Release Notes for Modo15.0v3

Release Date

26 May 2021

Note: Modo 15.0v2 was a Japan-only release to accommodate localization of the interface and documentation.

System Requirements

Officially Supported Operating Systems

• macOS 10.14.x, 10.15.x, and 11.x

Note: Testing on Apple Silicon (M1) processors is in progress and this statement will be updated when completed.

• Windows 10 (64-bit only)

• Linux 64-bit operating system (CentOS/RHEL 7.6+)

Minimum Hardware Requirements

• Intel processor(s), Core i3 or higher

• 10 GB available hard disk space (for a full Modo and 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 GPU memory and drivers that support OpenGL 3.2 or higher.

• AMD AI Denoiser requires a minimum of 4 GB of GPU memory.

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

• 4+ 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.

Recommended Graphics Driver Versions

• NVIDIA: 461.09 or later

• AMD: 8.982.8.1 or later

Note: We recommend downloading the latest driver version from the NVIDIA or AMD websites

Tested Workstation Hardware

The configurations listed below are those that Foundry have tested with Modo 15.0v1. Due to the constantly changing nature and wide variety of computer hardware available in the market, 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.

Note: Hardware marked with * (asterisk) was unavailable for QA testing for Modo 15.0 because of office access limitations due to COVID-19, but has been used to test previous releases.

If you encounter any issues, please visit the Support Portal at https://support.foundry.com.

Tested Workstation Hardware
Apple	• Macbook Pro (Retina, 16-inch, 2019) • Macbook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, 2018) • Macbook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, 2017)
Dell	• XPS 15 9560 • Precision 3520
HP	• HP Z600* • HP Z640* • HP Z800
CPU	• AMD Ryzen Threadripper* • Intel i7-7700k* • Intel i7-8700 • Intel i9-9900k • Intel Core i7 10750H

Tested GPU Hardware
AMD Prosumer Graphics Cards	• Radeon Vega RX*
AMD Enterprise Graphics Cards	• Radeon Pro 5300M • Radeon Pro WX 8200 • Radeon Pro WX 7100 • Radeon Pro 560X
NVIDIA Prosumer Graphics Cards	• GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (Linux) • GeForce 1080* • GeForce 2070 Super • GeForce 1080* • GeForce 2070 Super
NVIDIA Enterprise Graphics Cards	• Quadro T1000 • Quadro M4000*

New Features and Enhancements

• ID 463514 - Windows only: The SolidWorks import plug-in has been updated to support SW 2021.

• ID 472721 - MeshFusion: The viewport presets now include a Default option to restore viewport shading to normal.

Bug Fixes

• ID 464945 - mPath: Renders of some glassy materials did not appear as expected.

• ID 466783 - Viewports: A certain project containing normal maps took longer to load than expected.

• ID 467935 (61153) - Viewports: The pre-selection highlight appeared to slow interactions with the viewport.

• ID 469088 - MeshFusion: Making large or multiple edits of the same type caused Strip Previews to behave unexpectedly.

• ID 469723 (61182) - mPath: The alpha from refractive objects caused opaque elements behind the object to render semi-transparent.

• ID 469802 - macOS only: The In the future dropdown in the Fusion warning dialog didn't work as expected.

• ID 469938 - UI: Selecting mPath as the renderer incorrectly displayed the Global Illumination tab.

• ID 470071 - Rendering: Area light geometry affected shadow catchers incorrectly.

• ID 470484 - Licensing: The first Licensing dialog page always displayed No License found.

• ID 470485 - Licensing: The Licensing dialog did not always auto-detect languages appropriately.

• ID 470662 - MeshFusion: Opening Fusion files across different operating systems displayed the Missing Image dialog unexpectedly.

• ID 470684 - macOS only: Copying and pasting Japanese text did not work as expected.

• ID 471167 (61214) - File I/O: Selecting 3D View as Image Source as a thumbnail caused Modo to crash.

