I made a mess 
actually modo indie (which is the one will be available from now on) has 100k limit. Modo SE, which is being discontinued, has a 7k polys limit.
Sorry for the mess!
bought Mari Indi , after a bit of experimenting with it, it seems to be really logically structuredâŚ
lets see what it can do in my hands. 
After years of use (from release 201), Modo donât appeal me at all (recently improving my skill in cycles rendering and at moment is good enough for my need).
Their commercial skill are very good, even when the are only a little company called Luxology (was not a mergeâŚ), make me laugh read âfluid workflowâ 
, modo workflow is all but not exactly fluid (need a lot of customization, macros and even script to be fast), also viewport is step backward blender (and Blender viewport is not exactly the best), sculpt capabilities are worse (and this and paint section will never receive any update), animation tool now is nice, blender is a step (or two) forward, anyway the ridicules playback viewport capability can turn a rigging or animation session into a nightmare, particle system seem nice (not experience with it). Rendering is very good, I like: very simple and fast but not so flexible. IMO a blender user can spending better his money acquiring a vray license. Iâll bet theyâll have some surprise for 901 release, foundry want Modo competitive against the big one (IMO impossible)
Mari is interesting, but in this field substance can be a great alternative without limits. Anyway zbrush/blender cover all my actual needs.
At the moment seems to me more appealing Houdini Indie, less limitation and release 14 seems (from the preview), really promising.
Sounds good.
I personally would rather stick to Blender and other packages than purchase limited software, but this is a step in the right direction for graphics software in general - i.e. companies waking up to the fact that 3D software is no longer a âniche productâ used only by vfx facilities, such as ILM, but also in demand by individual artists who simply cannot afford ÂŁ3,500 for a single piece of software.
*** MODERATION ***
Both threads merged
My main concern about Mari indie is how the saved files are linked to your Steam account. How annoying is this in your experience, so far? Do they actually get saved to your hard drive, or just directly to Steam?
your files are getting saved on your hard drive in something like this:
C:/Users/Public/My Documents/Mari/Cache/Folder with numbers and letter combination/more folders
there it references your obj file in a human readable txt file with various other stuff called Summary.txt
there is also a Screenshot which is connected with the project.
as it seems, it thankfully doesn´t seem to save your projects or files in the steam cloud.
haven´t checked fully if something is saved but so far it does not do such things.
the saved projects can easily exceed 100MB.
one moot point in the Eula as far as I read, is a geolock, it forces you to stop using it after 70 days in another country⌠after that you have to use the licence again in the country you purchased it.
not only substance painter but also 3DCoat are available which in my opinion might and probably will force The Foundry to further either loosen their limitations or to lower the prices significantlyâŚ
These limitations are pathetic. You canât take a 3D program seriously that doesnât allow for automation through scripting. I know they need to disable scripting to enforce their silly polycount limits, but thatâs no excuse. If this was a free learning version, alright, but to pay over 300$ for something like that is for suckers. Not to mention they use Steam for DRM. What a joke.
If you want to support indies, create special licensing deals that only apply to individuals or companies with a very low turnaround. Donât create crippled applications that cause you needless engineering overhead and (in my opinion) hurt your brand. Thatâs just a sign of insecurity about lost money that most likely doesnât exist.
I get it, extreme reactions is your modus operandi but its hard to take someone seriously when that becomes a consistent pattern.
The limitations are not pathetic, especially not when put in context. Its not arbitrary thus theres a reason for it. Even more so, some very good modo artist dont use scripts, so if they can pump out quality content, so can others. Itâs not easy to balance releasing a cheaper version (copy) of their flag ship product without running the risk of cannibalizing it. There is a lot of risk involved.
If you consider that this is the evolution of the Modo Steam Edition, which had even more restrictions and no commercial use outside of steam, I would say its a pretty significant move. Right now Maya LT is the bar they are basing this version off of and LT is doing quite well.
Going back to the context mentioned, they have actively stated they are taking feedback and going over more options⌠these products are not static, they develop over time. One of the things they are actively looking at is to get the most used scripts inside of Modo itself and or a way to get scripting in without allowing the scripter to bypass the meager restrictions in place, and they are meager. A polycount limit, texture export limit and no scripting is fairly meager in an otherwise full version of modo.
I think there will be solutions, they are not trying to screw people over, but they are a business and not a charity. Its a balancing act I hope you can respect.
As for Steam⌠how is that a joke? Fact, steam is a distribution platform with a market of over 65 million active accounts and growing. It offers a patch system, regulated forums for help and support, chat channels, a means to beta test new versions and easily maintain them, it offers both user generated and official guides (tutorials) for new and existing users. Its a damn smart platform to work with, so I am not sure where the logic is in your complaint.
Fun fact, Blender was looking into getting on steam, Krita is already there and getting funded, over $20,000 has come from the steam workshop to help fund Blender. Steam turns software into a floating license that not tied to any one computer (and that in itself was previously met with dongles, node locks or added costs). Thereâs very little to legitimately complain about, the pros out weigh any cons.
