3D Software Update: Modo 401 for Modeling, Animation, Rendering

modo 401 improvements

Animation

Channel Linking

• You can now create a Channel Link (relationship) between two channels of an item; one providing a value for the input, the other being the channel that will be modified.
• This relationship can be keyed, so you can change the relationship between the driver and driven channels as many times as needed.
• Channel values can be adjusted via a new heads up display.
• The relationship curve can also be edited in the Graph Editor.
• Links between float and integer numeric type channels are supported.
• You can now add new, user defined channels to any item and individual channels can also be locked.
• Channel values can be limited to fall within a range of values set by the user. Both the minimum and maximum values can be enabled independently and the ranges can be animated to vary over time.

Constraints

A system of Constraints are introduced which control how one item relates to another. The ‘constrained’ item in modo is the item being affected or controlled by the constraint. modo’s constraints are weighted, meaning that a weight value can determine the influence a constraint has over the item it’s controlling.
There are several Constraints provided in modo 401 including:
• Position constraint – causes an item to follow the position of another item or a weighted average of the
positions of multiple items. When an item is Position constrained to multiple items, the weights control how
much influence a particular item has on the position of the item being constrained. Weights can be adjusted and animated so the relative position can be influenced to bias the location towards (or away from) a particular item. Setting a weight channel to 100% means that the constraining item will exert full influence on the constrained item, a value of 0% means the constraining item will have no influence on the position of the constrained item
• Rotation constraint – allows an item to match the orientation of another item or a weighted average of the
orientations of multiple items. Each of the constraining items has an associated weight channel on the
constraint channel modifier; these can be animated to blend between the orientations of multiple items
• Scale constraint – allows an item to match the world scale of another item or a weighted average of the scale values of multiple items. Each of the constraining items has an associated weight channel on the constraint channel modifier; these can be animated to blend between the scale values of multiple items
• Direction constraint – causes an item to face in a particular direction
• Vertex position constraint – constrains item’s position match that of a selected vertex
• Vertex normal constraint – constrains item’s rotation to match that of a selected vertex
• Edge Position constraint – constrains item’s position along a selected edge
• Edge normal constraint – constrains item’s rotation to match normal direction of a selected edge
• Edge normal constraint – constrains item’s rotation to match normal direction of a selected edge
• Poly position constraint – constrains item’s position to the center of a selected polygon
• Poly normal constraint – constrains item’s rotation to match normal direction of a selected polygon
• Parent constraint – allows an item to act as if it’s a child of a constraining item without actually being part of the normal parenting hierarchy.
• Distance constraint – provides a way to maintain distance to a point (and distance to a sphere) functionality
• Path constraint (and its 2 variants, position & normal) positions an item on a curve based on a percentage along the curve. It has options for which axis to use, roll, whether it should wrap or not (useful on closed curves). It supports up vectors either by the channels on the constraint item or by linking to another item.
• Path Normal constraint – The ‘Path Normal’ constraint will match an item’s rotation to the normal direction of a particular position along the curve
• Path Position constraint – The ‘Path Position’ constraint will bind an item to a user generated curve or the
weighted average of multiple curves affecting its position values only
• Intersect Line -Two Items – This creates a new locator at the closest point along an infinite line, defined as running through the world center positions of two selected items
• Intersect Line – Linear Curve – This creates a new locator at the closest position along a user generated linear curve, e.g. a curve defined by only two vertices
• Intersect Plane – This constraint creates a new locator at the closest point (by default) from the first selected item to an infinite plane derived from the world axes of the second selected item. The default axis plane can be changed by adjusting the ‘Plane’ setting
• Intersect Surface – This constraint can be used to project a closest point or ray intersection from an item to a mesh surface. Select the item that will be the source of the intersection followed by a mesh item. A new locator will be created at the closest point on the surface from the driver item.

