modo_501_New_Features

modo® 501 improvements 1 Updated 12/14/10 modo® 501 This document lists new features and improvements in modo 501 Click to go to any section: >> RENDERING >> HAIR/FUR >> PREVIEW RENDERER >> ANIMATION AND RIGGING >> MODELING >> MODO PLUG-IN SDK >> SCULPTING >> WORKFLOW AND USER INTERFACE >> PAINTING RENDERING >> Ray-tracing speed has been heavily optimized in modo 501, generally resulting in a significant rendering speed increase. Speed improvements of 2.5x over modo 401 are common, though the increase can vary from zero to over 3x depending on scene and settings. There are two new anti-aliasing options (512 and 1024 samples). One major benefit of these new options is improved Depth of Field blur quality. Motion blur computation speed has been improved. The new View Frustum Culling option in Fur Material rendering reduces memory usage by only what is in the camera frame and delivers a speed improvement in Fur rendering. The new Displacement as Bump rendering option makes it possible to use a higher displacement rate (meaning less polygons) while maintaining the same or better visual quality. This delivers a small rendering speed improvement as well. The enhanced Depth of Field delivers higher quality Bokeh Effects, and new control is provided over iris blades, iris rotation and edge weighting for more photorealistic results in shallow depth of field situations. A large set of Enhance: modo textures are provided. This is an extensive library which includes geometric textures, plus organic, noise, panel, process, skin, space tile, water and even display counter textures like a 24 hour clock. You can now restrict the amount of memory that a large texture is allowed to use. The Image Size Limit option is useful when you have a large texture applied in your scene but do not actually need to use all of the detail. The amount by which each light source affects subsurface scattering (SSS) can now be specified as a percentage in the light’s material. This lets you create more realistic results for things like candle wax, skin or milk. You can also use this setting to exclude the impact of a light source that is present in the scene for other purposes. RGBA layer effect provides control of color and stenciling using a single image map with an alpha channel. A new Dissolve Amount setting in Materials provides a way to fade surfaces from view on a texture basis. The Dissolve Amount is different from transparency as it is a convenient way to fade all aspects of a surface simultaneously. The new Vertex Illumination Baking function provides a means to bake or burn-in the illumination colors of the scene directly to the vertices of the geometry as a Vertex Color Map. Bump mapping is improved, as it is now based on a new algorithm which makes it more general and accurate. It also makes bumps behave like displacement, thus making it possible to use gradients as bumps. Bump amplitude is now expressed (like displacement amplitude) as a distance. modo 501 can save stereo pairs in a side-by-side format which is popular for creating stereo video streams. modo 501 can save Anaglyph stereo images, meaning you can now directly save stereo images ready for viewing with red/blue glasses out of modo. Gradients can now take ‘Back Facing’ as an input, which is 0 normally, but has a value of 1 for the back sides of double-sided polygons. When set to ‘Back Facing,’ the gradient will color both the front and rear sides of a polygon on double sided materials. First and Last irradiance cache pre-pass spacing options can now be set in the Render channels to provide more control over GI quality. modo® 501 improvements 2 Rendering continued >> Falloff Type control has been added to area, cylinder lights, point lights, and spotlights; offering you the choice of inverse distance or inverse distance squared. A new Linear Fog type lets you set the fog distance manually (linear or exponential). modo now offers the ability to work with huge disk-based, tiled images using the folder-based storage method for Zoomify images, where the tiles are stored as individual JPEG files, and an index file (with the extension “.xml”) is used to look up the tiles. This enables working with images that are much larger than available system memory. Useful for working with large terrain images, for example. Occlusion shading is added as a new Shader Tree item layer. The Occlusion material offers options for various types including concavity, convexity, up/down slope. The variance noise can be stretched along the Y axis for effects that depend on that direction, namely: up/down slope. There is also control over spread angle, as well as parameters that control how and in what quantity the rays are “shot.” One example use is in simulating how a metal object looks highly polished in some areas, while darker oxidation remains in nooks and crannies. Indirect bump mapping