Image Board Kit for MODO by Jaffa

Create and Save Image boards directly within MODO.

“Image Board for Modo is a must have for any artist working with reference images. I’ve wanted this feature in Modo for years and this kit not only delivers… but has extra features I didn’t even think to ask for. Installation was simple and getting up and going takes minutes. Grab this kit as soon as you can. You’ll be very happy that you did.” -William Vaughan

PF’s Take: Fantastic productivity tool for MODO, if you do a lot of modeling and shading and are alt-tabbing to references on a regular basis you will be super happy to get this kit.

https://gumroad.com/l/PtJPP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjYsi2gQnxU

HDR Light Studio: Tungsten Indie Version

HDR Light Studio software provides 3D artists with a new way to light 3D imagery. Paint your shot with lights. The lighting process is now easy, fast, precise, creative and enjoyable. HDR Light Studio builds lighting that is used by your existing 3D software and renderer. By adding HDR Light Studio, 3D artists become more productive and image quality improves.

PF’s Take: I’m a fan of HDR Light Studio but I haven’t upgraded in quite some time as the price starting floating higher and I eventually decided I could manage without. They now have an Indie version for $140/year subscription which I think is a great deal. If you’re an Indie artist doing product renderings (or even the occasional product rendering) then $140/year should fit really nicely in your budget. It really is the top lighting solution available (IMO) and the new version includes some really nifty compositing features that will really let you pinpoint your lighting and reflections exactly how you want them.

https://www.lightmap.co.uk/blog/tungsten/

https://www.lightmap.co.uk/hdrlightstudio/pricing/

Design Decals for 2D & 3D Art by Chris Glenn

This pack includes over 250 shapes, icons, vents, hardware, and more. I use these in my work for two important reasons: First, it saves me a lot of time when adding smaller scale details to designs. I can't tell you how many times I've made warning stripes in my career before I started making decal sets. Second, it's a fast way to add graphic design elements to my work. I find that adding graphic elements like logos, stripes, labels, etc to work adds interest and believability without much effort. 

Designs are in PSD and PNG format. Each individual decal is roughly 1k pixels in size. Some are larger, some are smaller depending on the design.

PF’s Take: $9.99 for 250 decals….so we’re talking 2 and 1/2 pennies per decal. Super useful for 3D assets as textures for labels, signs, designs…..use them for motion graphics and UI mockups. This seems like one of those things you drop in your texture folder and use a couple hundred times over the next 10 years.

https://www.artstation.com/chrisglenn/store/k7Vl/design-decals-for-2d-3d-art

Improve your colors by Atey Ghailan

In this tutorial I will share my thought process behind how you can improve your colors,I will also talk about 

• Setting up a moodboard

• How to improve your colors

• Reference and inspiration 

• Setup the lighting

• The video is about 41min of digital painting, the painting part has been speed up a bit

• Voice over first 20min of video to cover all the key points

PF’s Take: Atey Ghailan might be my favorite digital painter. I just love his (her?) work and the surreal moods the art evokes (check it out). We’re living in an amazing era of learning when you can get nearly an hour’s worth of education from a talent like Atey for the cost of a bagel.

https://www.artstation.com/snatti/store/mDGX/improve-your-colors

Abstract art kitbash set by Karl Andreas

This kitbash set will let you focus on creativity without being bored by long lasting modeling. Find creative ideas fast by simply building your scene from a large variety of shapes.

Train your lighting and composition skills by adding as many shapes as you like. In this Kitbash set you'll find all types of objects, from cubic to organic, curves, backplates and more. All objects are subdivision ready. 

All models are quad-based. No UVs, no materials. They are meshes only. There are 99 Objects in total.

PF’s Take: As a fan of all things Kit Bash it’s cool to see some fun abstract geometry that you can hook up to some replicators and push the MAKE ART button.

https://www.artstation.com/pixelpoems/store/56D1/abstract-art-kitbash-set

PRO Forest Bundle

Includes just some of MANY production ready assets we're creating for our upcoming student short film. ALL assets we create for our project, will be available for you trough Packs, each for only $1

• 17 assets in .OBJ format

• 4K textures (Diffuse, Gloss, Normal, Opacity)

• LOD versions

• Optimized for large-scale scenes

• Playful silhouettes without needles

• Absolutely FREE CC0 license

PF’s Take: Treeeeeeeeeees! Something you can never have enough of, real or virtual. The teambehind the student film Alter ‘49 have put up assets from the film on gumroad. Trees with LOD and 4K textures for $1 or less. How can you go wrong?

https://gumroad.com/alter49movie

Visit their FB page to show some appreciation, damnit!

https://www.facebook.com/alter49movie/

Studio Lighting Kit for Modo

The Studio Lighting Kit for Modo will enable you to add realistic studio lights to your scenes quickly and efficiently. The kit comprises of two sets of assemblies: image-based cards that are lightweight and optimised for fast renders, and complete 3D lighting rigs that can be added for more realism or even used as props.

