modo®
modo delivers character animation, dynamics, retopology modeling and rendering advances, plus a wide variety of workflow enhancements. We hope to show you how modo is the uniquely creative tool for artists and designers.
Character Animation and Deformers
modo's powerful animation capabilities include new character animation and rig- ging tools including an easy-to-use Pose Tool and a flexible system of layerable deformers. A system of Actors with assignable Poses and Actions speeds the animation process.


Skeleton Tool/Mesh Binding
A Skeleton Creation Tool in modo lets you quickly set up a hierarchy of bones that are connected by joints. You can bind your mesh geometry to the bones to smoothly generate weight maps that control how flexing will occur. Weight maps are now visible in the modo viewports as different colors overlaid on the current shading for the mesh.
Full-body Inverse Kinematics
A full body Inverse Kinematics solver in modo lets you easily manipulate a skeletal chain according to assigned goals including pinning. Pull on the arm of character and its whole body will react.... move the tip of a tail and the tail plus the whole body responds. You can blend inverse kinematics with forward kine- matics to create believable movements quickly.
Pose Tool
modo lets you create poses for characters without complex rigging. Start with any mesh that has an attached skeleton and easily manipulate it into the shape you want. Use the Pose Tool to animate your characters, as a prototyping tool for designing character rigs, or simply to pose models for sculpting and mod- eling operations.
Pose Space Sculpting
You can directly sculpt a mesh even at the stage of setting up a character in modo, providing an exceptionally flexible environ- ment for animating characters.


Actors with Poses and Actions
You can create Actors in modo which can be positioned along a timeline with named Poses and animated with a series of Actions. Actors are normally characters but can be any kind of hierarchy that you wish to animate.
Visible Motion Paths
In modo, you can see Visible Motion Paths for keyframed
or dynamic objects which are studded with either keyframes or frames, with control over how much motion is shown before and after the current time. Motion Paths are a great tools for seeing the full scope of an item's animation at any point in the timeline.
Deformers
An extensive system of Deformers in modo provides a variety of ways to modify the shape of animated items down to the vertex level. Multiple Deformers can be readily combined and the results are normalized for a uniform and balanced result. modo's uniquely powerful implemen- tation allows you to layer deformation effects, one on top of another. This opens up a range of possible deformation behaviors that typical skeleton-based systems can't easily achieve.
Falloffs as Deformers
As of modo, Falloffs are not just for affecting the spatial extent of modeling operations, they can be used to attenuate the influence of Deformers while animating. This interaction of Deformers and Falloffs provides tremendous control within animation rigs.
Textured Falloffs
Leveraging the integrated architecture of modo, you can now use Textures, in conjunction with Falloffs, to modulate non-material related elements in your modo scene for unique effects.
MDD Driven Object Deformation
modo now allows MDD driven objects to interact with dynamic objects.
AlembicTM Support
You can now load and save animated scenes in the industry-standard Alembic format for multi-application pipelines.
Dynamics
Rigid and soft body dynamics, based on the Bullet Physics LibraryTM engine, are now a standard part of modo.
Rigid Body Dynamics
Rigid Bodies can now respond to collisions and be affected by a variety of forces, such as gravity and motors, using recoil Dynamics in modo.
Soft Body Dynamics
Soft Body effects, like flapping capes and draping tableclothes, can now be generated automatically us- ing recoil Dynamics in modo.

