deformation system. Layers can be defined as active or muted. They can be soloed for isolation or locked to prevent accidental editing.
Specific elements can also be masked allowing for combining of multiple separate animations. Layers can be easily enabled, selected, duplicated, edited, baked and exported, all while maintaining granular control of authored animation data. For more information, see Animation Layers.
Automatic Data Type Conversion
Different data types can now be directly connected to each other without the need for additional conversion nodes. This greatly simplifies rigging and reduces the size of schematic networks.
Blend Falloff
Falloffs can now be combined using the new blend falloff item. Multiple falloffs can be combined and defined by blending type. For more information, see Blending Falloffs.
Pattern and IntRange Channel Types
New Pattern and IntRange channel value types have been added to allow you to define a pattern and a range of integers. For more information, see Add User Channels.
Schematic Improvements
Disable Link
You can disable links by selecting them and pressing the H key. You can re-enable them using the U key.
Node Alignment
You can now align and separate your nodes in various ways using the new node alignment commands.
For more information on the Schematic improvements, see Schematic Viewport.
Direct Modeling
Cylinder Primitive Update
The Cylinder primitive's default Segment count has been changed from 12 to 1. This reduces the amount of additional changes you need to make when using the primitive. For more information, see Cylinder.
Edge Bevel Depth Option
You can now control the radius of an Edge Bevel using the Depth option. You can make it inverted, and anywhere in between. For more information, see Edge Bevel.
Edge Relax
The new Edge Relax tool allows you to relax edges perpendicular to the selection. It is useful for changing the radius of bevels after the fact, creating chamfers from bevels, and welding overlapping vertices. These alterations would otherwise require time-consuming point-by-point alterations. For more information, see Edge Relax.
Find Shortest Path Selection
This selection tool automatically finds the shortest selection path between two manually defined selected elements. It also works on UVs. For more information, see Shortest Path Selection.
Ground Align
The Ground Align tool aligns any geometry in a selected layer to the Work Plane. You can drop items to the ground, or select a vertex, edge, or polygon, and rotate the item so that the selection is aligned to the ground. You can also drop items to the origin. For more information, see Ground Align.
Linear Falloff - Align to Selection Bounding Box
Falloffs that are part of a tool preset now automatically align to the selection bounding box orientation. For more information, see Linear Falloff.
Quick Align
The Quick Align tool allows you to quickly move and orient a selection based on other geometry in the scene. For more information, see Quick Align.
Replicator - Base Scale Channel
For Replicator items, you can set the base scale of the original item. This allows you to set randomly scaled replicas to be either all bigger or all smaller than the original. For more information, see Replicator Item.
File I/O
Unity Bridge
The Unity Bridge plugin uses a network connection to send, create, and update geometry, material, texture, and camera data dynamically from Modo to Unity and from Unity to Modo. For more information, see Modo Bridge for Unity.
MeshFusion
Fusing by Selection Set
You can now use polygon selection sets to specify which parts of a mesh will interact with MeshFusion. You can use the following three selection sets:
• Fusion! - Designates which polygons of a MeshFusion Source Mesh will be included in MeshFusion's boolean operations.
• Fusion+ - Marks polygons to be used by MeshFusion.
• Fusion- - Marks polygons to be excluded from MeshFusion completely.
For more information on how to work with these selection sets, see Fusing by Selection Set.
Zero Level of Subdivision Option
Generally, MeshFusion uses two levels of subdivision by default. This is required by certain topologies, such as triangles, n-gons, and vertices with three edges converging on them. If your source mesh was already quite dense to start with, this can cause problems.
You can now use a subdivision level of 0 for Fusion meshes. For more information, see Using MeshFusion with Zero Subdivision.
Procedural Modeling
Arrays
Arrays are a multi-dimensional value type that can store multiple values of different types in a single value. They can take any value type supported by Modo, such as integer, float, and matrix. However, all values within the array should be of the same type.
A number of Array modifiers have been introduced that you can use to create and manipulate arrays. For more information, see Array Modifiers.
Array Blend
Array Count
Array Element by Index
Array Element Type
Array Operator
Curves to Array
Filter Array
Locators to Array
Merge Arrays
Mesh Data Array
Offset Array
Particles to Array
Sort Array
String to Array
Create Polygons
The Create Polygons mesh operation generates new polygons and vertices on a procedural mesh layer, using arrays of position values. It allows you to create both surface-type (Face, Subdivision, Catmull-Clark) and linear-type polygons, such as curves and lines. For more information, see Create Polygons.
Curve to Bezier
The Curve to Bezier mesh operation is a specialized operation that allows you to convert an existing curve to a Bezier curve. The normals used to create the Bezier tangents usually come from an array generated using the Mesh Data Array, but you can use any valid vector array input. For more information, see Curve to Bezier Mesh Operation.