PF’s Take: Richard Yot’s product’s are always extremely comprehensive and high-quality. MODO excels at product rendering and it’s great to see in-expensive Studio Lighting kits that can give you more flexibility and variation than a simple library full of HDRs. The price is also killer - $25, you can’t really go wrong here.

https://gumroad.com/l/studiokit

A collection of 190 Alpha maps for hard surface modelling and sculpting in ZBrush.

PF’s Take: A TON of normal and alpha maps for ZBrush hard surface sculptors. I don’t have this collection but I have several kit bash collections from Johnathan Ching and they’re of very high quality (just look at the guy’s Artstation page).

https://www.artstation.com/jyching/store/qo8m/hardsurface-alpha-normal-maps-vol-1-200-sci-fi-maps

Edge Flow 2.0

Edge Flow is a new C++ tool available for MODO 12 and above*, that emulates maya's edge flow tool. Available for win64 and osX. *Tested with MODO 12 and the latest MODO 13 beta.

PF’s Take: Edge Flow 2.0 gives us Edge Flow as a MOP as well as a tool - it also has some nifty MOP onscreen tool handles for adjusting parameters. Super useful, super popular….in the must have category unless you like manually sliding edges around a whole lot.

https://gumroad.com/l/edgeFlow2

Understanding V-Ray for MODO Part 2

This second installment of the Vray for Modo training will help to demystify how to best approach using Vray in Modo, particularly when it comes to creating materials and what render settings to use.

 In this training you will go into more in-depth material creation, using both the Shader Tree and the Schematic view. The creation  of coated materials using the Schematic is demonstrated, giving a good understanding of Vray's Blend Material. There are step-by-step examples demonstrating how to create a layered material using Vray's own procedural textures, and a practical example of Vray's Tri-Planar projection in use. These techniques will allow you to quickly build complex shaders using Vray native materials and textures, with a range of options that are powerful and flexible.

PF’s Take: Richard’s V-Ray for MODO training continues. Blend Material, Displacement, Tri-Planar projections…tools you will actually use and need to understand (including using the schematic for nodal shading). Richard covers everything in-depth and with extreme expertise as usual.

https://richardyot.com/vray-for-modo-part-2

Scale Alpha Set

10 scaly hand sculpted alphas suitable for scaly creatures and stuff, all ten alphas are tileable. If you're creating dinosaur, dragon, reptile like creature or an alien this set can be helpful. There are 7 additional alphas included in this set. These 7 alphas are non tileable. 

PF’s Take: I love Paleo Art and Damir G. Martin has some fantastic paleo art on his Artstation page (link). Which is how I stumbled across these ‘scale’ alphas. They look great, they’re handcrafted and they are only $5. Making a dino, dragon, reptile, alien or dino-croco-meglodon for the next stupid SyFy shark movie? Pick these up.

https://gumroad.com/l/CPxuB

Slack

Slack is a collaboration hub, where the right people and the right information come together, helping everyone get work done.

PF’s Take: If you don’t use Slack yet then click the link and start using slack. The MODO community (and many others) are on Slack every single day and it’s often much easier and faster to get answers to questions and chat about new stuff in the 3D Universe on the Slack channel. It does not replace the forums…but it is a very important part of learning and using MODO and other DCC software.

foundry-modo.slack.com

www.slack.com

Wojciech Piwowarczyk 4K leaf scans

Recent study I did on recreating natural environment assets and photo-scanning textures. The final result was over 200 assets with high quality 4K textures that will be available to download for free.