• ID 471170 (61217) - Preset Browser: Right-clicking and selecting Edit Markup and then switching to the Shared tab and selecting Favorites caused Modo to crash.

• ID 471415 - Modo crashed on start-up under certain conditions.

• ID 471742 (61223) - Canceling a Scene Cleanup and then closing the application caused Modo to crash on exit.

• ID 471989 (61229) - UI: Browsing through filter lists using the arrow keys and then applying the selection using the Enter key did not work as expected.

• ID 472161 - macOS only: Switching to the Advanced Viewport occasionally redrew text and UI elements incorrectly.

• ID 472223 (61230) - Modeling: The Loop Slice and Slice Selected tools did not work as expected across triangles.

• ID 472499 - mPath: The Refractive Index from the Specular Amount control produced incorrect results.

• ID 472521 - Mesh Ops: Evaluating a certain procedural stack caused Modo to crash.

• ID 472869 - mPath: Setting Final Color > Contours caused Modo to crash.

• ID 473028 - Mesh Ops: The Intersecting Edges > Select by Previous option was missing in certain scenes from earlier versions of Modo.

• ID 473144 - Command-line: Certain scene files created in earlier versions of the application caused Modo 15_CL to crash.

• ID 473418 - UI: Certain custom configuration files did not load correctly.

• ID 473419 - MeshFusion: Select Source for surface strips did not work as expected.

• ID 473593 - macOS only: Saving .lxo files to the Desktop caused missing image errors.

• ID 473706 (61262) - Preset Browser: Pinning the browser and then using the search function caused Modo to crash.

• ID 473991 - MeshFusion: Overlapping meshes occasionally caused Modo to crash on exit.

• ID 474175 - Windows only: The Licensing dialog was incorrectly displayed in Photoview 360.

• ID 474435 - UI: Certain pop-up dialogs did not auto-focus on the search filter as expected.

• ID 475020 - Windows only: Connecting Photoview 360 to Solidworks caused the application to become unresponsive.

• ID 475234 - Windows only: Some 15.0 Solidworks libraries were missing version signature .pyc files.

• ID 475247 - Windows only: The 15.0 gnz* libraries, such as gnzmodel.dll, listed old version numbers.

• ID 475646 - macOS only: Python 3 files were not compiled as expected.

Known Issues

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

Animation

• ID 240321 (53661) - Selecting actions does not always select the correct one. This is caused by copying actions.

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

• ID 395357 - Deformer Caching doesn’t work.

• ID 423909 - Grease Pencil - Setting image type to JPG results in a black fill over the screen.

Assemblies

• ID 288164 (36452) - Assemblies exported from the Item List context menu result in poor visual layout of nodes on import.

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

Baking

• ID 293020 (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 221481 (49437) - The Bake Channel Swizzling option can’t bake to texture alpha.

Bucket Render

• ID 279848 (55663) - Motion Blur applied on a curve in a Mesh Operation no longer works.

• ID 235368 (53411) - Mesh lights or any direct light too close to a surface can produce fireflies (hot pixels) in some cases.

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

• ID 243070 (53793) - Rendering using a Dual CPU with 72 threads was significantly slower than expected.

Note: As a workaround, any machine that has more than 32 cores, performance will be better if you limit rendering to half the number of cores you have.

• ID 292947 (53184) - Value presets created for material Subsurface Scattering samples in Modo 10.1 or earlier now show on the render item instead.

• ID 297021 (52730) - The Vertex Illumination Bake command doesn't work as expected, when the mesh has transform channels.

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

Color Management

• ID 221439 (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.

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

Command Line

• ID 289290 (49514) - macOS only: Running modo_cl before running the UI Modo application breaks code signing.

Note: 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.

File and Image I/O

• ID 337523 (56862) - Modo for SolidWorks Kit: Modo crashes when importing the same SolidWorks file twice in one Modo session. This bug only affects import using the kit, not direct imports (File > Import).

