I wonder about all the time I have spent learning to model in Maya?

I just watched the modo 401 hard surface subd modeling video by Andrew Brown and it makes me want to remove Maya from all my machines and chuck all the disks into the nearest trash bin!

First I want to say that Andrew has to be one of the most articulate persons I have ever had the pleasure of listening too.

In the video he goes over creating a standin model of a subcomponent of a large and highly detailed mech. He creates a small library of proxy components. Then he sets up a basic rig to test the functionality of the subcomponent (in this example the ankle area of the mechs foot).

This first section is pretty straight forward, simple shapes, big ngons, pieces just stuck into other pieces. The highlight of this section though is the asset management system built into modo 401 that allows you to create libraries of easily accessed and reusable parts!

The second section is what really blew me away. He then detailed the proxy parts to create some of the final high detailed parts. All I can say is OH MY GOD! I watched it 5 times. He combined some objects and added details to objects that I would spend an eternity trying to duplicate in Maya!

Watching how he combined pieces of a piston assembly into a single object and how he created some very cool brackets with part lines and areas for them to be bolted together - with such ease - made me feel very envious.

In the second section there were two main features that really shined.

First was the back ground constraint object which is kinda like making an object live in maya only far more powerful. You make an object a background constraint and then you can just push another object into it and it forms perfectly to the surface. That is such a awesome feature. SEXY just damn SEXY!

Second was the axis and work plane alignment system. Maya's axis system (world, local, and object) just plain blows and has always blown! The only way I have found to get user defined axis alignment in Maya that even remotely compares to Modo is to create a cube proxy, manually align it as close as I can to the way I want the working axis, parent the object I am working on to it, then freeze transforms which is very tedious and inaccurate.

In the end I am just flabbergasted. It made me feel like Maya was a rickety go cart compared to a Ferrari!

I want to try and recreate the pieces Andy made in the video using Maya to see if I can figure it out. I'd like to take a shot at learning Modo again. I tried it before but the workflow is so completely different from Maya I was having trouble wrapping my head around it, and I actually regressed in my ability to use Maya. So I figured it was better to know one package really well then be an average Joe on two. At the time Modo was still buggy and Maya's workflow in my mind was easier.

But I have to tell you every time I see a modo modeling tutorial I am tempted to just chuck Maya and switch hard core to Modo.