Channel Modifiers

A system of Channel Modifiers is introduced to modify or generate new channel values in an animation. There are over 30 Channel modifiers supplied with modo 401:
• Basic Math – The math modifier combines two input channels into an output channel using one of a set of
mathematical operations namely Add/Subtract/Multiply/Divide/Modulo/Average/Minimum/Maximum
• Distance Constraint – restricts an item’s position relative to another item in the scene
• Direction Constraint – orients an item toward the position of another item
• Revolve – The primary output of the Revolve Channel Modifier is a world space distance traveled along a specified vector, as well as outputting a distance traveled the modifier also has channels to compute a rotation value from a given radius and a percentage traveled along a specified length
• Measure Angle – This Channel Modifier type can be used to measure the angle formed between any three 3D items in the scene
• Channel Oscillator – This is a motion generator that generates the standard sine wave and does not actually ‘modify’ any channel. The output waveform is controllable as to amplitude, frequency etc.
• Channel Noise – This motion generator creates a smoothly changing random value. Numerous parameters are provided to adjust the values generated
• Gravity – This channel modifier applies a gravity-like constant acceleration to a channel with a given intial
value and speed. It computes a trajectory after bounces based on an imaginary ‘ground’ plane’s position, and an elasticity factor describing the energy loss per bounce
• Metric Vector – Used to extract a normalized direction vector from a rotation matrix or the translation row from a translation matrix input
• Channel Color HSV – This modifier produces an RGB color (3 channels) from an input color defined by hue,
saturation and value. This allows the artist to animate the hue, saturation or value of a color with correct
interpolation, rather than making a multitude of keyframes in the red, green, and blue channels individually
• Intersect Channel Modifier – This performs closest point and ray intersections on lines (both on linear curves and between two items) and planes (defined by the world transform of another item). The ‘length’ channel can be used on both lines and planes to specify a fixed distance between the source location and the intersection point, pushing it along the line or plane as needed to maintain that length. A new locator item is created and placed at the intersection point
• Channel Relationship – Channel Relationships are useful to apply a non-linear relationship between two item channels

Forward/Inverse Kinematics

A simple 2D two joint Planar Inverse Kinematics capability is available in modo 401. This initial implementation includes support for preferred joint angle (requires the joints are bent in the required direction before IK is applied) and supports FK/IK blending.

Pivots and Centers

modo now provides two methods for setting the point around which an item rotates and scales, Centers and Pivots:
• Center – This is the local origin of the model and the default location around which item transforms originate. It’s the location that sits at the world origin when all the item transforms are at their defaults, i.e. when the item has not been moved, rotated or scaled in Item mode. Adjusting the Center of an item allows you to set the location around which the item will rotate and scale
• Pivot – Pivots also provide the ability to specify the location around which an item will rotate and scale. They can also be used when one needs to animate this location (a rolling cube for example), (Centers cannot be animated). The Pivot is specified as an offset from the item’s Center and once set, the rotation and scaling occurs around this offset instead

Groups

• Groups are a new way to organize items and channels into sets that can more easily animated. These groups exist independently of other item attributes and are mainly provided for segregating items that the author wants
to treat similarly in an animation.
• Groups can be made up from any number of scene items, including mesh items, cameras, lights, and even
locators. Groups can also contain any number of individual channels from any combination of items in the scene.
• You can drag items from the item view or the 3d view into a Group.
• Groups can be parented together, similar to 3D items, just drag a child group and drop onto a parent item, working the same way parenting is performed in the Item List.
• You can specify how you select or keyframe across multiple items using Groups. This makes it easy (for
example) to animate both arms at the same time.Control is provided over how a Group is displayed, including solid and wireframe colors, visibility and text labels can be supplied.
• You can lock members of Group so that items or channels cannot be selected or edited. This allows you to create a “rig” that is all set up for animation and yet cannot be altered in any other way (such as modeling).
• Multiple items can act as base prototypes for replicators when set into a group, allowing for greater variety in replicated objects.

