Release Notes for Modo 10.2v4

 

Release Date

12 May 2017

System Requirements

Officially Supported Operating Systems

• Mac OS 10.9.x, 10.10.x, 10.11.x, and 10.12.x (64-bit only)

• Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 (64-bit only)

• Linux 64-bit operating system (CentOS/RHEL 7+)

Minimum Hardware Requirements

• Intel processor(s), Core i3 or higher

• 10 GB disk space available for full content installation

• At least 4 GB RAM

• Display with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution

• Internet connection for product activation and online videos access

• The Advanced viewport mode requires an NVIDIA or AMD graphics card with at least 1 GB of graphics memory and drivers that support OpenGL 3.2 or higher.

Recommended System Requirements

Note:  This information is our best recommendation for the average user. Requirements vary by usage, and individual users may have different requirements from those listed here.

• 2.5+ GHz quad-core processor

• 250+ GB disk space available for caching and temporary files, SSD is preferable

• 16 GB RAM with additional virtual memory*

• Display with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution

• An NVIDIA or AMD graphics card with the latest drivers

• 2+ GB of graphics memory

• OpenGL 4.4 or higher support

*The use of virtual memory improves stability and helps prevent data loss on large projects.

Tested Workstation Hardware

The configurations listed below are those that The Foundry have tested with Modo 17.1v1. Due to the constantly changing nature and wide variety of computer hardware available in the market, The Foundry is unable to officially certify hardware. The list below can be used as a recommendation and does not guarantee that it meets your particular needs.

Please download and install the latest graphics driver from the NVIDIA or AMD websites. Make sure that you are using 8.982.8.1 drivers or higher for AMD cards.

If you encounter any issues, please visit the Support Portal at supportportal.thefoundry.co.uk.

Tested Workstation Hardware

Apple

• MacPro4, 1

• MacPro5, 1

• iMac13, 2

• MacBookPro10, 1

Dell

• Dell T1700

• Dell T3610

• Dell T3620

• Dell T5810

• Dell T7610

• Dell T7910

• Dell Precision Rack 7910

• Dell Precision 5510

• Dell Precision 7710

• Dell M2800

• Dell M6800

HP

• HP Z440

• HP Z600

 

Tested GPU Hardware

AMD Prosumer Graphics Cards

• Radeon™ HD 1900 XT

• Radeon™ HD 2400 XT

• Radeon™ HD 2600 Pro

• Radeon™ HD 3870

AMD Enterprise Graphics Cards

• FirePro™ W4170

• FirePro™ W5000

• FirePro™ W8000

• FirePro™ W2100

• FirePro™ W5100

• FirePro™ W4100

• FirePro™ W7100

• FirePro™ W8100

• FirePro™ W9100

 

NVIDIA Prosumer Graphics Cards

• Geforce GTX 680

• Geforce GTX Titan

• Geforce GT 650M

NVIDIA Enterprise Graphics Cards

• Quadro® K6000

• Quadro® K5000

• Quadro® K4000

• Quadro® K2000

• Quadro® K600

• Quadro® K5200

• Quadro® K4200

• Quadro® K2200

• Quadro® K1200

• Quadro® K620

• Quadro® M5000

• Quadro® M4000

New Features

There are no new features in this release.

Feature Enhancements

• ID 55383 - Licensing: Upon notification of a soon-to-expire license, added the ability to show a Run Modo button in the licensing dialog to allow users to continue to run Modo.

Bug Fixes

There are no new bug fixes in this release.

Known Issues and Workarounds Specific to Modo 10.2

This section covers known issues and gives workarounds for them, where appropriate.

Advanced Viewport

• ID 50810 - Anisotropic texture filtering is lower quality than in the Default viewport.

• ID 50364 - The Advanced viewport shows visible seams or noise after using environment textures.

• ID 49598 - Spurious diagonal lines of bad pixels may appear in the Advanced viewport with some AMD cards.

• ID 46995 - Ambient Occlusion display in the Advanced viewport is affected by selected item wireframes.

You can disable Show Selection in the Visibility options or disable wireframe drawing on the active mesh layers.

Animation

• ID 53716 - Onion Skinning does not work in the Advanced viewport.

As a workaround, use the Default viewport.

• ID 53661 - Selecting actions does not always select the correct one. This is caused by copying actions.

As a workaround, manually edit the tags on the broken actions by selecting them in the Groups tab, then save and reload the scene.

Assemblies

• ID 36452 - Assemblies exported from the Item List context menu result in poor visual layout of nodes on import.

As a workaround, you can save assemblies from the Schematic viewport.

Audio

• ID 52242 - Windows only: The .au format doesn't load on Windows 10, due to the lack of DirectShow support for the format.

As a workaround, convert the audio file to a different format, such as .wav. This bug will not be fixed.

