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# 5 10-12-2009 , 01:28 PM
ctbram's Avatar
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Michigan, USA
Posts: 2,998
Modo is based on lightwave or at least it was written by many of the original developers of lightwave who left to join luxology.

It's cheaper because of several factors - It has not been around as long as Maya and therefore does not have the track record with large studios that Maya enjoys. Until recently it did not have the animation capabilities of Maya and as far as I know still does not have very robust support for dynamics or any fluid dynamics.

In many ways it has modeling features that seem better than Maya for exactly the same but inverted reasons. Maya is getting old and has had no major improvements to it's tools in a very long time. Some may argue that around 8.5-2008 editions some significant upgrades were added. But nothing more then you could get in some free third party plugins as I see it. Modo on the other hand is new and has a lot of very powerful modeling tools that Maya does not.

The things I think Modo has improved upon from Maya are:

1. a far better axis control system
2. a much improved and more powerful element selection system
3. far more powerful falloff and soft selection tools
4. more accurate control of things like bevels, insets, offsets, extrudes...
5. asset management system

to list a few.

That being said a lot of veteran Maya users like myself are comfortable with the Maya workflow and I have found even after my initial awe with the hard surface modeling tutorial in Modo that I can accomplish the same results in Maya without much more effort.

My intent AND I MUST MAKE THIS VERY CLEAR was not to start a package war. I believe Maya, Modo, Max, XSI, and a list too long to mention are all very capable tools and all have features that give them advantages.

I was just very impressed with what I saw in the HSM tutorial and several other modo videos I have watched. I would actually prefer to see some of those capabilities brought into Maya then learn an entirely different program and workflow.


"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 12-12-2009 at 06:34 AM.