Other Animation Improvements

• Locator shapes can be modified via the ‘Display’ viewport.
• New Parenting tools (with and without compensation) are provided for modifying hierarchies, such as removing or inserting an item without destroying lower portions of the hierarchy.
• You can re-direct selection from a locator to a Group.
• A new Parent action center is introduced. The Parent action center positions the tool handles at the location of the current item’s parent. If the item doesn’t have a parent the handles are instead placed at the origin. Centre and axis options are provided (The axis option is useful for moving items in a hierarchy relative to their parent.).
• The Transform tool has a new attribute, “Child Compensate”. When enabled, any changes made to the position, rotation or scale of an item in a hierarchy will not (visually) affect the item’s children. The child item’s transforms are modified to counteract the transforms being applied to their parent (but not animation curves).
• A new ‘Compensate’ button found in the top area of the animation layout, next to the mode buttons, changes
the Parent/Unparent function to Parent in Place/Unparent in Place. What this does is ignores prior parental transforms, so items retain their initial positions in relation to their parent. Compensation is used when creating constraints or dynamic parents to allow the item affected to retain its world space placement. Compensation works when the constraints are created, or when adding and switching between Dynamic parent targets.

modo 401: Modeling Improvements

Pen Tool

• Improved the quad mode of Pen tool to use existing boundary vertex for the 2nd point if the base position of the quad is on a boundary point.
• The new wall mode in Pen tool draws double lines and includes handles to adjust the ‘offset’ amount.
• The new Merge option in the Pen tool snaps and merges to an existing vertex.
• Element pre-highlighting is now supported in the Pen tool.
• A “Show Angles” option will show corner angles of face polygons.5 Degree Angle Constraint can be invoked by the Ctrl key.A “Make UVs” option will create UVs for the new polygons. If “Backdrop Item” is set to “Project To” option, the pen positions are projected to the current selected Backdrop Item to create the UV values.
• Pen Extrude can make a tube with a selected profile or polygon along the selected edges with ability to cap the tube and invert profile.

Profile Presets

• Profile Presets are one type of many Presets supported in modo 401. These will store a geometry pattern (“profile”) which can be used to enhance the functionality of many modeling tools in modo.
• A new Profile Browser is provided to select profile presets from (numerous ones are supplied).
• You can also make and store your own Profile Presets.
• There are two types of Profiles:
• 1D profile is a single path consisting of lines and curves and is used for a parametric function to modulate a scale parameter along a path in modeling tools such as Tube, Sketch Extrude and path step generator. The 1D profile would be also worked with lathe tool as a source profile curve. The following tools support the 1D profile:
Tube tool, SketchExtrude, CurveExtrude, RadialSweep, PolygonBevel, LoopSlice, EdgeSlide, and Bridge tool.
• 2D profile is a 2-dimensional pattern shape consisting of lines and cubic Bezier curves. This profile is especially useful when it is used with sweep tools and thus the 2D profiles work with CurveExtrude, BezierExtrude, PenSweep and RadialSweep.The supporting polygon types are curve, Bezier, face and text. 1D profiles must have only one open path. 2D profiles can have multiple open and closed paths without intersections.
• The Linear, Radial and Cylinder falloff tools support 1D profiles to modulate the weights along the profile path.
• Clone effectors also support Profile Presets.

Background Constraint Improvements

New capabilities at modo 401 include:
• Offset the constrained point along the normal vector.
• The Geometry Constraint (Vector) will constrain transformed positions to background meshes. The Transform tools and the Push tool both work with in this mode, further enhancing modo’s ability to support re-topology operations.
• Geometry Constraint called Screen Axis will constrain the position in the direction of the screen axis. Transform tools work within this constraint mode.
• Smooth tool works with Background Constraint.
• Solid Sketch tool works with Background Constraint.
• A “Double Sided” option has been added to Background Constraint.

Sketching Improvements

New options for the Sketch tool at modo 401 include:
• Added “Precision” and “Uniform Spans” attributes to the Sketch tool.
• Added “Curve Interpolation” option to the Sketch tool.
• Added “Connect” option to Sketch tool which connects drawn quadrangles to existing boundary edges.
• Added “Slice” option to Sketch tool.
• Added “Quads” mode that lets you draw out quadrangle strips. It can be used in conjunction with the Background Constraint to easily place quads over background geometry.
• The Sketch tool now supports Ctrl key constraint on drawing to force a straight line result.

UV Editing Improvements

• The Relax tool now lets you save out your constraint points selected in the interactive mode to a vertex selection set. This allows you to not have to re-select those points if you drop the tool. You can also “add to” the selection set in the UV editor by using any of modo’s regular selection tools.
• UV Pack command now lays out UV islands with greater density.
• We have improved the speed of transform tools with tear off mode in modo 401.

