UVs: UV mapping is one of those necessary, but sometimes tedious, processes found in a lot of 3D work. UVing in modo, however, makes the processes faster and more easily understood. With 501, modo introduces a helpful new feature called Show Distortion. This visual aid is an interactive color map showing the user where the texture distortions of a model will occur. The colors update as the user adjusts the size and shape of the polygons in UV space. This is especially helpful with organic models such as a face where there are different sections requiring different levels of detail. modo's sculpting tools can also now be utilized directly on the UV map to smooth out, move and adjust the map as needed.

Preserve Curvature and Add Loop: Like a lot of users, one of my favorite features in modo is its ease of loop slicing and sliding. 501 makes it even better by introducing the Add Loop and Preserve Curvature tools. When using Add Loop you get the visual feedback of pre-highlighting of the intended loop before you add the loop. Preserve Curvature allows you to add or slide a loop and maintain the curvature of your model. Awesome!

Retopology is good with 501, but not the best. It now supports edge extend with a background constraint. Products such as Topogun and 3D Coat have gained some attention from the 3D community because of their ease of use and innovation with retopology. I'm waiting -- and really hoping for -- an improvement here from Luxology.

Preview/Rendering: Put your tray tables up and hold onto your pixels folks! 501 has some amazingly fast and improved rendering features in store for you; the most notable being faster render times with improved quality. Most users will experience a whopping 30- to 40 % increase with render times. In some cases even more. Noise associated with Area lights, Motion blur and DOF have been significantly reduced or controlled. Ray tracing or RayGL viewports (from any view projection) is new and comes in handy by allowing the user to keep working within the viewport without having to jump over the Preview. The new Render Region tool allows for excellent "in viewport" preview renders within user defined sections. The Preview viewport has gotten a huge bump in speed as well, allowing for a better control over interactively setting up the render. The bump mapping system has been rewritten to perform more like displacements, allowing for faster and more accurate renders. Preview has a slick new feature called Update Under Mouse that allows the user to direct Preview to work on a certain region (under mouse) first by "scrubbing" within a desired section. A new Color Picker is introduced in 501, which allows the user to define colors and save out those presets. This is a welcome addition, especially for those that paint directly in modo.

Animation/Rigging: modo has introduced its new visual animation rigging system (nodal). This is a big deal. To best describe this huge leap forward, it's a good idea to look back and contrast 401 with 501. The raw power of Assemblies and rigging with channel linking, IK, Dynamic Parenting, etc. were introduced and present in 401, but was a bit challenging to work with because of its lack of a front end or UI components that a Node-based rigging system offers. Also, there was an ocean of missing documentation, instructions and tutorials on how to actually use the system to extract its power, making it extremely challenging, or in some cases, useless to those new to rigging in general. Furthermore, unless you had training from another software package, you really had to do your homework to make any real use out of it.

modo 501 has changed all that, and much of the pain associated with working with a blind system has simply gone away.