Note: As a workaround, before importing a SolidWorks file for the second time, exit and restart Modo.

• ID 221508 (50198) - Alembic scenes don't export some surface items, including static meshes and procedural shatter items.

• ID 226589 (49728) - Exporting selected layers (from the Item List context menu) to .fbx doesn't export instances, unless the original mesh is also exported.

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

• ID 220991 (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 220975 (46962) - Rendering .svg images used as stencil maps for displacement or for layer masking can be very slow.

• ID 346842 - Alembic import - Drag/drop doesn't import animation correctly.

Note: As a workaround, use File > Import.

Fur

• ID 288248 (35731) - Fur length textures can’t be edited with the Stretch tool.

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

Input Devices

• ID 226536 (51741) - macOS 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.

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

• ID 303287 (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.

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

MeshFusion

• ID 316276 (56973) - If a Trim Fusion role is assigned to an object and then it is dragged and dropped onto a Primary, the drop menu does not contain the Trim boolean options.

As a workaround, use either the Fusion Buttons (Tool palette - Set Mesh Role & Apply section) or Pie Menu (Apply SubtractionApply Intersection or ) when initially adding Trims to each Fusion Item (Trims can contribute to multiple Fusion Items). If initially applied with either of those methods, all subsequent Drag & Drop options will be supported.

Modeling

• ID 226970 (32728) - Zooming out with a Space Navigator alters the Work Plane position.

• ID 408278 (60027) - Linear Falloff snaps to object size.

Note: As a workaround, use the right mouse button for an interactive initial linear handle.

Network Rendering

• ID 226363 (48325) - Scenes with image sequences rendered with Full Frames use the wrong image sequence number on worker machines.

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

• ID 226337 (36986) - Workers render hidden meshes. Since mesh hide state is not stored in the scene, when that scene is transferred to the workers, the state is lost. The master respects the hidden state, however.

Note: As a workaround, if the intent is to avoid rendering, toggle the visibility for the item or render or open System > Preferences > Rendering and disable Use Network Render Nodes.

• ID 220955 (30318) - Network Rendering doesn’t support Realflow particles.

• ID 226336 (25636) - Frame passes are not supported.

• Several Bugs - While it apparently worked in Modo 902, in some cases, Network Rendering was not implemented to support baking. Changes to Modo in the 10-series apparently broke what was working for some artists, so the functionality has been disabled.

Note: As a workaround, Modo 10 implemented the ability to Network Bake using Bake Items and an external render controller. For more information, please see the SDK Wiki.

Nodal Shading

• ID 221393 (50642) - Nodal shading does not support UDIMs.

• ID 385250 - Nodal Shading is slower in 13.0 with some modifiers.

Painting/Sculpting

• ID 288461 (41682) - Textures are not always updating in Preview/Render when painting on an image map.

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

Particles

• ID 303192 (34925) - Re-opening scenes saved with large particle caches can cause problems.

Note: 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 Render

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

Note: As a workaround, reset Preview to fix the baking.

Procedurals

• ID 305303 (56318) - Procedural duplication of Mesh Ops in a Deform folder creates errant Mesh Ops list.

• ID 305302 (56317) - Duplication of Procedurals does not work with the Select By Previous Operation tool.

Note: As a workaround, manually edit the duplicate's Select By Previous Operation Mesh Ops.

• ID 266469 (54738) - A duplication of any item that is a Merge Meshes Source (For example, a Mesh Item, Procedural Item, or Fusion Item), any duplicates (duplicate or instance) are added to the Merge Meshes Ops List as a source.

Note: As a workaround, remove the unwanted additional Merge Mesh Sources (regardless of the type of source) in the Mesh Ops List using the X icon in that list next to each Merge Meshes source.

• ID 221355 (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.

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

• ID 289810 (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.

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

• ID 388978 - Paving does not work when a Guide curve runs through a paving hole

References

• ID 294394 (44492) - If a scene that already contains references is referenced, the shading of the original references may not persist.

