MODO10 What new?

    

MODO 10The modelling and texturing tool expands its feature set to empower game artists and streamline processes TMODO 10he latest release of MODO focuses mainly on improvements for game artists. It features a number of new features and upgrades to make life easier for work on game assets and baking. It boosts an already-solid modelling program with some much-needed tools that make it easier to work with real-time engines.The largest new features and improvements lie in the new games layout and the tools within it.The Game Tools layout is a new tab that gathers many of the game-art specific tools in one place,with export settings and options for FBX, baking information for baking out textures, as well as asection for editing vertex normals.Many of the new additions are things that youwere able to work around in earlier versions ofMODO in various ways, but for newcomers this is an extra welcome addition since it reduces the amount of problem solving to reach the expected results. Also the new solutions are easy to find.Baking items is one of the new additions, which is a new way to organize your baking and save your baking settings; it comes in handy if you have multiple bake setups in one scene or need to rebake something several times. The renderer is now also in sync with the view port when it comes to the triangulation of polygons, which is a welcome fix for game artists as that should cut down on unnecessary steps in the baking process.Progressive baking is also a new feature, which is handy for heavier bakes and previewing them.The export section of the Game Tools layout has exposed all the export parameters for FBX, it also includes the latest FBX versions (up to version2015) and easy access to setting export paths. The exporter now also supports instanced layers in MODO, so it’s possible to assemble scenes from meshes in MODO, and import them straight in to the level editor in Unity and Unreal. Overall, the export process has been greatly improved, and is much more user friendly than in the earlier versions of MODO.The advanced view port has also seen an overhaul, with the aim to match the in-engine view ports of Unreal Engine and Unity. It features support for PBR shaders and HDRI lighting, with shading options to match both Unreal Engine and Unity. New texture settings have been added to correspond to the common texture channels in Unreal and Unity for accurate texture representation. The view port has some stability issues and some of the settings are a bit too taxing for proper real-time use, but overall it matches the look quite well, so previewing the assets before taking them to the game engine is now a breeze.For people who are new to MODO, and especially those who work with games, this version of MODO adds a lot of features that were sorely needed, and really simplifies some of the key workflows when working with game art. The core of the program is still very solid, with some new tools added, but with the addition of all the new game-focused features, MODO is a lot more attractive for game art. For previous owners, the upgrade is well worth it if you are a games artist –the amount of streamlining compared to previous versions is enough to motivate an upgrade.