is a new render option that enables bump mapping evaluation on indirect rays (the ones used to compute global illumination). This is disabled by default since it is usually not necessary but it can be enabled for specific GI cases like caustics on bumpy surfaces. The new Match Specular option makes the amount, Fresnel, and color settings be identical (roughness and anisotropy are already shared). In the real world there is no distinction between specularity and mirror/blurry reflection – it’s all the same thing. So in physically-based rendering, materials should have identical specular and reflection settings, which this option facilitates this. Edge Contour rendering is now supported. Options include surface and segment rendering, plus control over contour color and width. The option to fade over distance is also provided. Especially useful for visualizations of CAD data. A new rendering option called Indirect LOD can save memory and increase rendering speed in certain situations. When checked on, a lower level of detail copy is made of a displaced surface when it is hit by an indirect illumination ray. This means the high resolution surface can sometimes be flushed from memory thus saving memory. There is a new customer-provided image for the default environment that is used for the reflection shading mode in OpenGL. There is a new system preference to control the size of network rendering jobs. The number of buckets per job is now a multiple of the number of render threads on the slave machine. For example, a job size preference of 200% would cause quad core slaves to receive jobs of eight buckets each. PREVIEW RENDERER >> The Preview Renderer is noticeably faster. Preview will now iteratively render scenes exceeding quality settings determined by the user - the longer it “cooks” the higher the quality of the image. Preview progressively refines all noise in the scene, such as depth of field, blurry reflections, monte carlo global illumination, etc., exceeding the quality specified by the user; the longer it runs, the higher quality the image will be. The Preview Renderer now updates in randomized tiles rather than scan-lines, providing users quicker viewport feedback. Preview Renderer image quality is also enhanced as modo now uses an improved sampling method for anti-aliasing and respects color clamping. Interactive Preview refinement. You can direct the Preview Renderer to work on any desired area first by “scrubbing” a region with the mouse. This results in the area of interest under the mouse being updated faster. This Update Under Mouse option can be enabled or disabled in the Options button of the Preview Renderer. You can now toggle a button in the Preview Renderer to suppress Irradiance Cache updates on complex scenes where it’s taking a lot of time. This is useful when working on texturing since these types of changes usually do not depend heavily on the IC values. Irradiance caching quality is improved in the Preview Renderer. You can now set how much anti-aliasing should be performed (# of samples) by default in the Preview Renderer. The maximum number of samples/pixel that the Preview renderer uses with ‘Extended Refinement Passes’ on and off is set in the System Preferences. MODELING >> modo now allows you to optionally use Pixar’s industry-compliant subdivision surface representation. The PSub (Pixar Subdivision Surface) geometry provides a number of advantages including semi-sharp creasing and no texture warping. You can convert to the new PSub by using the Shift-TAB key combination. modo® 501 improvements 3 Modeling continued >> The new Pixar Subdivision Surfaces support Boundary Rules. The Boundary Rules option, available in mesh properties, allows you to control the way points are moved on a boundary in three different ways: • Smooth All: All of positions on the boundary are moved by the smooth rule. • Crease All: All of positions on the boundary are moved by the crease rule (sharp edge rule). • Crease Edges: The points that have two incident edges (valence = 2) are moved by the crease rule, others are smooth. Using FBX 2010.2 and the new Pixar Subdivision Surfaces, you can now exchange the semi-sharp crease data between modo and Maya. The polygon Subdivide command optionally uses the same algorithm as the Pixar Subdivision Surface representation does for the SDS Subdiv command. This new method also maintains UV textures and will work on curve polygons. The Linear and Array generators now include a new “Between” option which establishes positions between the start and the end handles. This is useful when you want to align trees, buildings, fence posts or other objects with consistent distances between them. A new Snap toggle (button) is provided in the user interface, which enables snapping behaviors, depending on the situation. The Snap toggle key is assigned to the global ‘X’ key. In any idle