Modoâs brand is getting more popular, its not hurting at all. Thankfully, if you dont like or appreciate the risk they are taking, just stick to free software. One more thing to note: It cost less than $300 at the moment, and theres a subscription plan that goes as low as $9.99 a month. Lets not pretend Modo Indie is expensive. The full version of Mari alone cost over $2000, Modo at $1500. Getting both for under $300 with the current sale, and or a cheap subscription cannot legitimately considered a rip off.
Modo and blender (with indie or full) make a great combo.
I see that happening as well. For awhile now the guy behind Mari has been getting a lot of feed back and a lot of âI already have substance painter, and its a lot better for what you getâ kind of commentary. I have Mari indie, 3d coat and all the substance applications. Substance is by far my favorite texturing app, its extremely ambitious. They plan on developing the brush system even more so it can be used for illustration-ish texturing and non pbr work. Substance will definitely cause the competition to shift gears a bit.
i think they just want to target the indie game modeler market among others.
with unreal engine priced at such, they want to target people who model for these engines - hence focus is on the export. no wonder they officially start a thread asking what people want in a game dev pipeline.
but i think being unable to use substance painter steam indie with it hurt a little (modo indie canât use plug-in) which defeat the purpose, to a certain extent. but knowing them, i wasnât shocked if they release an update for this special case (in the product page they already mention an update that will enable other stuff). and they already increase the export limit. so they do listen.
This needs some clarification, there is no substance painter plug-in (at least that I know of) for modo. There is a substance plugin that acts like a mini-substance designer however. Basically you load up a substance inside of modo, and adjust sliders. While convenient, if someone has painter, b2m or designer, all you are really losing out on is some convenience. Its a lot like sculpting, you can do it in modo, its not bad and has its uses, but for serious sculpts we need to use zbrush. The same logic applies for the substances inside of modo vs their native applications.
I know Epicâs Warren Marshall is in contact with them over Unreal 4 integration, and they have publicly stated there is info going back and forth between the two. Warren Marshall by the way is a big modo user as well. This is just the starting point.
There are some tutorials and documentation in the works as we speak which will cover Modo indie to Unreal (free tuts btw), and the plan is to actively pump out that kind of stuff rather than do it once and leave. In fact they specifically hired/promoted some of their existing staff to focus solely on building up the indie side of things, so its a lot more hands onâŚboth community wise and with passing on that information.
I highly recommend those at least some what curious just do a subscription for a month or two. Its the same cost you would pay for a month of WoW or any other sub based mmorpg.
I missing this point, so no script in Modo indie? Without scripts you are forced to use Modo basic workflow, the crap workflow ever designed IMO⌠Hope can be used Macro, without script and Macro I donât see any particular reason to use Modo modelling tools. Better, much better, Silo or Blender.
But Modo Indie has a state of the art bones system. And it has a working FBX export pipeline to Unity. Thatâs two very fat plus points. And i wouldnât call polygon modeling in Modo weak, especially not compared to Blender.
I made a mess
Heh, stumbled across the very same pitfall first. Oh noez, still just 7k poly export ⌠oh wait ⌠^^
I am very unhappy about the export limit to 100k polygons though. Nowadays game characters already goes up to 50k tris. And you may need to deal with high poly meshes too. Without that polygon export limit it would be a no brainer at the current price.
You can technically get 200k tris out of Modo Indie, if you consider the fact that exporting 100k quads will = 200k tri in any game engine. The 100k poly limit for export shouldnt be that bad depending on what you do. Also with the Reduction Tool, you can scale down the resolution dynamically and it wont destroy UVs, plus it tries to retain form. Pretty nice, especially if you need to pump out a quick LOD as well.
I can see the polycount limit getting push further later, but from what I have been told its current limit matches Maya LTs.
Additionally, It might be worth verifying as I havent tested it out, but Unity and UE4 supposedly dont import single meshes that are more than 130k quads.
Did you give a serious try to Modo? Try it, youâll found one of the most clicks application actually on the market (a continuous click between viewport and GUI), in particular if you are used to blender.
Modo have more tools compared to Blender (but lesser compared to 3dsm), but the fragmented workflow and consistency lack are the worse aspects. The reason is, IMO, Luxology designed modo like a raw set of tools, ready to be caged and customized following the habits of users coming/migrating from very different software. Maya LT have better implemented tools (the NEX plugin). The standard modo license permitting to customizing the workflow, without the need of a single code line, is not so flexible as their propaganda claim, but more than blender, you can mitigate the most tedious workflow aspects, but need scripts and recording your personal macros.
Another modo worse aspects is stability: not so terrible as someone claims, but again, a step backward compared to Blender.
Honestly, i tried just the demo of the big version a while back. Mustâve been 606 or so. So i cannot say how it behaves in a real workflow situation. But i found it not that bad from what i have seen and tested. And afaik you can use hotkeys there too.