Painting

• Painting has been updated to allow painting directly on projection textures (non-UVed).
• Painting now works with image sequences.
• The painting tools can now paint on Backdrop Items.
• There is a new UV seam projection method which reduces (in some cases completely eliminates) UV seam issues when painting and sculpting.
• Painting is now multi-threaded.
• Added ‘Auto Scale’ option to Image Ink, which maintains the image scale relative to the object. This means that the image becomes smaller as you zoom out and bigger as you zoom in. This is an effective way to make sure that your texture is always painted on the surface at a consistent scale.

Sculpting

• Added fast mode which uses interpolation to speed up image sculpting. This delivers speed at the expense of precision.
• Added support for fur and surface particle maps. This allows real-time sculpting of fur direction for example.

Instance Replicator

• The new Instance Replicator item accepts mesh or static mesh item(s) as prototypes and places replicas of them at the location given by a “source” that has modes for basic particles, aligned to surface, and polygons. Replicators are much lighter than instances because each instance has its own transform and various other data. Replicators simply derive their pos/rot/scale from the particles that feed them and are only generated at render time. This allows for renderings which contain >1 trillion polygons for example.
• The polygon mode places a particle at the center of each polygon using the normal and first edge for
orientation.
• The particles for an Instance Replicator can come from a Surface Generator item. This is a texture layer that is applied to surfaces by masking in modo’s Shader tree. The surfaces that it affects will have random particles distributed over them based on the spacing channel of the Generator. To use it, set the source of the Instance Replicator to the Surface Generator item of your choice. A “seed” channel on the Surface Generator allows for different particle sets over the same surface.
• Orientation of the replicas can be controlled by a normal vertex map, or an XFRM vertex map. To use normals, make some geometry and create a normal map from the Vertex Maps menu. Replicas will be oriented so their Y axis in model space points along the normal.
• Texturing: the Surface Generator can be textured using the surface particle effects. The surface particle
‘normal’ effect is a vector effect which controls the orientation of particles on the surface.
• Replicators are recursive. Replicators can thus replicate other replicator items via the “Use Children” option.

Other Modeling Improvements

• The Backdrop item has been enhanced to have “Contrast”, “Brightness” and “Transparency” channels. This provides better workflow when modeling over a reference image.
• A new “Camera” projection is a special projection mode for the camera view to display the image for front projection.
• There is a new Weld Effector tool and “Drag Weld” tool preset that lets you interactively merge vertices by moving one to be near the other.
• Edge Beveling quality is improved on complex edge selections.
• Image-based sculpting has improved seam smoothing.
• The Bridge tool has two new options; “Keep Aspect” and “Reverse Inset”.
• We improved the polygon reduction tool to keep characteristic edges and to minimize error between original shape and the approximated shape.
• The Edge Slice tool now has Element pre-highlighting.
• The Tube tool now allows the user to adjust the radius by RMB.
• An option to the Mesh Paint tool called tablet orientation has been added.
• We have improved the speed to create symmetrical geometry elements.
• The Edge Remove command now supports removing a curve edge.
• Element Falloff Improvement: A New “Edge Loop” mode has been added to the “Connected Elements” option.
• Loop Slice now supports an even N-gon and also has a “Reverse” option to reverse the slice positions.
• Grow Quads command creates quadrangles along the selected border edges.
• Fill Quads command makes quadrangles from open edge loops.
• You can now transfer vertex map information between two objects, including morph maps

Rendering

Preview Renderer Improvements

• We have improved the speed of the companion Preview Renderer for faster navigation updates.
• The Preview Renderer now offers extended refinement passes (aka progressive rendering) so your image gets “better and better”.
• Camera navigation inside the Preview Renderer is much faster, uses all available threads and is scales well even with large numbers of items in the scene.
• The Preview Renderer now supports Irradiance Cache style global illumination.
• Box zoom: ctrl alt RMB performs a box zoom on the geometry under the mouse in the Preview Renderer. This moves the camera and sets the target point and focus distance to the point under mouse.
• Added a camera popup in the Preview Renderer so you can select whatever camera you have in your scene to be the camera used in Preview. This allows you have multiple previews in your scene – either separate cameras or showing different render outputs (e.g. a reflection channel).
• Images can be dropped directly onto the Preview renderer. When they are dropped over a mesh they are applied as a texture layer; otherwise they are applied to the environment.
• You can now see a subset of the Shader Tree contributing to the material under your cursor when you click with the RMB over an item.