time, pushing the Snap key simply toggles the global snapping state. By LMB + the Snap toggle, the snapping state is temporary changed when LMB is down. The state comes back again as soon as the mouse button is released. This ability to temporarily enable snapping saves several mouse clicks over the old method, streamlining workflow. A new snapping popover activated by the F11 key provides ready access to the current snapping state and also shows settings for snapping and constraint tools. You can also toggle snapping on or off from this popover. The tool attributes about snapping for the Pen and Mirror tools have been included in the popover. The Geometry snap mode is improved to snap to a plane or the axis of the vertex position when you drag the constraint axis handle or plane handle. With the new Freeze Replicator command, you can now convert replicas into instances. This allows you to edit them or export them to other software. With the new Freeze Surface Generator, you can now convert a surface generator into a point cloud for individual control over replicator/instance items by editing the individual vertices. Surface generators have a new “Ignore Deformations” option. This allows the replicas to “stick” on animated deformations. You can use this to make leaves “float” on an undulating lake surface for example. Replicators have Time Offset and Time Variation parameters for random variations. This affects the transform and visibility of replicated child items. The Random Time Variation channel selects a window for replicas to vary from the current time. So if this is set to 1 second, then the replicas will have random transforms based on their animation between the current time and one second in the future. The Time Offset channel can be used to move the random window in time. For example, if this is set to 5 seconds and the Variation is set to 1 second, then the replicas will get their motion from the animation of the prototype between 5 and 6 seconds into the future. The Edge Slide and Edge Extend tools now work with the background geometry constraint. The new ‘Drop’ paint mode in the Mesh Paint tool lets you place a mesh while controlling the rotation and size at the same time (like the preset brush). The Mesh Paint tool now lets you directly indicate a specific item to use as the source. New tablet controls allow you to control the position and rotation of mesh paint elements using the angle of the pen on the tablet’s surface. The new rotation modes are: • Surface Align with tablet (no pitch), aligns to the surface using the tablet heading but no pitch. • Screen align aligns the mesh using the screen direction. Diagonal Edge selection mode is introduced. modo can now automatically select edges which are shared by pairs of triangles. You can convert triangles to quadrangles by removing the selected edges. The Loop Slice tool is enhanced with a new Preserve Curvature option that lets the new position be calculated on a cubic curve to avoid flattening and thus maintain the curvature of the edge. The new Add Loop tool is the interactive version of Loop Slice tool. Just click on an edge and you can see a pre-highlighted span to slice at the mouse position. This adds a “1-Click” edge loop creation capability to modo. Several options are provided in the tool, including distance and position indicators, splitting at the middle of the selected loop and creating new parallel loops. The Add Point tool is introduced. This is another “1-Click” interactive tool to quickly add a vertex on the clicked edge. Ideal for adding a vertex on a curve or Bezier spline. modo® 501 improvements 4 Modeling continued >> Align Vertices is a command to align the selected vertices along the given axis or on the plane between the 1st selected vertex and the last selected one. This command requires three or more selected vertices and will align them by axis or on a uniform basis. The Split Vertex command splits curve type polygons at the selected vertices. It takes a single vertex and creates multiple vertices in the same location, based on the number of polygons that share the point. The Set Position command is enhanced with two options to specify the space of the input position: • Work Plane: The input position is encoded from the current custom work plane to the model space. • World Space: The input position is encoded from the scene space to the model space. Smoothing Groups are introduced. Smoothing groups allow users to define specific areas for polygon smoothing in game engines and provide better control over vertex normal shading when making game characters. modo now presents polygon statistic entries for concave and convex polygons and smoothing groups. SCULPTING >> Multi-Res sculpting is now supported. This utilizes the newly introduced Pixar Subdivision Surface type of geometry. You can sculpt on any subdivision level to make gross shape