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

• ID 220957 (41119) - Reloading a reference after replacing it with the same file can cause Modo to crash.

• ID 309252 (56620) - Modo crashes when closing a scene containing a referenced scene after attempting to revert a reference override.

Note: As a workaround, first close and reopen the scene before attempting to revert the reference.

Rigging

• ID 287584 (27244) - Duplicating joints in a bound mesh retains influences from the original joint chain.

• ID 404238 - Bezier Curves don’t work correctly with the Curve Falloff.

Scripting

• ID 242545 (53458) - Right-clicking or running a script in the Script Editor can lock up input to Modo.

Note: 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 299187 (37858) - In the Shader Tree, choosing a group from Add Layer > Image Map > (use clip browser) fails.

Note: 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 288141 (30947) - Layer masking displacement does not work unless you drag and drop the masking layer onto the displacement layer.

• ID 372282 (57874) - Custom Materials that define their own smoothing properties (such as the Skin material), no longer smooth the mesh correctly.

Unreal and Unity Materials

• ID 294747 (50701) - Unreal material Ambient Occlusion does not bake correctly in Modo.

• ID 295862 (50700) - There is no way to visualize the Unreal SubSurface Color effect in Modo.

• ID 221477 (50451) - On some graphics cards, Unity material may cause flickering in the Advanced viewport when used with bump maps and shadows.

UI

• ID 281374 (55759) - Transforming objects can cause the Items Properties panel to flicker.

• ID 277244 (55571) - Resizing the dopesheet in Zen crashes Modo 11.1, but not in Modo 11.0.

• ID 273139 (55185) - Text in the viewport icon buttons is not visible in the Advanced viewport on some Mac OS/AMD configurations.

Note: As a workaround, upgrade Mac OS to 10.13.

• ID 226492 (44496) - macOS only: Disabling Affect System Color Dialog in Preferences > Rendering > Color Management, and using the system color picker caused colors to darken with each use of the color picker.

Note: 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 224169 (44896) - Dragging and dropping an image from disk into the Clips list doesn’t work.

Note: 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 288714 (43162) (Windows only) -Setting a custom text size affects Modo's text drawing.

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

• ID 333249 (57715) - Selecting items in the viewport does not always update the Properties form.

Note: As a workaround, click the alt key.

• ID 388937 - macOS only: UI form field highlights can appear grey.

• ID 395884 - Mac only - Double-clicking bottom right corner or edge of popover doesn't resize back the popover correctly

Viewports

• ID 310930 (56706) - Unity and Unreal materials are not displayed correctly when first loaded into the Advanced viewport.

Note: As a workaround, enable and then disable the visibility of the Shader Tree textures.

• 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.

• ID 281365 (55816) - Wireframes are washed out on transparent surfaces in the Advanced viewport.

Note: As a workaround, avoid transparency when modeling or doing work where wireframes are needed. Alternatively, use the Default viewport.

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

• ID 338374 (58003) - Game Navigation mode (camera rotation) does not work in a floating 3D view (palette or separate window).

Note: As a workaround,use Game Navigation mode only in docked 3D views (views that are part of a Layout).

• ID 338599 (57955) - Clicking on the VR layout tab may crash when using a system with a Radeon WX-series graphics card. This is due to a driver bug and should be fixed by a AMD in a future driver release.

• ID 289738 (49473) - Projections are incorrect if the projecting camera is set to Vertical film fit mode and the width is less than the height.

• ID 289020 (43771) - Camera projections from non-render cameras show distortion in GL and baking.

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

• ID 408416 - Gradient (texture layer) renders incorrectly in the Advanced Viewport.

Note: As a workaround, use Preview.

• ID 420733 - Ghost Mode Transparency set to 0% isn't fully transparent.

VR

• ID 218386 - VR is now supported on Linux, but has only been tested and verified working using SteamVR on Ubuntu 18.04.