Baking

• ID 50671 - Baking displacement maps can cause UV seams to be visible, and the baked displacement map to show quilting effects and other render artifacts.

• ID 49437 - The Bake Channel Swizzling option can’t bake to texture alpha.

Color Management

• ID 49244 - Windows only: With Perform Color Correction on, setting a default scene to a scene with a mesh that has a position channel crashes Modo at launch.

As a workaround, use System > Reset Preferences to reset to defaults or move/remove the default scene.

Default Viewport

• RGBA textures only draw correctly in the Advanced viewport. In the Default viewport, any unsupported texture effect on an image map is drawn as diffuse color when the layer is selected in the Shader Tree.

Dynamics

• ID 54208 - Procedural Shatter doesn’t connect to geometry or add a Solver to the scene.

As a workaround, make the mesh you want to shatter an active rigid body first, then click the Procedural Shatter button.

File and Image I/O

• ID 53897 - Exporting selected layers does not export Library shaders.

• ID 50198 - Alembic scenes don't export some surface items, including static meshes and procedural shatter items.

• ID 49728 - Exporting selected layers (from the Item List context menu) to .fbx doesn't export instances, unless the original mesh is also exported.

To resolve this, set the .fbx preference to Export Selection and use Export As….

• ID 47036 - Color management in .svg images is not currently supported. This is a side-effect of a bug fix where the largest allowable image size (64k x 64k) was always used when color correction was enabled.

• ID 46962 - Rendering .svg images used as stencil maps for displacement or for layer masking can be very slow.

Fur

• ID 35731 - Fur length textures can’t be edited with the Stretch tool.

Use different fur length drivers, such as hair guides or vector vertex maps.

General

• ID 49514 - Mac OS X only: Running modo_cl before running the UI Modo application breaks code signing.

As a workaround, start the UI version of Modo once, before running modo_cl on any system where you later intend to use the UI version.

GL

• Windows only: Using Raptr can cause GL driver crashes in Modo.

• ID 53088 - Independent drawing does not work in the Default or Advanced viewport modes.

As a workaround, use Shaded or other modes when using independent drawing.

• ID 52886 - The Draw Faded Grid option does not work correctly with X- or Z- up coordinate systems.

• ID 43220 - Replicated items may not be visible in GL from certain Camera or Perspective view angles.

As a workaround, turn off GL culling using the glculling toggle command.

Input Devices

• ID 51741 - Mac OS X only: Modo sometimes becomes unresponsive when using the combination of a click-drag in a tree view (for example, when toggling the visibility of two successive items in the Shader Tree), followed immediately by a two-finger scroll gesture on some devices, including laptop trackpads and the Magic Mouse.

As a workaround, change to a 3-button mouse (recommended to fully access all of Modo's features).

• ID 35856 - Linux only: Plugging in a Wacom tablet while Modo is running can cause undesired movement. This cannot be fixed, due to a limitation of the hardware driver.

To avoid this, plug in the tablet before application startup or restart.

Modeling

• ID 54206 - The Apply Morph option in the Vertex Map menu doesn’t work.

• ID 53893 - The Mirror tool merges vertices with geometry that is hidden.

• ID 53424 - Focus (Ctrl/Cmd+A or Shift+A) does not work with morph targets when Deformers are enabled.

As a workaround, disable the Enable Deformers setting in the 3D Viewport Properties (keyboard shortcut: O) under Drawing and Control > Animation.

• ID 32728 - Zooming out with a Space Navigator alters the Work Plane position.

Network Rendering

• ID 48325 - Scenes with image sequences rendered with Full Frames use the wrong image sequence number on worker machines.

As a workaround, use File > Consolidate Scene, then render the scene using a shared network folder (Preferences option under Rendering > Network Rendering).

• ID 36986 - Workers render hidden meshes. Since mesh visibility state is not stored in the scene, when that scene is transferred to the workers, the state is lost. However, the master respects the hidden state.

As a workaround, If the intent is to avoid rendering, use the item or render visibility instead (eye icon in the Item List, or set Render to No on the mesh item properites). This is not a bug and won’t be fixed.

• ID 30318 - Network Rendering doesn’t support Realflow particles.

• ID 25636 - Frame passes are not supported.

Nodal Shading

• ID 50642 - Nodal shading does not support UDIMs.

Painting/Sculpting

• ID 41682 - Textures are not always updating in Preview/Render when painting on an image map.

You can save and reload the image to force the update.

Particles

• ID 44551 - Surface Particle Generators may not update with changes to a Density Gradient Input set to Slope.

As a workaround, choose Distance to Locator or any other setting from the Density Gradient Input dropdown, then change it back to Slope.

• ID 34925 - Re-opening scenes saved with large particle caches can cause problems.

To avoid such issues, delete the cache before closing Modo, or export the particles to .csv cache files or Realflow .bin files. You can do this by attaching one of those nodes to the Particle Simulation item in the Schematic viewport, and clicking Cache Simulation.

