MODO And The Future of 3D Design
MODO is a powerful and intuitive 3D modeling, texturing, animation and rendering application that has been making waves in the computer graphics industry since its initial release in 2004. Originally developed byLuxology, MODO was acquired by The Foundry in 2012 and continues to be developed and improved upon with each new release.
With its speed, flexibility and innovative toolset, MODO enables artists to quickly iterate and explore creative ideas in 3D. It is used across a wide range of industries including product and industrial design, visual effects, animation, games, architecture and more. As the world shifts further into digital content creation, MODO provides the perfect bridge between concept and final product. A key factor in this is MODO's seamless integration with AWS and Conductor, and even an online, third-party render farm like GarageFarm, enabling scalable, high-speed rendering.
MODO's Strengths
One of MODO's biggest strengths is its fast and intuitive direct modeling capabilities. The modeling toolkit provides a wide range of tools for pushing, pulling, extruding, scaling, cutting and deforming polygon geometry with speed and flexibility. Organic shapes and hard-surface models can be created and refined rapidly without the restrictions of a history-based workflow.
Rendering and shading in MODO is powered by a physically-based shader system, providing realistic material definitions and lighting scenarios. Photorealistic images and animations can be produced quickly even on lower end hardware by utilizing the integrated, network-based rendering solution. Final frames can be rendered locally or distributed across render farm networks.
MODO integrates gracefully with other software through import and export of common 3D file formats. It has out-of-the-box support for FBX, Alembic and native SOLIDWORKS files for a smooth data exchange pipeline. MODO scenes can also be imported directly into NUKE for compositing and After Effects for motion graphics work.
For product and industrial design, MODO enables designers to move concepts from imagination into 3D with ease. Clean topology and accurate surfaces are achievable even from rough blocked-in forms. High quality models containing both organic shapes and hard edges are perfect for downstream prototyping and manufacturing. Even massive CAD assemblies and BIM models containing millions of polygons can be creatively refined in MODO while maintaining data integrity.
MODO's Future - What's Planned Ahead
The developers at The Foundry have an exciting roadmap planned for MODO's future development. While the core values of speed, flexibility and creativity will remain central to the product, there are several key areas of focus for upcoming releases:
Enhanced modeling tools and workflows
Expanded procedural capabilities
Next-gen viewport and interactivity
Improved integration with Foundry products
Ongoing rendering advancements
Performance and stability improvements
Modeling in MODO will continue to evolve, providing artists more control over mesh generation, selection, editing and sculpting. Expect more tools aimed at creating clean topology faster, with less need for manual cleanup. The toolset for deforming, refining and optimizing geometry will also expand.
Procedural modeling will grow more advanced through voxel-based Boolean operations, extended instancing, history-based dependencies and nodal presets. More procedural MeshOps will be introduced enabling powerful non-destructive editing on procedurally generated models.
To boost productivity during model creation, MODO's viewport and OpenGL display will receive significant upgrades. Interactivity will be smooth and efficient even for the most complex scenes. Real-time rendering quality will approach final render output more closely.
Tighter integration between MODO and other Foundry products is planned through unified licensing, shared asset libraries and streamlined pipelines. Combined workflows with MARI, Katana and NUKE will become more seamless in the future.
Rendering technology such as raytracing and denoising will evolve to produce final images more quickly with less noise. The path to cloud rendering will be simplified by expanding support for popular online services like Conductor. Optimization for modern hardware and GPU acceleration is also in active development.
Lastly, under-the-hood improvements are continuously being made to strengthen MODO's core. Areas of focus include: reducing memory usage, speeding up boolean operations, improving viewport frame rates, and updating to modern graphics APIs like Vulkan. Rigorous quality testing and bug fixes will ensure each new release is rock-solid and dependable.
Recent Advancements - What's New in MODO 16
The Foundry development team has been hard at work packing new features and improvements into the recently released MODO 16. Here are some of the highlights:
New MeshFusion modeling tools
Extended procedural MeshOps
Interactive slicing of primitives
Advanced edge/poly selection sets
Ruler-based measurements
Decal workflow
Tri-planar texturing
Shared Texture caching
Path-traced viewport
Denoising for rendered images
Upgraded USD scene support
Native Apple Silicon support
With new modeling capabilities like PolyHaul, edge selection sets and geodesic MeshFusion strips, the toolset for creating production-ready meshes keeps improving. Procedural workflows now allow for powerful non-destructive edits through the new Wrap MeshOp and other Effectors.
Scene assembly is faster with the Ruler MeshOp for precise alignment plus interactively slicing and tagging primitives. Animation workflow is smoother with new action export and motion trails in the viewport.
Texturing gets easier with tri-planar projection and the shared Texture Cache which accelerates baking and display. The viewport now provides a physically-based path tracing mode for accurate material evaluation. Rendering produces cleaner results thanks to Intel's machine-learning-powered denoising filter.
Format support expands with upgrades to USD export and the new native Apple Silicon build for M1/M2 Macs. MODO 16 delivers noticeable speed boosts when running natively on this cutting-edge hardware.
What Lies Ahead for MODO
The improvements and additions packed into recent MODO releases are just a taste of what lies ahead. The Foundry is clearly focused on shaping MODO into an increasingly powerful, intuitive and production-ready 3D application. Staying ahead of the latest industry trends, they continue advancing tools and technology while retaining a commitment to flexibility and artistry.
As demands grow for higher quality real-time and rendered 3D content, MODO will evolve in lockstep. More procedural techniques will allow for greater complexity with less manual effort. Expanding integrations are eliminating pipeline barriers and making multi-software workflows seamless.With ongoing research into new rendering methods, viewport modes and optimizations across the board, interactivity and final output quality will reach new heights. MODO will empower artists to translate concepts into stunning 3D creations faster than ever before.
While the core values remain focused on creativity, MODO marches steadily towards the future. Its history may be defined by speed, flexibility and innovation, but the road ahead promises to be even more exciting. 3D artists have many great tools to choose from today, but few match the comfort and creative freedom embodied in MODO.For those seeking an intuitive 3D application capable of tackling any task with grace, MODO represents the pinnacle. Its seamless workflows and emphasis on speed enables artists to iterate faster, explore ideas freely and focus creativity into final output more efficiently.As 3D development continues to accelerate, MODO is positioned perfectly to grow in capabilities while retaining the artistic sensibilities valued so highly by its users.