That you cannot customize your workflow with scripts like in the Pro version is of course a drawback. But with adding scripting there wouldnât be a difference to the big brother anymore, since this would open a workaround for the export limit and for plugins. And they have to draw a line somewhere. When there wouldnât be a few limits then there wouldnât be a reason to buy the Pro version anymore. Itâs business.
Additionally, It might be worth verifying as I havent tested it out, but Unity and UE4 supposedly dont import single meshes that are more than 130k quads.
There is the 65k limit as with nearly every game engine out there. A 16 bit relict from the graphics cards history. But you can definitely import much bigger meshes into Unity. They simply get split into the 65k chunks then after a warning.
You need to use it extensively, an example: when you use knife in blender (or Silo or SI), you can cut edges in the middle pressing a key (CRTL in Blender and Softimage), in Modo you need to check the box âsplit in the middleâ in the GUI (in standard GUI is at your left, or you can call it with same default Pie Menu (crtl+3 if Iâm not wrong), so Modo will ever split in the middle, until you go on the GUI and deselect âsplit in the middleâ mode. Modo is full of this type of workflow choices (for snapping, for edge slice etc. etc.), what is more rapidly and efficient, check continuously the GUI or some interactive actions/gesture like is in blender, XIS, silo and now Maya? I prefer the Blender choice.
As I wrote, you can mitigate this, recording macro and create your own tools, even mixing one or more tools, but with some limits (but is acceptable, donât requiring a single line of coding, anyway, many of the bad (for me) modo workflow issue cannot be modified). Any pro Modo user heavily customize interface/tool and recording his own macros, but this generate two bad issue:
- More scripts and custom tolls you use, more unstable becoming modo (this until release 701, donât know 801)
- When upgrading from major release to another you need to install again all the scripts and preferences (blender experience in this field is years ahead)
Jholen, I really dont get the whole âclickyâ thing. Its no more or less than any other application in this field. The whole âclickyâ thing is a myth. The tools are accessible in the same way as blenderâs tool panel, the tool options the same way as blenderâs tool options, there are pie menus and hotkeys if you dont want to click. Like blender you can hide quite a bit of the interface and just work inside of the UI. If one cant get over the dropping of the tool method, turn on auto drop. Where blender has you clicking in the material tab or opening up a space to click up some nodes, Modo has everything in a shader tree (outliner for shading and rendering). Dont want to click on tabs, use a hotkey like control + tab.
The point is, the whole âclickyâ rhetoric is baseless, its a myth. I fell for that line too before actually using Modo. Its not significantly more or less than other 3d apps, including blender. In fact, some of the tools are merged so its even less clicky. Bevel is a great example, bevel doubles as extrude depending on how you use it, less clicking as a result.
Check out some of Tor Frickâs concept work for example⌠he has been doing these 1 hour environments and streaming it live. His workflow is far from being excessively âclickyâ, most everything he does is a hotkey.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145222&highlight=snefer
And he did this rocket launcher in about 3 hours.
You can see the streams below:
http://www.livestream.com/snefer
As for stability, not sure what version you used last but since 701 Modo has been extremely stable. I have had a couple crashes in Modo, and a couple in BlenderâŚthe one in Modo I found was due to a bug in the steam edition (which was expected to have some bugs). Sent in the bug and it was fixed on the next update. Iâd say Modo as it stands now and Blender are both very stable applications. I donât think Modo is perfect, but the âworse aspectsâ I often see pop up are not really there.
All that said, I know we have been over this a few times in various ways, so I guess at the end of the day it just ends up being agreeing to disagree.
This is a bit unfair, as thereâs a false equivalency of sorts. In all these workflow choices, there are pros and cons, give and take. I could argue many of the same things you are arguing happen in Blender too depending on the tool or the desired effect. Going back to Modoâs default cut tool, what you miss out on is that you can set its snap value. So if I type in 25%, the tool will now snap based on 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100% points on an edge. This speeds up time, where as in blender that would take considerably longer to get that kind of precision when cutting many faces. Again its give and take. One toggle isnt so bad when you get far more tool options and conditions for its behavior to work with.
- More scripts and custom tolls you use, more unstable becoming modo (this until release 701, donât know 801)
- When upgrading from major release to another you need to install again all the scripts and preferences (blender experience in this field is years ahead)
I have a handful of scripts and kits, stability hasnt gone down one bit. At this point that is not an issue to worry about. Modo is extremely solid, even with how scripts are accessed and presented via the form editor.
As far as I know, config files can be saved and then imported with new versions of the software. With Blender you also have to install the latest version. 2.7 doesnt magically update on its own to become 2.72⌠additionally, blender addons can cease working with newer versions as well or depending on installation location, re-installed. One application isnt acting outside of the fashion the other is not. These are all extremely minor complaints you are having and so far none have been very concrete. Iâm all for complaining about valid issues and suggesting to the devs that this needs to get fixed.