PF’s Take: Wow, what an amazing gift to the 3D Community. A huge number of leaf assets photoscanned at 4K with Albedo, Normal, Glossiness, Bump, Displacement, Translucency and Opacity maps. I don’t know if there’s a tip jar - but if there is then give him a tip.

https://gumroad.com/wojciechpiwowarczyk

http://www.wojciechpiwowarczyk.com/#/photo-scanned-textures/

UV Seams Kit for MODO

This Kit will help you to speed up the process of creating UV's in Modo.

Extremely recommended by me for people who work on game projects.

PF’s Take: This kit is from Sergey Tyapkin - a very prolific MODO expert and game artist whose work is totally next level. I mean, check out his Artstation page (that Mammoth!!). People who spend this much time in a program have honed their time saving workflows to a fine degree and Sergey is making his UV kit available to all MODO users.

https://gumroad.com/l/UV_Seams_Kit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm_-hDeOsU0

Oleg Ushenok | Sci-Fi Panels pack vol. 2

Hey guys! Eugene Apekin and me are glad to introduce our cooperative project.

This kitbash was made to let you spend less time for modeling and more for your ready ideas.

This sci-fi panels pack made in fusion 360 and 3D max.

Models are saved in MAX, OBJ and FBX files for import to other 3D applications.

PF’s Take: One more from Oleg and Eugene. I bought vol. 1 of this and had barley constructed my first paneled hallway (Boba Fett’s personal spa on-board the Slave 1 if you must know) and what do you know? Volume 2 is already out. These are great models that deserve to be dirtied up by ventilation exhaust, alien planet dirt dragged in on the boots of explorers…and of course bodily fluids from marauding xenomorphs.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L2RbNA

Oleg Ushenok | Hard Surface Kit Bash vol. 5

Hey guys! Eugene Apekin and me are glad to introduce our cooperative project.

This kitbash was made to let you spend less time for modeling and more for your ready ideas.

This hard surface pack made in fusion 360 and 3D max.

Perfectly suitable for 3d concepts. Models were saved in MAX, OBJ and FBX files for import into other 3D applications.

PF’s Take: What is it? Kit-Bash week or something? Yes…yes…it is. It’s Kit Bash week. This kit looks absolutely ready to bash a Mars complex or space station to me. You need heavy industrial complex geometry to lay the groundwork for any demon or alien invasion.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L2RbNA

Alexey Pyatov | Vehicle attachments kit - 1

Spice up your vehicle design with this kit.

This kit contains radars, active and passive defense system elements and enough miscellaneous details that are suitable for wide range of vehicles.  All 30 parts support subdivision and work well for high-resolution renders.

PF’s Take: If you know me you know I love kit-bashing…and these are some fantastic high-tech kit bash meshes. Bonus, they support conversion to Sub-D. No UVs or Textures…that’s up to your unpaid intern.

https://www.artstation.com/karanak/store

Understanding Vray for Modo - Part 1

This introduction to Vray for Modo will help to demystify how to best approach using Vray in Modo, particularly when it comes to creating materials and what render settings to use.…….Whether you are on the fence and trying to decide if Vray is a good addition to Modo, or if you are a seasoned Vray veteran, this tutorial will clearly explain the workings of the shading and rendering aspects of Vray, and explores issues which are not covered in other tutorials, with original research revealing little-known aspects of Vray. So take the guesswork out of using Vray with this Introduction to Vray for Modo.

PF’s Take: I’m a fan of V-Ray for MODO, it’s a great general rendering solution and also a great special-case solution (it can handle a giant scene, specialized materials, etc.) Richard Yot takes the time to really become an expert user in the subject matter his videos cover and his style is deliberate and professional. If you use V-Ray for MODO (or are thinking about it) - then hit this link.

https://richardyot.com/vray-for-modo

Modo Essentials: Weekend Crash Course

This book was created to demystify navigating and working with the tools and features in Modo. In this guide you’ll learn the fundamentals of Modo, useful hotkeys and much more. The information I present in this book is an attempt to share what I’ve learned during my time using and teaching Modo. This resource would have saved me countless hours and allowed me to focus on what I love most… creating.

PF’s Take: I believe this will become the go-to MODO book both for beginners first learning the program and for experienced users who need to jog their memory and learn some new hotkeys. Super well organized, tons of images and videos as well as useful tables and lists. I wish there was an equivalent to this book for half-a-dozen other programs I’d like to be better at.

http://pushingpoints.com/v2/the-pushing-points-modo-essentials-book

FlippedNormals Lighting Scenes

The free version contains 1/20 light setups and only a few materials. It’s a great way to try it out. Lighting can be incredibly hard to get right so we took the guesswork out of the equation. Our solution is one which produces a brilliant render in seconds: You simply drag your model into the scene – ready to be rendered! Our included Photoshop file makes it easy and quick to push your render to the next level. Easy to use masks and color correction gives you control over your image.

