www.si-community.com

I did few character animations in my life (all fall into category of crap) and I know what IK is,

but there must be something more with "full body IK", I mean the plugin costs over 1k $$.

lightwave has had full body ik for years, called IK BOOSTER, there was a site dedicated to it called ik booster, but i think it has shut down now.

dirtydog wrote:lightwave has had full body ik for years, called IK BOOSTER, there was a site dedicated to it called ik booster, but i think it has shut down now.

Yes, modo rigging/animation smell LW...

dirtydog wrote:lightwave has had full body ik for years, called IK BOOSTER, there was a site dedicated to it called ik booster, but i think it has shut down now.

Seems like Sega Animanium was also very interesting. I think Mirai had FBIK as well.

modo is the LW modeller and some more. I have owned softimage and LW for 5 years, I personally don't see the point in buying modo especially now as both apps are being developed further.

here is a short IK Booster tutorial showing full body ik setup and action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsSdcMrd ... detailpage

I've heard 3d Studio for DOS was first with full body IK
According to feelings expressed from all sides of 3d world, definitively there is
*something* with Modo 601. Now I'm 101% sure I'll try it, as soon as possibe.

Mathaeus wrote:I've heard 3d Studio for DOS was first with full body IK
According to feelings expressed from all sides of 3d world, definitively there is
*something* with Modo 601. Now I'm 101% sure I'll try it, as soon as possibe.

What is this "something"?

About rigging/skinning in Lux forum was opened a thread from a Lux staff member:
http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/t ... x?id=63414
My interest in modo is diminished when I heard about the more slow rendering in this release and the now sound timeline "feature"

About rendering, in 501 modo was more faster about 30% compared to mental ray, but don't have all the (many) features MR has from years. Now they increase the features (volumetric, skin shader...), but speed decrease on average 20% , and, in some case, a user declare skin shader arrived an 3 hours rendering against 32 min 501 SSS material. Impressive
Another discussion about speed decrease in 601:
http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/t ... x?id=63262

so it's 'real' full body IK, definitively. Got my copy of 601 before few days, still I don't know how to pan a viewport . So just a few first impressions. There is a good number od control for local rotation limits, stiffness, so on. FBIK don't need to apply to full skeleton, it's possible to have multiple separate solvers. Also FBIK don't need to drive a "final" interpolation, there's what is called 'pose tool'. As name says, 'pose tool'
allows to tweak the joints in a way of Max'es select-and-move. RMB makes a fixed joint, LMB is tweak, really easy to get the pose.You tweak it as FBIK, it playback as FK.
I'd believe it's possible to finally overcome the classic, layered rig from '90s...

Another interesting things I've seen so far, that's Dual Quaterinion skinning. Also some kind of node-driven expression editor, able to deal with vectors and matrices too.
Of course all that is not Maya, but FBIK itself gives enough energy to fight with possible problems.

Renderer.... (at least from my point of view of using MR for years), woooooooooooow, radiosity is miracle.... motion blur is impressive too.
Hair doesn't seem to shine (nicely to say) compared to 3delight, but I didn't even expected this..Would be interesting to render ICE particles with Modo volumes, volume render seems to be faster and nicer too (compared to MR).

Slick....

Is it even possible to get ICE particles into modo? It's Maya nCache right? I'm debating rendering in modo or vray right now.

nice review
About hair, rendering is really slow, but is a know issue, community wait a SP1 with many, different fix

Apparently the Modo 601 trial has finally come online: Try Modo, but it has come online "with a twist". The 15-days "Basic Trial" is available for free, while the 30-days "Production Evaluation" with all kinds of extra goodies, like the "modo Plug-in SDK" will cost you $25 (which apparently will be refunded at purchase). Strange but true... I'd rather have the "standard" 30-days for free without any extras, but Luxology obviously wants to stand out...
;)

They did so every new release. The reason is they want customers download modo and learning software from their tutorials (included in the 25€ materials), a 25$ fee would ensure that trial users puts a minimum effort to learn and not merely serves to mess up their servers.
I think is a bad idea, but seems it work nice because they doing so from early 301 release and don't want cage at all.

IMHO, 30 days are very poor time for evaluate a software, 15 are too short...

Nizar wrote:They did so every new release.

You're right, I even knew this,
but seem to have successfully blocked it from memory (or maybe I'm just getting too old...)
What I find even more disturbing however is the fact that it seems all side-grade offers
have expired before the trial came online. This means you had to buy on "blind faith"
just to get the bargain. And that seems to be a weird business model indeed...

They wait SP1 was ready before release Trial. IMO A question of image: users base is loyal (and fanatic), so a buggy release was not a problem, but they aim to gain many new customers with 601 and want trial without some (big) bugs.

In any case, IMHO is a good product. I tried rigging and weight paint, is really good. Modelling are also good and rendering has now many option (I prefer modo rendering to mental ray... yes, I know mental ray has many more feature but love Modo fast preview windows, you can test material fast and simple, and rendering is very nice and setting take few second), also, paint work nice (but cannot blend level, I hope next release). The only drawback, IMHO, actually is viewport: really weak if compared to rock solid softimage.

At the end, a good software, with many promises: Brad Peebler (Lux CEO) said in an interview next release will evolve the compositor capability, node editor for materials and 701 will handle more heavy flux data (this mean more strong viewport. Love Luxology attitude (they care about their product and care about their customers) and you feel their interest and passion.

Hirazi Blue wrote:

Nizar wrote:They did so every new release.

You're right, I even knew this,
but seem to have successfully blocked it from memory (or maybe I'm just getting too old...)
What I find even more disturbing however is the fact that it seems all side-grade offers
have expired before the trial came online. This means you had to buy on "blind faith"
just to get the bargain. And that seems to be a weird business model indeed...

blind faith seems to be an extreme statement given modo's reputation, but it was strange to do that. =)