modo 501 Technical Specifications

General System Requirements

• 2 GB RAM
• 2 GB available hard disk space
• Mouse or pointing device (pressure sensitive tablets supported)
• OpenGL 2.0 accelerated graphics (at least 1280 x 800 resolution)
• Internet connection required for product activation

Macintosh System Requirements

• Mac® OS X 10.6 or later (32 and 64-bit)
• Intel processor(s)
• 2 GB available hard disk space (for full content installation)
• 2 GB of RAM
• OpenGL 2.0 accelerated graphics (at least 1280 by 800 resolution)
• Mouse or pointing device (pressure sensitive tablets supported)
• Internet connection (needed for product activation and to access online videos)

Windows® System Requirements

• Windows 7, Vista and XP (32 and 64-bit)
• Intel Xeon/Core 2 Duo or Quad /Core i7 or AMD Opteron/Phenom processor(s)
• 2 GB available hard disk space (for full content installation)
• 2 GB of RAM
• OpenGL 2.0 accelerated graphics (at least 1280 by 800 resolution)
• Mouse or pointing device (pressure sensitive tablets supported)
• Internet connection (needed for product activation and to access online videos)

User Interface and Workflow

• Fast startup speed
• Inline Help system with tutorial videos and search function
• Preview renderer updates as you work or as you mouse over
• High-quality OpenGL display (including ray-traced view)
• Completely configurable viewports (size, function, visibility options and location)
• Preset Browser provides access to wide array of pre-built content
• Input fields support math operations like 5*2m
• Pie menus offers "heads up" menu selection
• Renderings begin instantly, with no waiting
• Drag & Drop support
• Undo/Redo enabled
• 3D navigation method can emulate other 3D programs
• Task-specific layouts provided for common operations (like painting)
• Help mode invokes explanations of any selected tool or command when clicked (often with video examples)
• Tool values can be hauled (adjusted) directly in the viewport with visual feedback
• Commonality of commands across modo (e.g. paint tools use same system of Falloffs as modeling tools do)
• Cut / copy / paste functionality
• Smart selection of polygons, vertices and edges (including pre-highlighting, grow selections with arrow key)
• Customizeable color picker
• Cursors indicate selection type
• Extensive system of Falloffs (spatial influence of tool)
• Extensive system of Action Centers (definable origin for modeling and transform operations)
• Shadowcatcher feature simplifies placing 3D objects into existing photos
• Easily align-able workplane
• Measure the parallax offset at any point in your scene for stereoscopic productions
• User Interface forms and viewports can be easily spread across multiple monitors
• Over 2GB of pre-built content, plus access to Asset Sharing portion of Luxology website

Modeling and Sculpting Features

• Complete hybrid polygon/SubD/Ngon modeler with extensive toolset for creating and modifying meshes at the vertex, edge and polygon level
• Pixar Subdivision surfaces support sharp creasing and multi-resolution sculpting
• Re-topology modeling (model and sculpt on top of existing geometry)
• Extensive duplication tools support mirroring, linear and radial arrays
• Deformation tools let you twist, bend and shear geometry
• Instance replicators let you create render-time instances of meshes (like barnacles, leaves or welds) with trillion polygon detail and time-varying appearance
• Add thickness to existing geometry
• “1 click” modeling tools (e.g Add Loop)
• Flexible coordinate systems (SI, Metric,English, Game Units)
• 3D primitives and text
• Solid Sketch tool for quickly creating base meshes with branches
• Symmetric modeling
• Pen tool supports structured drawing with snapping
• Curve creation tools
• Smoothing Groups
• Model over background image
• Snapping (to grid and geometry) supports precise placement and can be invoked and modified during tool use
• A scene can reference multiple files on disk
• 2D Profile Presets can be used when modeling
• Sketch tool lets you create lines, curves, straight lines, slices, or quad strips
• Sculpt or use traditional modeling tools at will (sculpting is not a mode)
• Modifier keys affect the behavior of sculpting tools so you do not need to drop a sculpting tool to get opposite effect (Push vs. Pull for example)
• Mesh-based sculpting for roughing out forms
• Image-based sculpting for adding fine surface detail
• Multi-resolution sculpting supported on Pixar SubD’s
• Mesh Paint tool lets you add geometry onto surfaces with a brush
• Unique vector displacement brush lets you create a brush from 3D geometry and sculpt with it (e.g. an ear)
• Sculpting can be made to constrain to an existing surface
• There are ten 3D sculpting tools:
  • Push
  • Smooth
  • Tangent Pinch
  • Spin
  • Move
  • Carve
  • Flatten
  • Smudge
  • Emboss
  • Mask