Modeling
The world's most powerful polygon and Subdivision Surface modeler is now even more powerful and ef- ficient to use. Here we explore some of modo's modeling improvements.
Dedicated Re-Topology Modeling Tools and Viewport
modo has a focused environment for re-topology modeling which combines a specialized user interface with new tools that make it easier than ever to cre- ate clean geometry on top of a background mesh.
Topology Pen Tool
The new Topology Pen is the Swiss Army Knife® of topology modeling. Within a single tool you can drag, weld, extend and create new geometry. Using tool-specific hot keys, you can easily drag components or edge loops, duplicate components and loops, slide edges and remove com- ponents on the fly. Additionally, the tool can automatically create UV data as it creates new geometry. This single tool is an incredible accelerator to the topology modeling process.
Pixar® Subdivision Surfaces Improvements
Pixar Subdivision Surface modeling in modo lets you weight individual vertices and efficiently work with your models at the desired level of detail while rendering at maximum surface quality.
Preserve UV's
Now as you work in modo, the UV map for your model adjusts in real-time to match your modified geometry – letting you concentrate on model creation rather than adjusting UV maps.
Mesh Cleanup
With one click, the new Mesh Cleanup tool lets you optionally remove floating vertices, remove one or two point polygons, fix duplicate points, eliminate co- linear vertices, fix face normals, merge discontinuous UV's and unify polygons. This is a great tool for getting imported models in good shape for texturing, rendering or other downstream operations.
New Geometry Constraint “Point” Mode
This new modeling option constrains vertices to their closest position on a background mesh during model- ing operations to further facilitate re-topology model- ing. This option is present on tools such as Add Loop, Loop Slice and Edge Slide.
Soft Selection Falloff
modo has a new Soft Selection Falloff that grabs both the selected area and a variable zone outside the selection. The Falloff implicitly selects elements around selection and sets influence weights based on the distance from the closest ele- ment inside the radius. The Soft Selection Falloff also has a “Use Connectivity” option which considers surface connectivity, so that unwanted areas remain unselected.
Lazy Selection
Lazy Selection is introduced for vertices, edges and polygons – so that you need not be positioned over
a geometric element to select it. The closest element from the mouse cursor position is selected despite the selection hit size. Lazy Selection works great in silhouette mode; you can be outside of the mesh and still select elements easily on the profile. It also works very well in conjunction with the new Topology Pen tool for extending the outer edges of a mesh without having to precisely pick the edges first.

Vertex Map Painting
modo has always been progressive with how it deals with weight maps... allowing you to set up weights and add or remove points/ polygons all the while keeping all your weighting intact. Now you can use modo’s paint system to paint, scale, erase and smooth vertex (weight) maps on your mesh. This works just like the other brush tools in modo so there is virtually no learning curve if you already know how to use modo’s existing painting and sculpting tools. Weighting can now be added to weight “containers” that allow for weighting to be stored at the item level. This gives users a more streamlined approach for weighting multiple meshes as well as making it much easier to build a rig and re-use it in other scenes.
Workflow
The experience of using modo is more natural than ever. Here are some of the many new workflow enhancements that further accelerate the creation process in modo.
Matcap Materials
Matcap Materials provide a shaded surface that remains uniform as you look at your model from any angle. As you work with your model in dif- ferent perspective views, the consistent visibility of Matcap Materials in modo help you perform sculpting and other modeling operations more efficiently. Access the supplied Matcap Materials or render your own!

Silhouette View
You can now display items as silhouettes in order to readily adjust the outer profile of an object as well as to visually isolate items in profile when modeling, posing or animating in modo.
Enhanced Render View
The Render View in modo has evolved into a multi-function environ- ment for rendering, baking, image viewing, image processing and perform- ing side-by-side image comparisons. The enhanced Render View in modo provides a focused environment for achieving final rendering results.
3D Paint Performance
The Paint Stroke Engine in modo is both faster and of better quality. This provides a more fluid expe- rience when painting and yields smoother results.
Render within a Capped Time Limit
Preview Renderer now lets you specify a total Render Time, giving you a predictable way to meet deadlines as you render out to an image sequence or a movie file.
3D Mouse Support
You can now use a 3Dconnexion® 3D mouse with modo. This provides yet another quick and intui- tive way to adjust your view in modo.
Rendering
modo provides numerous rendering improve- ments that enhance the rendering experience and make it easier than ever to produce exactly the results you want.
Render Booleans
You can now use meshes or other 3D shapes to visu- ally subtract out parts of your scene at render time, revealing interior portions of your models without hav- ing to manually remove or hide intervening geometry.
Sky Portals
Sky Portals offer an intuitive way to render interior spaces by letting light pass through windows or skylights from the surrounding environment. Sky Portals funnel the out- side light into your scene for natural results.
Rounded Edge Shader
You can now render the hard edges on your model with a softer, rounded appearance that emphasizes edge highlights – for more realistic looking mechani- cal designs or architectural elements.


