What's New in Modo 15.1

User Experience

OmniHaul

One of the greatest strengths of Modo is customization. OmniHaul significantly extends this strength by incorporating gestures to quickly alter properties or channels. Artists can leverage the default settings or define exactly which movements enable the functionality they desire. This is done directly in the UI with easy to understand graphics that appear next to tool properties or channels, creating a consistently in-context experience.

See OmniHaul for more information.

Deferred/Paused Evaluation for MeshOps and Deformers

Procedural Modeling offers tremendous power and flexibility. Some calculations can take a significant amount of time and slow down interaction within a scene. In Modo 15.1, some of these time intensive calculations can be temporarily delayed, allowing for improved interactivity when using tools, modifying channels, or playing an animation.

See Deferring and Pausing Evaluation for more information.

Static Analysis

Sometimes artists need to be able to quickly identify and fix problems in their scene. Static Analysis is a new framework in Modo that will search through a scene to find and fix problems that have been defined in the Static Analysis test. Preset tests are provided while allowing for highly customized tests as well.

See Testing a Scene with Static Analysis for more information.

Direct and Procedural Modeling

Curve Booleans

Curves are an extremely powerful aspect of modeling workflow. Curve Booleans allows curves to be intersected to generate complex shapes and patterns, enabling artists and designers to rapidly create and iterate with curve-based modeling techniques as either direct or procedural modeling operations.

See Curve Booleans for more information.

Curve Winding Aligner MeshOp

Tools like Curve Fill streamline creation of geometry. However, if a curve is inside of another curve, the two curves need to have related directions to fill the shape properly. The Curve Winding Aligner automates this process, ensuring that artists get the result they want without having to troubleshoot a scene.

MeshFusion Edge Weights to Strips

Edge weighting or creasing provides a fast and intuitive modeling workflow. MeshFusion can now leverage edge weights on open ended tube-like meshes to create strips. This provides a slick method to produce reliable, procedural bevels. When combined with procedural tools like Curve Sweep or Extrude it helps produce precise meshes that can easily be altered at any point of the creation process.

See Converting Edge Weights to Strips for more information.

Boolean, Union All

Boolean modeling offers a very intuitive method of creating complex forms. In the past, artists had to add each individual mesh as a separate operation. This significantly slows down the modeling process. The new union all mode let’s artists and designers leverage a single mesh layer with overlapping mesh islands in boolean workflows.

Layer selection for the Merge MeshOp

The Merge Mesh MeshOp is an important part of the procedural modeling toolset that passes a mesh from one layer or stack to another. Now artists can choose a layer in a procedural stack to output instead of just the final result of the entire stack. This makes interaction between multiple MeshOp stacks far more flexible and powerful.

Rigging

MeshOp Stack Node

Both node graphs and stack/tree views are great ways to represent item relationships. The new MeshOp Stack Node visualizes the MeshOp order of operations stack within the node-based schematic view. This allows greater visibility to how the MeshOp stack and node graphs interact without having to jump between separate views, while maintaining the inherent advantages of both methods.

Rendering

mPath

mPath is the new physically based, hybrid rendering path tracer. In Modo 15.1 we’ve extended the QuickCam capabilities to include direct camera rotation enabling the ability to “look around” a scene without orbiting an item. Dispersion has also been added, enabling refractions to be more accurate by allowing the light to be split apart into separate wavelengths or colors. This is a phenomenon frequently seen in nature, further expanding mPaths powerful capabilities.

File Exchange

USD Support for UV tiling and Real World Size

USD continues to be upgraded with support for UV tiling and Real World Size values. USD is an excellent exchange format that is useful in a variety of industries. These additions further cement our commitment to USD and customers who rely on it.

Enhancements

TuneUps

Orient to selection has been added to the dimension tool, improving how designers assess the dimensions of the items they create. This has also been added to the Absolute Scale tool providing thought-free interaction. Finally, Replicators can be frozen through the right click menu in the Item list.