Camera Improvements
• Added a film back preset for the 2/3” CCD size used by many digital cameras
• Added a spherical projection type for camera items that results in a “lat/long” panoramic image based on the camera’s position and rotation. The intended use is the creation of spherical environment maps, including export of modo-created panoramic HDRI’s.
• You can now specify Field of View by angle

Stereoscopic Rendering

• Turning this on will cause each frame to be rendered twice, first for the left “eye” and then for the right. When a stereoscopic image sequence is saved, the filenames will include the letter “L” or “R” after the frame number.
The Interocular Distance (eye separation) and Convergence Distance (the distance from the camera at which an object will appear in the same position in both left and right images) are user-adjustable properties of the camera item. This works on stills and animated sequences (stereoscopic rendering can make use of irradiance and photon mapping caches when rendering multi-frame animations).

Photon Mapping

• Implemented direct light caustics using photon mapping for direct light sources (modo 302 already supported this for indirect light sources)
• The number of photons used is saved in the data saved with recent renders (and also shown in the Render Frame viewport as a readout).
• Caustic parameters can be animated.

Fur Material

• A new “Fur” material lets you add fibers to a surface with a wide variety of appearances. Fur can be seen in
the Preview Renderer and fur parameters are animatable.
• You can style Fur interactively, using the Sculpt tools on curves, which act as hair “guides”
• Features of Fur include:
• Length, Density, Taper, Flex and Growth Jitter can all be set
• Fur “clumping” is supported
• Circular or squarish fibers (e.g. tinsel) can be created
• Root Bend provides a way to set fur direction and also the curvature
• Sculpting Collision detection: works at the Sculpt tool and the hair guide tool level to detect collisions
between the surface and curves and changes the curve so that it doesn’t intersect the surface.
• Support for UV maps and weight maps
• Fur layering allows the layering of fur materials and their textures – this can be used to show things like a
tennis ball that have a dense soft fur layer and a few longer, thinner, hairs that stick out
• Fur direction can (also) be controlled with direction texture maps that can be sculpted like vector
displacement maps.
• Adaptive fur makes hair density goes down as a function of the distance to the viewer.
• Fur strips have implicit UVs which can be accessed in the texture locator as ‘Fur UV’. Using this texture
projection mode you can do interesting texturing effects like feathers or fronds
• Fur can be rendered with transparency
• The supplied hair shader improves specular highlights (and flattens diffuse shading) for more realistic hair
• Fur Presets are supplied to make application of Fur easier.

Tone Mapping

Implemented“ photographic” tone mapping operator proposed by Reinhard et. al. so that images can have a warmer tone and extremely bright areas do not burn out.

Multiple Environment Support

The Shader Tree can now contain more than one Environment item. These should have different visibility settings to distinguish which one is used for the background seen by the camera, which is used indirect illumination, for reflection, and for refraction.

Shadow Catcher

A new “Shadow Catcher” feature is nice for making environments (such as HDR panoramas) appear to be receiving shadows cast by geometry. It is applied as a new alpha type in the shader item, and accounts for both direct lights and indirect illumination (cached or otherwise). It results in a surface that is completely transparent to the camera except where direct and indirect shadows appear. Useful for compositing meshes over existing image
environments.

Procedural Texture Improvements

The Cellular • procedural texture now has options to randomly vary the ‘fill’ value of the interstitial areas between cells.
• The new Weave procedural texture generates a woven effect. A Roundness channel in the Weave texture at a value of 0% results in ribbon with a rectangular cross section and a value of 100% generates circular yarn effects.
• A new procedural Ripples texture is available; based on waves radiating from sources randomly arranged on a sphere whose size is that of the texture locator. The wavelength is a percentage of this size, and the phase can be keyframed to animate the ripples. Increasing the phase channel moves the waves away from their sources

Dispersion

This new setting is used to “tint” refraction rays, like you would see on a rendering of a cut gemstone. It controls how much the refractive index of a transparent material varies with wavelength.