PF’s Take: I bought the full version of this a while ago as well. It’s a nice combo of materials, lights and a photoshop template file. These are on-stop solutions to give you a nicely lit model with a corresponding material to show off your polys skillz.

https://flippednormals.com/products/flippednormals-lighting-scenes-free/

FlippedNormals Fabrics

All maps provided are 1024 x 1024 with RAW exr and PNG files included. These world-class maps will instantly make your clothing and fabrics stand out from the crowd. Simply drag and drop the maps into your favourite 3D software and you’re ready to render. It will work particularly well with ZBrush, Mari and Substance Painter!

PF’s Take: Flipped Normals has all kinds of great stuff. I bought these a while ago but now I see there’s a free version. Super high quality, super useful, highly recommended.

https://flippednormals.com/products/flippednormals-fabrics-free/

MODO Keyboard Shortcut Poster

Keyboard shortcut poster for Modo version 12.  Two formats available. Poster format and a tent card format for those that would like to print out and make a tri-fold tent card.

PF’s Take: Benjamin Ferrante created this awesome MODO keyboard shortcut cheat sheet. $2.00 - seems like a deal to me. Deserves to printed out and put on the wall between your Baywatch and Better Off Dead posters…(GIVE ME MY TWO DOLLARS!)

MODO Cheat Sheet

V60 Search Tool

This search engine works right inside of MODO, making it easy and efficient to access over 600 videos. Add the V60 Search tool to your MODO UI today!

PF’s Take: Easily search for Vaughan in 60 second videos right in MODO. I refer to William’s videos on regular basis to remind myself how tools work (slack effector anyone?). Now you can do this right inside of MODO - next step is watching the videos in a viewport (maybe?). IMO this is also a great way of thanking William for his work. Hundreds of free videos and the search plug-in is $11. Kind of like buying him a drink…or breakfast….or a whole pack of Pokemon cards for his efforts.

http://pushingpoints.com/v2/v60-search-tool/

MAXTD Rigging ToolBox

Introducing the maxTD Rigging Toolbox. A collection of tools designed to assist artists in the often complex or tedious tasks of creating a rig for an asset. These tools were designed with non-riggers in mind (as in, they had to be really easy to use), but experienced users will also find them of great benefit. 

PF’s Take: Rigging mastermind Sergio Mucino is a veteran of many films and 3D applications and he’s put together a very extensive kit of rigging tools for MODO. If you do a lot (or a medium) amount of rigging then there’s going to be a number of things in here for you. There’s preset rigs and assemblies and a lot of tools and utilities to quickly create and manage set ups. Lots of videos and documentation as well.

http://www.maxtd.net/rigging_toolbox.html

Kanova

Kanova is a simple, easy to use, VR enabled, 3D sculpting application. It uses the patented 3D Adaptive Distance Field (ADF) technology developed by Foundry. Clay-like materials can be manipulated to create 3D assets on both the desktop and within a VR environment.

PF’s Take: Kanova is Foundry’s early access volumetric sculpting app that works both in VR and desktop mode. The latest version allows you to convert a mesh to Kanova’s ‘clay’ so you can sculpt it. Even though it’s still in early access this feature now puts Kanova in a very interesting space. There’s a lot of updates going on with this program and it’s definitely one to watch. Give it a shot - it’s free..fun..and..uh…fancy?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/730550/Kanova/

The Pushing Points | PySnippets for MODO

The Pushing Points | PySnippets for MODO is a collection of small blocks of reusable code that can be quickly inserted into the MODO Script Editor or any external source code editor. Use these commonly used code blocks to speed up the creation of python scripts.

PF’s Take: I think these will not only be happily used by experienced scripters - they look great for beginners. Especially those of us who are making our way through the book mentioned below. I really do think the ability to speed-up, streamline and create new workflows via scripting is one of the things that allows an artist to really grow to their fullest potential.

http://pushingpoints.com/v2/the-pushing-points-pysnippets-for-modo/

MODO: Macros and Python Scripting Vol 01

This book is packed with loads of tips, tricks and techniques designed to teach you how to create custom macros and scripts to increase your speed and enhance your current workflow in MODO. This book doesn’t just show you how to create specific macros and scripts. Instead, it teaches you the foundation of scripting, so you can create unique custom scripts.