adjustments while preserving the fine details you added earlier at a lower subdivision level. This also lets you add extremely fine detail without having to explicitly add more geometry in detailed areas. Sculpting has an improved stroke engine that provides less lag and greater speed. Stroke interpolation options are provided: • Stroke step: as a percent of the brush size, this controls the distance between each consecutive brush position. Smaller means smoother but slower strokes. • Continuous Stroke: connects each consecutive brush position, making the stroke continuous • Draw Stroke: draws the stroke as a yellow line in the OpenGL view, to help you visualize the stroke. A multi-resolution palette is added to the Sculpt tool palette with the following controls: • Multi-resolution: A toggle button to enable multi-resolution mode on the current mesh. • Max Level: The maximum subdivision level allowed for the current SDS mesh. • Current Level: The current subdivision level for the current multi-resolution level. The Lock Borders option when sculpting will freeze the positions of any border areas (i.e. open edges) so brushes can’t affect them. When sculpting this lets you relax a shape without changing its borders. You can now invoke a Smooth Mode and apply smoothing during sculpting operations at will. This is very useful when using sculpting tools like Flatten. Sculpting is now supported in the UV view. Sculpt tools in the UV view provide a very natural way to work on UVs: you can push, pull and smooth them just like you would do on a regular mesh with sculpt tools. You can use sculpting tools to interactively smooth (relax) a mesh with brush falloff and by using the Sculpt Move tool with Rigid UV’s enabled, UV islands can be easily moved around. This can also be activated with the control key on the Move tool. Sculpting now supports use of a Background Constraint to facilitate re-topology operations. PAINTING >> Image ink UV Mask option lets you set an image to use as a mask (blocking areas from receiving paint) in UV space. This is convenient to use with baked textures like Occlusion passes - allowing you to paint on a face except for areas with deep (occluded) creases for example. The mask can also be inverted so you can paint in areas that are normally hard to access. A new Clone View Projection option lets you paint using an image that is a clone of the 2D view of your painted scene. HAIR/FUR >> You can now use two types of Billboard polygons in the Fur material, as a way to distribute flat polygons across a surface The Tree option replaces each fiber with a flat, upright simple polygon plane that always faces the current render camera. The Leaves option replaces each fiber with a flat simple polygon plane. Billboards are useful for mapping tree images to upright planes scattered on a landscape to create a forest or for adding leaf images to a tree branch, for example. View Frustum Culling is a new Fur Material parameter that directs modo to disregard Fur outside the camera view at render time. This results in faster fur generation time and reduced memory usage. It is mostly useful on large landscapes covered with grass. modo® 501 improvements 5 Hair/Fur continued >> Preview now has options to disable Fur and to reduce the Fur density in Preview. Guide source: Fur Guides can now be specified by item and polygon tag. This makes it possible to separate the Guides from the surface on which hairs are grown, so you could have a mesh with just the Guides controlling the hairs grown on another mesh. You can also tag the Guides for each Fur layer, which allows more sophisticated hair styling. The Fur Material now offers Kink options. This applies a Perlin noise the root or tip of a fur strand to change the root direction smoothly. You have control over Scale and Offset parameters. The Fur Material now offers Frizz options. This applies a Perlin noise the root or tip of a fur strand to change the hair direction at each node. You have control over Scale and Offset parameters. OpenGL Fur now works with Guides. Set OpenGL Color overrides the OpenGL color using the specified color, this can useful when working with Guides to distinguish them visually from the OpenGL Fur representation. OpenGL Fur quality is much improved, and now follows the Render results much more closely. Fur textures are now evaluated at each point along the hair, making it possible to change clumping along the length, for example. Hair sculpting ‘Tip mode’ is introduced. Tip mode makes the tool work with maximum strength on the tip and reduces the effect on the root. This provides a more natural feel. Fur Strays can now be generated. Strays are individual hairs that escape and protrude from Clumps. You can set their percentage probability and their Strength, which affects how far from the clump they diverge. Fur IC is a new option that forces the Fur to us