Clearcoat

The new Clearcoat channel creates an additional unblurred, untinted reflection layer (with physically based Fresnel). This frees up the regular specular, reflection, and roughness controls to represent the underlying layer, and removes the need for adding an extra shader item. The most common application for this is metallic automotive paints.

Global Illumination

Shader Items now have an option for Global Illumination type, enabling the user to control which surfaces use Monte Carlo versus Irradiance Cache. Monte Carlo is better used on very detailed surfaces such as fur or carpet which can cause the Irradiance Cache to grow to unmanageable size.

Volumetric Lighting

• Lights can now have volumetric effects. A volumetric light is a volume that reacts to light as it travels through, showing effects like smoke and projected shadow rays.
• Volumetric lighting comes from the interaction of light with a medium, and this is controlled by the volumetric options in the light material. The two main effects are scattering and absorption, which is somewhat analogous to diffuse and transparency for surfaces. Control is also provided over volume density. If you imagine spot lights in a smoky bar, the volumetric effect is more visible when the air is thick with smoke (when the smoke density is high). Lowering the density makes the effects less visible.
• Volumetric shadows are supported, which projects shadow rays into the volume. In modo, this happens
automatically if the light has shadow options.

Deep Shadow Maps

Deep shadow maps are shadow maps that can deal with transparent surfaces and volumetrics. These maps cache the shadow information as a way to speed up shadow rendering. They are mostly interesting to use on heavyscenes that combine lots of geometry and volumetrics.

Light Linking

The effect of lights can now be excluded or included at the Shader Item level, allowing you to link a light to specific meshes in the scene so that only those parts of the scene are illuminated. This way you can highlight your main subject without adding extra light to your background. You can include or exclude by groups, you can have multiple lights in a group and lights can be in multiple groups and you can use any type of masking to control the light linking.

Blurry Refraction

Implemented blurry refraction, in which multiple refraction rays are jittered based on the material’s roughness. This is useful for things like frosted glass.

Anisotropy Direction Mapping

Added a texture effect to allow texturing of the blurry reflection anisotropy direction for materials. You can use an image map to modify the anisotropy direction on a surface, which means controlling the orientation of the microscratches on the surface that spread out specular highlights and blurry reflections. Some common applications are carbon fiber and engine-turned metal parts.

Other Rendering and Baking Improvements

• Curves now be rendered as tubes with volume.
• Two new antialiasing levels with 128 or 256 samples per pixel have been added. This will enable improved
motion blur quality, among other things.
• We are employing a new motion blur method for animated transforms that provides a superior result compared to the previous per-vertex motion vector method. This allows instances to be motion blurred differently from their source mesh, for example. This provides improvements in radial motion blurs, like a rotating wheel, for example.
• In modo 401 you can bake to a sequence of images. This allows baking of animated texture layers.
• Sampling of iris positions (for depth of field) and time (for motion blur) have been improved for higher quality.
• A new channel was added to control the roughness used for blurry refraction, so it no longer needs to be the same as the reflection roughness.
• Edit fields have been added to the render window for interactively adjusting white level, tone mapping, and gamma level after a render.
• There are new readouts about the light cache in the Render Frame window.
• The sampling of distributed light sources has been improved for higher speed and quality.
• Added an Exit Color channel to the advanced material item to specify what color to use for refraction & reflection when the maximum ray depth has been reached. This means you can pick any color instead of black when cutting off an infinite (or at least longer than the max depth) series of reflections or refractions. It will be modulated by reflection color, absorption, etc. in the usual way. It means you can lower the refraction depth and not get too much black.
• Shadow map resolution control has been added to spot lights.
• Added a Dissolve amount channel to the advanced material item which fades the regular shading of a surface toward the color returned by an unbent, untinted refraction ray. Shadows cast by dissolved surfaces are also appropriately faded.
• Added an option to make indirect illumination account for subsurface scattering (enabling objects with bright SSS to illuminate nearby surfaces, like glowing wax for example).
• Added keyboard controls for adjusting the exposure in the render window.
• Updated turntable rendering to support both X up and Z up coordinate systems.
• Image sequences can now be discontinuous, when a frame is not there the last texture in the sequence before that one is used.

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