PF’s Take: I’ve been waiting a long time for something like this. The lack of scripting ability has been a dark smudge on my 3D skill set and I haven’t tried programming since creating the world’s worst text adventure on an Atari 800 using Basic. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for….now I just need to DO IT! (and so do you).

http://pushingpoints.com/v2/modo-macros-python-scripting/

OctaneRender

OctaneRender® is the world’s first and fastest unbiased, spectrally correct GPU render engine, delivering quality and speed unrivaled by any production renderer on the market. OTOY® is proud to advance the state of the art once again with the release of OctaneRender 4™ – available now – with groundbreaking machine learning techniques, out of core geometry support and massive 10-100x speed gains in the scene graph.

PF’s Take: Ok, I’m sure everybody is quite familiar with Octane Render. I’ve been using it for quite a few years now and feel very comfortable recommending it. It’s a fantastically fast GPU renderer that really does make great looking images very easily. It’s a little different in that you will be using the schematic in MODO to create all of your materials, and it has some quirks still (the rounded edge rendering kind of sucks and it can be slow to send all the data to the GPU in heavy scenes). Overall though it is absolutely my go-to renderer now - for both animation and stills. V-Ray Next will probably give it a run, but it’s not out for MODO yet and there is not question in my mind that Octane is a more capable renderer than the current V-Ray RT GPU iteration.

https://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/

Bulk Rename Utility

Bulk Rename Utility: file renaming software for Windows. Bulk Rename Utility is free of charge for personal, private use, at home. To use Bulk Rename Utility within a business entity, company or for commercial purposes, a commercial license is required.Bulk Rename Utility allows you to easily rename files and entire folders based upon extremely flexible criteria.Add date/time stamps, replace numbers, insert text, convert case, add auto-numbers, process folders and sub-folders....plus a whole lot more!

PF’s Take: Oh…what? Not SEXY enough for you?? Everybody needs a re-name utility for those animation sequences you mis-spelled when you started a re-render right in the middle..etc….etc. This is the one I like and use.

https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Download.php

MODO Power Translators

The Power Translators for Modo are ideal for designers, engineers, product visualization specialists and 3D generalists who need to bring specific industry-standard CAD data formats into Modo for visualization or design. As you import these formats, the Power Translators give you interactive control in Modo over how geometry is tessellated and provide efficient methods for accommodating incoming CAD files with many repetitive elements.

PF’s Take: At first glance it seems expensive - $500 for an importer. If rendering and animating product CAD files is a part of your business though - then this is essential. MODO will load Solidworks files natively….and there’s other ways to get CAD files into MODO (Rhino..etc.). However Power Translators gives you import options for tesselation, options for replicators and instances that you just don’t get with other methods. I use this product weekly.

https://www.foundry.com/products/modo/addons/power-translators

Vizpack Materials: Products and Architecture 

VizPak: Architecture is a collection of over 90 materials providing a range of detailed and physically accurate shaders to cover many different needs. With a focus on interior and architectural renders the materials in this collection are general purpose materials representing the clean, subtly textured materials required for visualisation work.

VizPack: Products is a collection of over 160 materials providing a range of detailed and physically accurate shaders to cover many different needs. With a focus on product renders the materials in this collection are general purpose materials representing the clean, unblemished materials required for visualisation work. Worn and damaged materials will feature in future packs, but the emphasis here is on highly detailed shaders of materials in new condition.

PF’s Take: I bought both of these for Octane and V-Ray. They’re ready to use (or modify) with a drag and a drop. If you’re interested in seeing how these kinds of materials are created it’s worth the time to dig in and see how Richard sets them up. If you switch renderers a lot it’s nice to have the same presets in MODO, Octane and V-Ray.

https://gumroad.com/richardyot

Edge Flow

EdgeFlow is a new C++ tool available for modo 901 and above*, that emulates Maya's edge flow tool.

PF’s Take: An inexpensive and very useful tool to interactively even out edge flow in your model. Unless you’re super into spending a lot of time eyeballing edge-slides one at a time - then this will definitely be worth a few buck to you.

https://gumroad.com/l/edgeFlow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-4_U8ceIqM

Surface Mimic

Surface Mimic Sells 3D surface scans for digital artists in the Visual Effects and Video Game industries. Our surface scans are high resolution displacement, normal, and color diffuse .psd images.