Edge Bevel Depth Option
You can now control the radius of a procedural Edge Bevel using the Depth option. You can make it inverted, and anywhere in between. For more information, see Edge Bevel in the Procedural.
Edge Relax Mesh Operation
The new Edge Relax mesh operation allows you to procedurally relax edges perpendicular to the selection. It is useful for changing the radius of bevels after the fact, creating chamfers from bevels, and welding overlapping verts. These alterations would otherwise require time-consuming point-by-point alterations. For more information, see Procedural Edge Relax.
Merge Meshes Particle Support
The Merge Meshes operation now supports particles as input. For more information, see Applying Merge Meshes to Particle Simulations.
Select by Pattern
The Select by Pattern selection operation creates a selection based on a pattern you define. The pattern selection specifies elements using a "True, False" pattern. Elements whose index is present in the pattern are selected. For example, the pattern "True, False" selects every other element, whereas the pattern "False, False, True" selects every third element.
For more information, see Select by Pattern.
Smooth Mesh Operation - Preserve Volume Option
The Preserve Volume option has been added to the procedural version of the Smooth tool. Previously this option was only available for the direct modeling version.
This option allows you to maintain some of the definition of the original object by preserving object volume. For more information, see Smooth Tool Procedural Mesh Operation.
Spike Mesh Operation
A procedural version of the Spikey tool has been added. For more information, see Procedural Spike.
Switch Modifier
The Switch modifier allows you to connect multiple inputs to a single connection, and use an index channel to specify which of the inputs is written to the output. It works similarly to the String and Numeric Switch modifiers, but it can operate on any value type.
Note: Before Modo 13.0 the Numeric Switch node was called Switch.
For more information, see Switch Modifier.
Rendering
AMD Denoiser
You can now use AMD's hardware-agnostic denoiser for denoising render outputs. This provides additional options to reduce render times. The options available are Wavelet, Bilateral, and Median. For more information on denoising, see Render Outputs.
AMD Radeon™ ProRender
AMD’s GPU accelerated path-tracer, the Radeon Pro Render is now a part of Modo’s collection of powerful rendering options. For more information, see ProRender Beta.
Material Presets
Material Presets are collapsed, complete materials that can be leveraged for cleaner display of materials in the Shader Tree. If a Material Preset in the browser has had any properties changed, these changes automatically populate to the reference in the Shader Tree. In a large team environment, this can be significantly important in maintaining consistent material use across many Modo scene files.
Material Presets can also be unlocked and expanded, allowing for traditional editing of the preset material within the Shader Tree. For more information, see Material Presets.
NVIDIA® OptiX™ Denoiser Updates
You can now denoise any number of render outputs with the NVIDIA OptiX Denoiser. For more information on denoising, see Render Outputs.
UI
Drag and Drop Scenes from the Preset Browser
Entire scenes can now be loaded from the preset browser. Furthermore, scenes can be loaded into an independent scene, added to an existing scene, loaded as a reference or as a proxy item. For more information, see Importing Scenes.
Modo Layout Improvements
Render Passes Viewport
A Groups viewport filtered on Render Passes has been added to the Passes viewport in the Modo layout along with buttons for adding and removing channels from the Pass.
Tool Properties Display
There is a new preference setting to choose how tool properties are displayed in the Modo layout. By default, a button below each toolbar opens a popover form. You can change this in the UI Preferences to display the tool properties in line below the toolbars. The Inline option is intended for larger screen sizes where there is sufficient room to display the properties without excessive scrolling. For more information, see Defaults Preferences.
UVing
Edge and Vertex Slide to Work in UV Context
Edge and Vertex Slide can now both be leveraged inside the UV window and are available as procedural UV modifiers. For more information, see Slide / Edge Slide.
Show Wireframe Option in UV Viewport
Wireframe display can now be toggled in the UV viewport, making visualization of dense meshes easier to read when features like UV distortion are enabled. For more information, see UV Viewport.
UV Cut Map
The new UV Cut Map tool allows you to define sets of selections that are color-coded and displayed on the model in the 3D viewport. The Unwrap tool can also be run automatically from the UV Cut Map form and the Unwrap tool itself can now leverage Cut Maps and selection-sets from within its tool properties. For more information, see UV Unwrap.
UV Pack by Item
Packing can now be defined on an item-per-UDIM basis. This makes producing complex UV sets easier as well as offering a way to more easily manage unwrapping and editing multiple items at once. For more information, see Pack UVs.
UV Split to Respect Connect To Options
The UV Split tool has been enhanced to include options to define the direction of a split edge. For more information, see Split, Move, and Sew UVs.