Texture Bombing (Texture Replicator)
You can now render textures (including groups) on your models with random size and rotation across the object with no UV map required. “Texture Bombing”
is a creative new way to avoid the “tiled” look, and to efficiently achieve organic-looking textures, like mold, dirt or battle damage.
Oren-Nayer Diffuse Roughness Shading
You can achieve a truly flat look with no specular- ity when rendering rough materials like clay, fuzzy fabric, brick and terra cotta.
Subsurface Scattering Depth Control
You now have control over how deeply Subsurface Scattering is rendered in modo, for better results when rendering translucent areas, like ears and noses, or materials like wax and cheese.
Camera Clipping (By Surface or Material)
Camera Clipping lets you truncate the view through a camera up to a specified clipping distance. This new tool provides an interior cross-section that can be animated to gradually reveal or hide internal struc- ture and detail.
Render Passes
Render Passes let you easily and automatically render scenes with alternate settings such as: different materials for color studies, different item visibility for post-render compositing, or different pixel resolutions for film/video, web and print applications. You have complete control over what attributes of your scene are rendered.
Preview Renderer Improvements
The Preview Renderer can now be set to render at full resolution so that you can employ it for final image or movie production. Previews can now show motion blur and volumetrics too.


Spectral Samples
Spectral Samples provide more control for calculat- ing dispersion values for prismatic/rainbow effects in rendering glass-like objects. This gives a high-quality, realistic appearance for crystals, gems and other fac- eted or glass-like objects.
Shading
Several new shaders are provided in modo to simplify realistic rendering of hair and skin and to provide additional non-photorealistic rendering options.
Skin Shader
Human skin is a rather complex organ, comprised of multiple layers of materials, each absorbing, scattering and reflecting light differently, to create a very subtle but distinct look that we as humans are intimately familiar with. The new Skin Shader included in modo provides many familiar control to simulate the subtle nuance that is human skin.
Hair Shader
A new Hair Shader with a rich, but accessible, range of controls is provided. Based on An Artist-Friendly Hair Shading System, the Hair Shader simulates light scattering and reflections through many hair fibers within a volume of hair.
Cel Shader
A Cel Shader is included for toon or comic-book style rendered results. This Shader provides a wide range of controls over diffuse, specular and reflection bands, plus the ability to draw edges.
Volumes, Replicators and Particle Clouds
You can now replicate vast numbers of objects across sur- faces with greater ease and variability, and paint and import particle clouds to drive the location of objects. Volumetric rendering has been added to modo, letting you create blobby objects and cottony materials like clouds and smoke.
Volumetric Rendering
modo supports Volumetric Rendering so you can create clouds, smoke, cotton and similar volume-filling effects and get dense or wispy results with self-shadowing. They can also be procedurally textured in order to achieve, for instance, a fibrous look. Results are viewable in the Preview Renderer.
Volumetric Rendering (Clouds)
Volumetric rendering in modo can be used to cre- ate a wide range of effects, including production of realistic or cartoony clouds.
Replicator Improvements
Time-varying replicas let you have a set of duplicated objects which exhibit slightly different animation compared to each other. You have control over Time Offset, and you can also introduce Random Time Variation.
RealFlowTM Support
modo lets you load RealFlow particles into modo and render them with replicators, volumetrics, and sprites. The RealFlow BIN format is a simple, com- plete format that provides an excellent way to get particle data into modo.
Blobs
You can create gooey, waxy and viscous shapes using the new Blob items in modo. These implicit surfaces can be textured, and you have control over sizing, as well as globbiness/surface cohesion, to create a variety of interesting shapes. You can control where the Blobs appear by attaching them to a mesh or any point source. Blobs are fully integrated into the rendering pipeline – they are rendered just like any other surface – therefore Blobs work with features such as global illulmination, disper- sion, blurry reflections, and motion blur.