PF’s Take: Pretty straightforward - surface mimic is a nice library of a variety of scanned surfaces available as displacement, normal and diffuse color. I’ve bought a number of these for skin textures on some medical projects. Affordable..look nice…what more could you ask for? (ok…you just said ‘FREE’…well they’re not…people have bills ya’ know. Very affordable though)

http://www.surfacemimic.com/gallery/index.php

Polystein Kit for MODO

The Pushing Points Polystein Kit is a MODO KIT consisting of an array of all-quad SubD mesh presets that can be seamlessly added to a model making mesh detailing incredibly easy. This powerful toolset positions, scales, orients and auto-stitches these mesh presets to your active mesh relieving you of the tedious process of doing it manually.

Want to use your own meshes with the Polystein Kit? Use the Polystein Preset Creator and within minutes you're up and running. From vehicles, characters, weapons, environmental models and more, the Polystein Kit is a perfect addition to your modeling toolkit.

PF’s Take: Ok, you probably already have this - because it’s one of those things everybody from hardcore 10 hour a day modelers to hobbyist doodlers has. There’s been a lot of copycats and knockoffs for other Apps but this is the original. You can very quickly and seamlessly (literally) add details to your model from libraries of Sub-D geometry. Need to add a nose to a face? Select some polys and pick your nose from a list of thumbnails. Polystein will seamlessly weld it to your model. There’s a ton of third party geometry libraries you can buy and use, as well as make your own. I’ll list some links below. My take is this is another one of those handful of kits that everybody should have.

http://pushingpoints.com/v2/the-pushing-points-polystein-kit-for-modo/

A few of many add-on geometry packs.

https://gumroad.com/snefer#

https://gumroad.com/stiderotte

https://gumroad.com/MarkBTomlinson

MODO Premium Content

Modonauts get exclusive access to thousands of dollars worth of learning materials! Only available for active Modo Subscription & Maintenance customers.

PF’s Take: Admit it, you forgot about this. Click your login icon in the top right and you will see the link to MODO Premium Content. A ton of learning material and Live Streams like ‘Modonaut Mondays’. I typically keep this tab open so I don’t forget this exists. It’s a nice extra for those on maintenance or subscription. Regardless of your thoughts on subscription software, Foundry is clearly making an effort to add value in exchange for the cash you’re forking over. The live streams are great and believe me, there will be something in the free training that you will be glad you watched.

https://community.foundry.com/modonaut/

Shrinkwrap

Shrinkwrap is a new C++ meshOp available for modo 11, that emulates modo's constraint to background. The product is offered with a "Pay what you want" formula, with no license check attached. The revenue will be invested into the R&D of other modo operators.

PF’s Take: A great little pick up. Basically you get a background constraint (point or vector) MeshOp with animat-able range and amount. Super useful, pay what you want. I say pick it for the cost of a beer or coffee.

https://gumroad.com/bluego

Intro Video

Automatic Character Setup 2.0 (ACS 2.0)

Auto Character Setup (ACS) 2 kit is a production-ready, automatic rigging solution for bipedal characters. ACS 2 simplifies technical tasks with an interactive drag-and-drop workflow that enhances intuitive Modo character design without sacrificing the depth you need for professional use.

PF’s Take: I bought this quite some time ago and have used it on numerous projects. It doesn’t matter if you are animating or not - it is super useful for just posing characters for stills or simple animations. ACS is a creation of Lukasz Pazera - a fantastic artist and MODO expert who clearly understands the needs and mindset of MODO users. The UI and tool layout is fantastic - as is the video documentation. You can get up and going in a few short hours and you will wonder how you ever dealt with characters before you had ACS…a highly recommended TOP PICK.

https://www.foundry.com/products/modo/addons/auto-character-setup

Super Aligners

A set of pie-menus and pop-overs that allows a very flexible access to a bunch of alignment tools.

