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The engine itself was quite a
bit more complicated to build. But since we were only
going to render this from one angle, it is only super
detailed on this side. The engine was meant to actually
be somewhat realistic and it has a lot of the bits
you'd expect like a starter, alternator, clutch. I
even stuck a dipstick on there.
This was what we thought would
be the final view. This is from within modo, using
the OpenGL view. This took me a total of about 3 days
to model. Probably the hardest part was not the modeling,
it was originally coming up with an appealing but detailed
engine design. But that was fun too.
You can see on the final image
we changed the camera angle to be a bit more head on
and obviously emphasized the weight of the engine with
the negative camber on the wheels. We let a bit of
air out of the tyres too. The image was supposed to
communicate that the engine has a got a big job to
do and that the way you drive and maintain your car
affects the amount of CO2 emissions in a big way.
Lux: How
did texturing and rendering work for you on this job?
Ian: Since Passion's
pipeline usually relies on XSI and mental ray for lighting
and rendering it made a pleasant change to be able
use modo for the whole job. While the shader tree inside
of modo is seen as rather unconventional in diverging
from the node based system of other 3D applications,
I found it very easy to get the materials to look convincing.
Using a UV map to control the direction of the anisotropy
of the exhaust was particularly pleasing. Render times
were fine despite the final output being for print.
Lux: So
you proved you could do the whole thing in modo. But
what is modo best at as far as you are concerned?
Ian: When it
comes to UV-ing, modo is the first application I head
for. It truly has taken the chore out of what has for
years been a usually laborious and boring process.
The 3D paint is, to me, a bonus. It is so easy to use
and convenient having it right there.
modo in its current state is
simply a very streamlined modelling and rendering package.
But regardless of any specific tools, the biggest time
saver is the efficiency with which I can create and
edit models. From a completely selfish point of view,
I appreciate that no UI space or keyboard shortcuts
are wasted on frivolous tasks such as animation <grin>.
My favourite features are probably
the action centres and fall offs. These are maybe not
the most intuitive part of modo, but their power and
flexibility easily reward the time spent learning how
to use them. As an artist and from a purely aesthetic
point of view, modo is much prettier than other 3D
apps, especially when using advanced Open GL. That
makes me more of a pleasure to use for me.
Lux: Back
when you learned modo, how long did it take your team
to get up to speed on modo?
Ian: Having also been a LightWave
user previously, modo was for the most part familiar
and therefore reasonably easy to switch to. I still
use the same modelling workflow as I did in LightWave,
so the main challenge was learning to exploit modo's
more powerful and flexible toolset.
Lux: What
hardware (PCs, Macs, or both?) and software did you
use in your pipeline?
We use mostly dual processor
PCs. We are moving towards dual quads with 3GB RAM.
Our main pipeline is built around XSI currently along
After Effects and Combustion for compositing. There
are a few Macs for editing with Final Cut Pro.
Lux: On
other jobs, how well does modo integrate with the
rest of your production pipeline?
Models created in modo transfer
to XSI perfectly well via the lwo format and XSI's
Point Oven import. However, it would be helpful to
not need the intermediary file, and also retain the
hierarchy which unfortunately is lost using this process.
99% of modeling jobs can be easily
separated from the rest of the pipeline. If we need
to go back to the model after rigging we can use Gator
in XSI or edit it directly in XSI. Unless it was a
really major change, I would just fix in XSI.
Lux: Do
you use modo at other times, like at home?
Yeah, here are some shots of
a recent project I am working on in my "spare time." I
captured these on a new 30" LCD screen I am trialing!
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