Author: Debi

With modo 601 came a video called Fireboy where Andy Brown rigs and animates one of Warner McGee's characters. The video is quite detailed, but if you just want to quickly jump in and rig a character, I've broken it down into simple steps below.

Preparation

• Make sure your character is a nice clean mesh without holes or flaws. Just to be sure, run > Geometry > Mesh Cleapup before you start.
• Separate the components, such as body and eyes into separate layers.
• Centre your character at X & Z, and zero on Y
 

Create Skeleton

• Click on the Setup tab along the top menu
• Under Commands select > Setup > Skeleton
• Then click on Tool Properties tab and make sure that Compensation and Intersection are turned on (2:20)
• In Add-mode, create your skeleton. Be mindful of when to use symmetry, and when to turn it off.


Align Bones

• Double-click on the root bone (in the viewport, or from the Item List)
• Adjust all joint locators so that the red line is pointing along the X-axis by selecting each joint individually, then clicking on the universal transform tool to move it. It's quicker if you have two viewports open side-by-side - one Front, and one Right to make seeing where you're at, easier. (5:55)

Zero out transforms on all joints (Sets a resting position for deformations)

• Go into Setup modo. A yellow border will apart around the viewport
• Double-click on the root bone
• Go to > Properties > Zero > All
• Turn off the Setup mode toggle
• Save
 

Bind skeleton to Mesh

• While in Item mode, select Setup mode
• Double-Click on the root bone in the viewport, and then Shift-select the character mesh
• Then under  > Commands > Deformers > Bind > Heat  (you can use any of the other options)

The modo 601 documentation has at least three times as much content as previous versions. And you'll be fascinated by some of the hidden gems you'll find there. So reading the modo docs on your iPad is a great way to kill time whilst being productive - especially when you don't have a paperback with you, or internet access. And five minutes a day discovering something new is more worthwhile than playing games 😉   

Note: MODO701 does not come with a .pdf version of the help docs  

• In your Applications folder, right-click on the modo icon and select 'Show package contents'
• The PDF is located in the 'Help' folder
• Open iTunes and drag the PDF onto the books icon
• The pdf will appear on your bookshelf once you synch your iPad

Ever needed a low-poly bird for a background, or wanted to sculpt an organic shape like an animal or human but didn't want to start totally from scratch? Did you know modo has them built-in? They're part of the Solid Sketch menu.

The Solid Sketch tool provides a quick method for “roughing” out organic shapes. By clicking down, new nodes are created and Solid Sketch connects these dots with a smooth flowing mesh. Each node can spawn new branches to create complex shapes quickly and easily.

When you click to create a node you can immediately drag to the right and left to scale the node. Once you have released the mouse button you can use the various handles to move, scale, rotate and twist the node. Additionally, holding the Shift key and dragging on the center handle will scale on all three axes. Clicking on a node with the middle-mouse button will delete that node.

Note: It seems for some reason that this functionality has been removed from MODO701.  

Go to > Geometry > Curve Palette > Presets

Within an hour or so, I received two responses - one from modo mio, who gave me the answer I wanted, and then Clef took it one step further and gave me the answer I needed by creating an updated video using the newer schematic view. So this article is kind of a hybrid of all three approaches but hopefully the simplest way.

You can watch the original video by Ryan Drue created for modo 401 (Old Luxology Forums - no longer exists) Later on when 601 came out, there were questions on the forum about how the workflow had since changed where Clef and a modo mio responded

And this is Clef's video using the schematic view

When rendering out characters, most times it's preferable to have them looking straight at the camera. But you may need to move the camera around quite a bit so that you can get just the right angle, which means, you will need to keep manually adjusting the eyes so that they continue to look towards the camera. There is a way though that you can constrain the eyes to remain fixed on a particular spot (locator). That way you can then move the locator anywhere around and the eyes will follow, making it a lot easier for you to set up your shot.

If however, you move the locator really close to the eyes, they will go cross-eyed, so using a central controller can help deform the eyes in a non-destructive manner.