So, you're an avid part-time MODO user, but you'd still like to be able to keep up-to-date with all the neat tricks and cool ways you can optimize your MODO workflow.
Being a hobbyist sometimes it can be weeks or months before I manage to find some spare time to mess around with MODO, by which time, I've almost forgotten everything. :-/
This site is just as much for me as it is for you. It's a place where all can keep all the tips and tricks I come across, and it's fully indexed, so you should be able to find whatever you're looking for very easily :)
I'm no MODO expert - far from it, but every other month I'd like to be able to present you with a new article that'll become a new string to add to your modo bow.
If you're a longterm 3D artist or professional, then I can't guarantee there'll be much here you don't already know. You can always have a poke around though., or if you are looking for something specific, use the Search menu up the top (and the links with topics, categories and tags underneath) to find exactly what you're after. If you don't have any luck, let me know if there is anything in particular that you're looking for.
- Debi (alphageekgirl)
Here you'll find a variety of MODO gems & tips I've managed to either figure out myself or collected along the way which hopefully will help improve your workflow. You can never have too many tricks up your sleeve! ;)
Most people think that Texture Locators are just those widgets that get in the way while you're trying to work on your scene, but James Darknell takes some time to explain how they work and offers a different way to quickly align them to your item's surface.
One of the handiest things you can use in your everyday workflow is the versatile way you can approach entering numbers into MODO. Here in this video, James Darknell explains a variety of ways that even many MODO experts are unaware of.
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/view.aspx?id=659I particularly like the Gang Edit. 🙂
In addition to being able to edit the number fields by typing in numbers, users can gang edit all three fields simultaneously by LMB+Clicking the icon to the left of the mini-slider enabling the feature.
INDEPENDENT - The default is i 'Independent', controls are edited independently.
COPY - The first click changes the field = 'Copy', will make whatever you type into the first field, the same in the other two fields.
PROPORTIONAL - The second click changes to ∞ (infinity) 'Proportional' where value changes are applied proportionally to all like controls.
RELATIVE - The third click changes to + 'Relative', the value change is added to all like controls. For instance if you divided the first field by /2 the other two fields would recalculate dividing by two as well.
When entering numeric values, you can use keyboard equivalents as well, such as;
'Ctrl'+'Alt'+'Enter'for Copy
'Ctrl'+'Enter' for Proportional
'Alt'+'Enter' for Relative
| Description | Architectural visualization is often known for its silhouettes of people going about their day. These 2D stencil images can be downloaded from the 'net, or from the MODO asset share site. When it comes to changing camera angles though, it's not necessary for you to go around and tweak each person so that they remain aligned to the camera. Here's a trick I saw Brad Peebler do a few years back. |
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You'll notice then that when you move the camera, the 2D Item Mesh will always align to the camera. However, one thing that you probably won't want it to do is, tilt when you move the camera up or down. You just need it to move on the Y-axis only 
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| Forum Link | http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/view.aspx?id=483 | ||
| Source | Brad Peebler | ||
| Description | Before you go wasting a heap of time rendering out an entire movie in final quality without even knowing whether it'll work, I suggest that you first render out a lower-res version. In Maya this is called a Playblast. In modo, I could never remember how to do this. That's why I am posting it here because I am sure a lot of other people either don't know about it, or else, cannot remember where to find it either. But beware, it won't be a nice looking render. It will look just like your viewport, including lights, camera and locators. It's basically so you can check your composition and timing An alternative lo-res solution, is to render out your animation with a capped time limit. This will look more like a draft version, and can be especially helpful if you know your scene is going to take say 12-24 hours to render properly - and especially if you know things will more than likely need to be changed, but you just don't want to waste all that time waiting at this point, so you could set it up for say 6 hours instead, so that it can be done say over night. http://www.alphageekgirl.com/?p=1065 |
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| Version | MODO 701 / 801 | ||
If you add an object, sometimes that camera just is a little too big for the scene, especially when getting in close. Or by the same token, if you've got a really large object, your camera is almost invisible; it's too tiny. So under the Display, with that camera selected, there is the Size. This is the view size; it's not the actual size of your renderer or anything else--it's the size of the camera icon.
So you can change that depending on your scene, and what I've often told people is just set it to 0 and it stays relative to your zoom. So notice the camera pretty much stays the same size, whether you zoom in or out, and that's really kind of nice. So I always know where it is. If I zoom out really far, my objects are hard to see, but because I have this size set to 0, I can always find my camera. So, something to think about when you are building larger scenes.
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