Preview

• If a high poly mesh is not visible, the Preview baking output will be incorrect.

Reset Preview to fix the baking.

Procedurals

• ID 52149 - Curve Extrude mesh operation: The Path Segment Generator's Align to Normal option doesn't work when using a Bezier with zero-length tangents.

As a workaround, rotate the polygons to point toward the +Z before extruding or make sure there are no zero-length tangents.

• ID 50486 - If a mesh has a deformer affecting it, you can't deselect elements using lasso or Ctrl/Cmd+paint with your mouse.

• ID 49767 - Scenes, which contain a UV constraint modifier driving texture properties, may fail to load after saving, due to a modifier dependency loop.

• ID 46512 - When rigged, Rock items and other procedurals do not display correctly in GL. This is a limitation of the feature and will not be fixed.

You can use Preview or RayGL to visualize the variations from rigging.

Projections

• ID 49473 - Projections are incorrect if the projecting camera is set to Vertical film fit mode and the width is less than the height.

• ID 43771 - Camera projections from non-render cameras show distortion in GL and baking.

To avoid this, make sure that the projection camera has a film width-to-height ratio that matches the main render camera.

References

• ID 44492 - If a scene that already contains references is referenced, the shading of the original references may not persist.

As a workaround, limit scenes with shading to one level of reference.

• ID 41119 - Reloading a reference after replacing it with the same file can cause Modo to crash.

Rendering

• ID 54263 - Portal Lights don’t render correctly.

As a workaround, use Modo 10.2v1, where they render correctly.

• ID 53411 - Mesh lights or any direct light too close to a surface can produce fireflies (hot pixels) in some cases.

As a workaround, use a Maximum Radiance higher than 1 W/srm2 to reduce the bias.

• ID 53184 - Value presets created for material Subsurface Scattering samples in Modo 10.1 or earlier now show on the render item instead.

• ID 53151 - Saving passes as images can save the wrong alpha if the scene only has alpha outputs in material masks.

As a workaround, make sure you have a Global Alpha render output in the Shader Tree.

• ID 52730 - The Vertex Illumination Bake command doesn't work as expected, when the mesh has transform channels.

As a workaround, freeze the transforms in the mesh properties.

• ID 52553 - Light sources with negative intensity values clip into black incorrectly.

• ID 52011 - Tangent Basis handles Mirror UVs incorrectly.

As a workaround, apply Mikk or any other tangent space basis to the mesh before baking.

• ID 46468 - Additional (masked) alpha outputs are not saved when rendering animations.

Since other render outputs do work, a remapped depth output with a very high maximum depth setting functions similarly to an alpha output.

Rigging

• ID 53224 - Assembly and Alias vector channels don’t display gang edit controls.

• ID 27244 - Duplicating joints in a bound mesh retains influences from the original joint chain.

Scripting

• ID 53458 - Right-clicking or running a script in the Script Editor can lock up input to Modo.

As a workaround, click in the top window of the Script Editor, use the main menus, or change to another application, then switch back to Modo.

Shader Tree

• ID 37858 - In the Shader Tree, choosing a group from Add Layer > Image Map > (use clip browser) fails.

To work around this issue, in the Clip Browser, choose a single image instead of the group, and then change to the image group using the Texture Layer's Properties tab.

• ID 30947 - Layer masking displacement does not work unless you drag and drop the masking layer onto the displacement layer.

Unreal and Unity Materials

• ID 50701 - Unreal material Ambient Occlusion does not bake correctly in Modo.

• ID 50700 - There is no way to visualize the Unreal SubSurface Color effect in Modo.

• ID 50451 - On some graphics cards, Unity material may cause flickering in the Advanced viewport when used with bump maps and shadows.

UI

• ID 46499 - Windows only: Autosave steals focus.

As a potential workaround, if either of the following registry keys exist on your system, try deleting them and then restarting.

• HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundFlashCount

• HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout

• ID 44496 - Mac OS X only: Disabling Affect System Color Dialog in Preferences > Rendering > Color Management, and using the system color picker causes colors to darken with each use of the color picker.

This is due to an OS X issue, which requires the color profile in both the monitor settings and color picker to be set to sRGB IEC61966-2.1.

• ID 44896 - Dragging and dropping an image from disk into the Clips list doesn’t work.

If the Clips list is empty, drop the image onto the bar at the top, otherwise drop it above or below other images in the list.

• ID 43162 - Windows only: Setting a custom text size affects Modo's text drawing.

As a workaround, go to the compatibility settings by right-clicking the Modo shortcut or executable, and turn off font-scaling for the application.

Volumes

• VDBVoxel items support OpenVDB 3.0 files or earlier and don't properly load those encoded with Blosc.

• ID 45847 - VDBVoxel motion blur is oriented incorrectly.