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Particle Painting/Sculpting
In modo particles are either discrete vertices that act as point sources for Replicators, or clouds of vertices which in turn form Blobs, Volumes or Sprites. Much like modo's existing Painting Tool, which allows users to apply color onto a surface, the new Particle Paint Tool allows users to spray particles onto a surface in an intuitive and controllable manner. Sculpt- ing tools like Move and Spin provide additional control over the arrangement of particles.
Volumetric Sprites
Sprite Volume items let you very efficiently fill a sphere, cube or cylinder with camera-facing billboard images that are rendered using the Volume item ren- dering technique.
Load these scene formats into modo 601
- Luxology Scene LXO
- SolidWorks 2012, 2011 and 2010 Model sldprt, sldasm*
- LightWave Object LWO2, LWOB
- Autodesk DXF
- Autodesk FBX
- Autodesk 3DS
- Videoscape GEO
- Adobe Illustrator EPS, AI
- Adobe Photoshop PSD
- Wavefront OBJ
- COLLADA DAE
- MDD (animation format)
- Alembic
*SolidWorks import is for Windows 32–bit and 64–bit only
Save out these formats from within modo 601
- Luxology Scene LXO
- LightWave Object LWO
- Web3D X3D
- Autodesk DXF
- Autodesk FBX
- Autodesk FBX 2006.11
- HPGL Plotter file PLT
- Layered PSD
- Videoscape GEO
- Wavefront OBJ
- COLLADA DAE
- Alembic
Load these image formats into modo 601
- Flexible Precision image FLX Targa TGA
- Windows BMP
- Compuserve GIF
- Radiance High Dynamic Range HDR
- Adobe Photoshop PSD
- EULumDat LDT
- Radiance High Dynamic Range HDR
- JPEG 2000 JP2
- JPEG JPG
- Portable Network Graphic PNG
- SGI (SGI RGB RGBA BW)
- Tagged image file format TIF
- ies IES
- OpenEXR EXR
modo 601 support for other file formats
- modo 601 can load RealFlow Particle data (bin) file, but not from the traditional File menu.
- modo 601 can also record OpenGL animation to movie or images.
Save out these image formats from within modo 601
- Flexible Precision image FLX
- Targa TGA
- Windows BMP
- Compuserve GIF
- Radiance High Dynamic Range HDR
- JPEG 2000 JP2
- JPEG 2000 16 bit JP2
- JPEG 2000 16 bit lossless JP2
- JPEG JPG
- Portable Network Graphic PNG
- Portable Network Graphic 16-bit PNG
- Adobe Photoshop PSD
- ies IES
- SGI RGB
- Tagged image file format TIF
- 16-bit TIF
- 16-bit uncompressed TIF
- OpenEXR Half 16-bit EXR
- OpenEXR Float 32-bit EXR
- OpenEXR Tiled Half 16-bit EXR
- OpenEXR Tiled Float 32-bit EXR
- OpenEXR EXR
- Save Animation to Quicktime MOV
- Save Animation to WMV
General System Requirements
- 2GB RAM minimum
- 2GB available hard disk space for full content installation
- OpenGL 2.0 accelerated graphics, at least 1280x800 resolution
- Internet connection required for product activation and to access online videos
- Mouse or pointing device, including pressure sensitive tablets or 3DCONNEXION 3D mouse
Windows® System Requirements
In addition to the General System Requirements:
- Windows 7, Vista or XP (32 and 64-bit supported)
- IntelXeon/Core2Duo,Quad/Corei7orAMDOpteron/ Phenom processor(s). Must support SSE2 instruction set.
Macintosh® System Requirements
In addition to the General System Requirements:
- Mac® OS X 10.6 or later (32 and 64-bit supported)
- Intelprocessor(s),Core2Duoprocessororhigher.
- Note:FullscreenmodefortheLionoperatingsystemis not currently supported
Fragen zu modo 601
- Von Thomas Sch. at 03.12.10 14:51
- Hallo Software3D-Team,
ist in dieser Version auch das update auf die bald erscheinende Version 501 enthalten?
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Thomas Sch. - Hallo,
ja das Update auf das neue Modo501 ist enthalten, bei allen aktuellen Modo Bestellungen in unserem Shop.
Beste Grüße
Ihr software3D-Team
- Hallo Software3D-Team,
- Von Alexander Stan at 30.09.10 08:33
- Hallo S3D,
Ist Ihnen fehlerhafte Funktion von modo 401 auf MAC bekannt?
Die modo 401 Renderings wirken auf mich überzeugend, ich würde das Produkt gerne kaufen, jedoch:
Habe ich eine Demo-Version von modo 401 zum ausprobieren heruntergeladen, die auf menem MacBook Pro (Intel Core Duo, 4GB Hauptspeicher, MAC OSX 10.5.8) nicht lief.
Im web habe ich auch keine Störungsberichte zur Demo-Version gefunden.
Inzwischen ist die Demo-Zeit abgelaufen.
Da ich dennoch auf modo neugierig bin, wende ich mich mit der Bitte an Sie um eine zweite Demo Gelegenheit (vielleicht klappt die Installation ja diesmal).
Schöne Grüße,
Alexander Stan
- modo sollte auf Ihrem Mac Book Pro eigentlich super funktionieren. Gerne stellen wir Ihnen eine zweite Demo zur Verfügung.
Ihr software3D-Team.
- Hallo S3D,






