The Foundry Modo v11.2v2 Win/Mac/Linux

Direct modeling improvements

Modo 11.2 brings significantly improved poly bevel features, including: Square Corner to add quadrangles at the corners of a polygon’s boundary edge; Offset Even to maintain an even distance between the inset faces and the original boundary edge; Edge Rail for beveling groups of polygons; and Thicken to maintain a closed volume. Edge bevel now has a mitering option to create co-planar polygons beside the outer edges of the bevelled area, fixing smoothing errors. The Maintain Co-Planar Edge merges unselected co-planar edges to the next unselected sharp edge, giving more predictable results. And the Snap Only Selected option snaps selected geometry to foreground geometry, speeding up geometry snapping for heavy meshes.

UV Tool enhancements

The already powerful UV tools in Modo continue to improve, making it easier to texture games assets with consistency and efficiency. Numerous updates have been made to the Texel Density tools recently added in Modo 11.1, making them faster-to-use and providing more reliable results. Additional features quickly align UV islands and stack islands for more efficient texture usage. A UV coverage indicator shows the coverage percentage by foreground items and all items in a UV map. Extra display modes make it easier to select missing or distorted UVs, and there are multiple new commands for detecting UV errors.

Procedural modeling

Keeping Modo at the leading edge as one of best-in-class modeling solutions on the market, the procedural modeling tools in Modo 11.2 continue to expand and provide greater flexibility. The Select by Previous operation has been updated to support slice related mesh operators, like Slice, Axis Slice, Axis Drill, Solid Drill, Boolean and Curve Slice. The new Set Polygon Type mesh operation operates on any selection of surface polygons and modifies the polygon type, converting polygons into faces, subdivision surfaces or catmull-clark polygons. Plus there’s a new Flip Polygons mesh operation to reverse the surface normal of polygons.

Animation performance

Performance continues to improve across several areas of the rigging and animation workflow. Updates have been made to both Weight Editing performance and also Deformer Manipulation, enhancing the overall rigging and animation experience in Modo. When weight editing smaller parts of the mesh, such as a hand on a larger character, or when posing characters where smaller parts of the skeleton are deforming, such as a foot or finger, the interactive performance gains are significantly improved.

File I/O updates

Modo 11.2 has a much enhanced replicator exporting workflow, allowing you to move data between Modo and other DCC applications more easily and efficiently. Select whether to export replicas as an Alembic particle system, geometry or both via the preferences viewport. Additionally, the FBX plugin has been updated to version Autodesk FBX 2018.1, including support for FBX 2016-2018 export/import options.

Cloud based preset browser

Netting quick wins is now even easier! By using the Modo Preset Browser, artists can access the recently updated Modo Community share-site, with thousands of sample files, presets, and templates, directly from within Modo. Simply double-click on a preset to download it and the asset will be installed inside your default content folder structure, in much the same way as you install a regular .IPK file. Easy access to free kits and plugins, as well as direct links to purchase additional Modo Addons, will also be made available and continue to expand as the Community grows.

MeshFusion updates

Speed up interaction with Draft Unions: a new workflow which automatically splits MeshFusion Items into active and inactive parts, temporarily disabling the union or seam geometry calculation when the contributing mesh is moved. New support for Catmull Clark Sub-D edge-weighted source geometry results in meshes that handle variable edge weights better. There’s a new method for creating material polygon tags, pie menu updates, and two new assembly presets: Rib Trim Assembly is useful for modeling structural ribbing, window/canopy framing and related geometries. ElboPipe assembly provides an easy way to create piping consisting of straight segments and short, tight turns.

Workflow improvements

Extensive workflow improvements have been made across all areas in Modo 11.2. Unreal Bridge now has a more compact UI for push actions, including checkboxes for items, textures and materials. It also supports subfolders, works with multiple Modo scenes when the connection is live, and has more precise export progress bars. Other additions include a new shader type – Principled BDRF, based on the paper from Brent Burley of Walt Disney Animation Studios. A new Scene Cleanup command removes any empty meshes and groups, and purges any unused schematic nodes, images, materials and deformers, while the new Playblast command gives you more options when recording OpenGL viewports.