PF’s Take: Let me be super clear on this - I use Super Aligners dozens of times each modeling sessions. Dozens…of….times. You can quickly align points just by slashing the mouse/stylus left, right, up or down. You can also align points in a ‘taut’ manner (along diagonals) and to any axis or 0. I have it mapped to ctrl-5 and I honestly could not model without this. I made a PF video a year or so ago - linked below.

https://www.etereaestudios.com/docs_html/general_index_htm/resources.htm

Super Aligners overview video on Pixel Fondue

Vitaly Bulgarov Sci-Fi KitBash

Few words on 3D KitBash Store: Taking advantage of various modeling techniques, from quad-based SUBD polygonal modeling to non-SUBD polygonal modeling and CAD-based modeling I have been designing libraries of reusable 3D parts that helped me to maintain a high-level of detail in my concepts as well as deliver my work fast within the challenging deadlines. Today most of these libraries are available for purchase via 3D KitBash Store page of this website. The goal is to support an artist with various sets of pre-made mechanical parts that can be reused throughout various projects that involve a digital 3D medium. Whether you’re a concept artist in the entertainment design field or a VFX artist working on large scale 3D matte painting or finishing that complex 3D model or even just having fun as a rapid prototyping enthusiast, I hope these kits will be as valuable to you as much as they have been valuable and helpful to me.

PF’s Take: Probably the most impressive set of Sci-Fi KitBash models you will find. Mid-to-High price but amazing quality.

https://vitalybulgarov.com/3d-kitbash/

LDraw LEGO loader for MODO

This is a pretty complete rewrite of internals of the loader.  The main feature is that each brick now comes in as an individual objects.  This fully supports instancing.  So for the most part saved files will be smaller and scenes will render faster in less memory.

PF’s Take: Want to download, animate and render the LEGO Millennium Falcon? Who wouldn’t? This free plug-in for MODO written by Eric Soulvie (author of MODO’s dynamics system) will allow you to load up countless LEGO templates for fun and practice. It’s great - I love kitbashing these things (Shelob meets an AT-AT).

https://www.battlefleet.net/fmtldr/

Sketchfab

Sketchfab is empowering a new era of creativity by making it easy for anyone to publish and find 3D content online. With a community of millions of creators who have published millions of models, we are the largest platform for immersive and interactive 3D. Additionally, our store lets buyers and sellers transact 3D models with confidence using our realtime viewer and model inspector. 

PF’s Take: Ok - seems like a weird ‘Top Pick’, right? It’s not. While Sketchfab has a fantastic service for being able to show your 3D Assets in a flexible, embed-able window - that’s for later. I just want to make note that if you register you will gain access to an incredible number of models to download (as long as you give credit to the creator) to practice your 3D skills on. Grab a model to practice rigging, or to practice rendering…or to pick apart somebody else’s modeling edge flow. It’s truly a great resource for 3D models. Check out the thumbnail - downloaded from Sketchfab…rendered in Octane, just for practice.

http://www.sketchfab.com

vrscene GUI

V-Ray is one of the most powerful rendering engines out there. Used in productions all over the globe it has become an artist-friendly but mighty render engine. vrscene GUI helps you control that engine by providing you with tools to render and adjust your V-Ray render scene files (.vrscene) on the fly.

PF’s Take: V-Ray is one of the most popular and powerful render engines available. One of the great things about V-Ray is it’s ability to export it’s own scene format for rendering (vrscene) no matter what host package you are in. While vrscene GUI allows you to load up a vrscene and change any number of parameters before saving it back out - I bought it for one specific reason. You can use vrscene GUI to set up a tiled render of a huge image. I needed to render a couple 16K images and by using the tiling feature I was able to spread it out over as many frames as I needed to and upload it to a render farm (Rebus in my case). Each node rendered a single tile of the image (as a frame) and I used one of the scripts that come with vrscene GUI (for Nuke, Fusion and Photoshop) to put the image back together with one click. AFAIK there is no other program that can do this for you - and if you render out high-res stills then this is indispensable .

http://vrscenegui.de/

Tracer X

TRacer X is a plugin for Modo, the powerful and flexible 3D modeling, texturing and rendering toolset from Foundry.
The kit contains 4 mesh operators:
- Curve Tracer X
- Noise Displacement X
- Image To Weight X
- Push X

PF’s Take: I bought this a while ago and have used it on several projects (including the image to the left, which shows collagen created with the Curve Tracer X and Noise Displacement X MOPs). Curve Tracer X allow you to animate flowing curve trails from an item’s vertices…and Noise Displacement X gives you some 2D and 3D noise displacement for your curves or meshes. Image to Weight X will convert images (and image sequences) to weight maps and Push X will use these to displace a surface. Well worth the money I spent on it and especially useful for Motion Graphics. Check out the trailer and Gumroad site.

https://gumroad.com/l/TRacerX

Trailer

Poliigon Textures

Say goodbye to blurry photos. All of our textures are tack sharp for crystal clear rendering. Find a new style for your next project with a range of 360 lighting studio setups, and real sky captures. Get up-close realism with our imperfection maps that mimic microscopic detail from real life.