Fur Features

• Fur material lets you create wide variety of effects such tinsel, grass, hair or fur
• Create vast forests or leaf detail with images mapped to Billboards
• Fur is readily visible in both OpenGL and Preview
• Fur can be interactively styled with guides
• Adjust Fur length, spacing, and tapering
• Support for flexing, jitter, strays and clumping
• Kink and frizz options
• Fur can inherit color from textures (e.g. tiger stripe image)

Rendering Features

• Fast ray-tracer with physically-based shading options
• Preview renderer updates as scene changes are made and progressively renders to near final quality
• Multi-threaded to use all available cores on your system
• Time-enabled for rock solid motion blurs, stable reflections in animations
• Layer-based Shader Tree offers Photoshop-like control over materials and environments
• Fast global illumination (GI)
• Physical sky and sun (specify location, date and time)
• Fog
• 2D and 3D procedural textures require no UVs (e.g. cellular, rusted panels, monster skin)
• Render high resolution images to disk that vastly exceed available memory
• Extensive lighting model (point, dome, area etc.)
• Extensive array of render outputs (over 30 types)
• Stable GI solution for walk-through animations.
• IES (photometric) lights
• HDRI lighting
• Bake maps to single or multiple images
• Displacement rendering of micro-tessellated polygons at trillion polygon detail
• Orthographic rendering
• Transparency can vary with absorption distance.
• Edge Contour rendering
• Subsurface Scattering
• Anisotropic Blurred Reflections
• Weight maps
• Volumetric lighting and deep shadows
• Instance and replicator rendering to trillion polygon detail
• Curve rendering
• Depth of Field
• Bokeh effects
• Stereoscopic support and output formats
• Blurry refraction
• Dissolve
• Occlusion shading
• Dispersion
• Photon mapping
• Light linking
• Clear coat
• Fresnel Effects
• Motion Vector output
• Vertex illumination baking
• Network rendering on up to 50 workstations

3D Paint Features

• Use Airbrush, Paintbrush, Smudge, Fill and Erase brushes to paint directly on your 3D models
• Create and save your own brushes
• Paint layout includes a canvas, gallery-style row of images along the bottom, a color picker and brush preview pane
• Paint on any image in the Shader Tree
• Paint across multiple images and onto multiple UV maps
• Roller brush facilitates continuous painting
• Image ink lets you paint existing images onto surface
• Image maps can be used to drive over 25 effects (e.g. displacement, bump, specular). Paint bump maps in real-time
• Paint on objects that lack UV’s

UV Editing Features

• Streamlined user interface for interactive UV editing
• Use same tools as rest of modo to rotate, move, scale etc.
• Easily visualize the distortion of UV polygons against 3D polygons as RGB colors
• UV projection to variety of shapes (e.g. cubic)
• Project from view option
• Unwrap tool with seal holes (e.g. eyes) option
• Relax tool
• Peeler tool
• Fit UV’s option
• Pinning lets you nail down portions of UV map
• Numerous UV alignment and expansion options
• Sculpting tools work in UV Editor
• Move and sew
• Cut / copy / paste functionality
• Show UV overlaps option
• Symmetry option
• Show poly fill option
• Pack UV option

Animation Features

• Set keys on virtually any property of any item
• Graph editor with curve-based control and slope options
• Schematic view provides visual connection editor for building rigs
• Transforms can be layered easily
• Seconds, Frames, SMPTE and film code time systems
• Import animated scenes from other 3D applications in MDD format and render it in modo
• Can save animation in OpenGL viewport or Preview Renderer as a movie
• Cut, copy, paste keys
• Animate while seeing real-time playback
• Reverse playback option
• Vertex map deformers
• Camera and light targeting
• Morph targets (aka Blendshapes) are fully editable and can multiple morphs can drive the shape of the item at any given time
• You can render an animation to a sequence of still images or to a movie file
• COLLADA and FBX file support
• Channel linking and custom user channels
• Extensive library of constraints and modifiers
• Time offset channel
• 2D Inverse Kinematics
• Face Camera option
• Dynamic parenting
• Ability to save re-usable rigs with simplified labels and shape controls that explain operation

Developer Features

• Toolpipe lets you customize and create new tools
• Script in Perl, LUA, Python
• Software Developer Kit (SDK) provided with each modo license
• modo can be used in headless mode for command line operation

Marketing and Reference Materials

Current modo 501 Version

• modo 501 Brochure (PDF)
• modo 501 Improvements (PDF)
• modo 501 Supported File Formats (PDF)
• modo Plug-in Software Developer Kit (SDK) (PDF)

Previous modo Versions

• modo 401 Brochure (PDF)
• modo 401 Improvements (PDF)
• modo 401 Supported File Formats (PDF)
• modo 401 File I/O SDK (PDF)

Back to top »

Products Site Map