PF’s Take: Expanding your texture, scanned model and HDR image library has gotten very affordable. I suggest checking out Poliigon, I’ve downloaded and used some of their free textures and am especially enamored of their surface imperfection maps. They have a very flexible subscription program (do it for a month for a few bucks to check it out). It’s pretty amazing seeing the sheer number of high quality assets available to us artists.

https://www.poliigon.com/

Eterea Quick Locators

A new free kit for helping with Locators creation and transformation operations.

PF’s Take: This is a free kit for quickly placing and modifying the look of locators. Put simply, I LOVE this kit. If you do any rigging or scene organization this is a must have. You can change the look (shape and color) of locators very easily - as well as place them on or between components and items with a click. The UI is super intuitive and has great tool-tips. I really think all MODO users should go get this.

https://www.etereaestudios.com/docs_html/general_index_htm/resources.htm

https://community.foundry.com/discuss/topic/81021

Pushing Points MOP Booleans

The Pushing Points MOP Booleans Kit is a MODO KIT designed to remove the challenges of working with complex boolean operations and introduces a non-destructive workflow that makes creating highly detailed meshes a trivial task.

PF’s Take: MOP Booleans is one of the handful of ‘must-have’ kits for MODO hard-surface modelers. Created as a collaboration between Tor Frick and William Vaughan (two expert MODO modelers) it will result in a significant increase in speed (and flexibility) in non-destructive ‘boolean-style’ modeling. There’s a ton of training videos and online support for this product, and it really is ‘just one of those things’ that everybody who’s serious about modeling in MODO gets.

http://pushingpoints.com/v2/the-pushing-points-mop-booleans-kit-for-modo/

Real Displacement Textures

RDT is using advanced 3D-scan-technologies to record highly detailed information for our texture-sets. Object-scans are also included in our product range. These objects are designed to perfectly match our texture-scans. 

PF’s Take: These are some fantastic scanned textures with super accurate, super high-res displacement maps. The scanned objects also appear to have been retopo’d down to Sub-D surfaces instead of the typical mess of triangles you get with other scanned items. The packs are in a good price range for Indies and I’ve been quite impressed by the sample textures I downloaded and rendered in Octane.

https://www.rd-textures.com/

Mesh Fusion Demystified

Designed to give you a solid foundation for working with Mesh Fusion in Modo. It will teach you the best strategies to approach a Mesh Fusion model, from planning the initial topology to creating production-ready meshes while avoiding common pitfalls and problems.

PF’s take: Mesh Fusion is one of the most powerful modeling systems in MODO and deserves your time to learning it. I bought this and can attest - Richard’s training is clear, comprehensive and will result in you making better models.

https://richardyot.com/mesh-fusion-demystified

BabylonDreams Pipeline Kit

We developed the BabylonDreams Pipeline Kit to plug many of those shortcomings we find during daily work. As such this kit is geared towards working with massive CAD scenes, optimizing the shading and rendering workflow and anything in-between. Ver. 1.4 just released (11/7/2018)

PF’s take: This is for people who work with CAD files within MODO and find themselves doing the same things over and over again. It has a huge number of tools to improve CAD ‘scene processing’ and rendering workflows. If you work with CAD files on a regular basis then this is for you.

http://pipeline-kit.babylondreams.de/

Version 1.4 YouTube video.

Sci-Fi KitBash Vol. 1 and 2

Vol. 1: 45 Sci-fi props to supplement your artworks and designs. 15 unique Crates, Canisters and Cargo props, split up into parts for easy material application. 30 detail props including, cables, wires, pipes, gadgets and hardware parts.

Vol. 2: A kitbash collection of 40 abstract sci-fi objects to help with your artwork. 

PF’s take: Are you kidding me, $6 each? These are awesome models for kit bashing, I bought both collections. Who doesn’t like sci-fi kit bashing?

https://www.artstation.com/jyching/store