Massive Ent., a studio in Vivendi Games’ Sierra Ent. division, is using modo for World in Conflict, the upcoming Cold War strategy game for the PC due in spring 2007. All images courtesy of Luxology. 

Early last month Luxology once again had customers singing their praises by providing another worthy and free upgrade to modo, their flagship application that combines 3D modeling, texturing and rendering. modo 202 is another welcome entry in what is fast becoming a go to piece of software for many studios as well as a number of independent artists. The update includes many improvements in addition to a surprising amount of all new functionality for an update. It is worth noting here that Luxology is to be commended for offering so much in a free update, especially at a time when their competition is offering quite a bit less in expensive, less worthy updates. That same competition is also incrementing a full version up, for less than stellar additions. Among the many additions in modo 202 is a marked improvement in performance; rendering times, in particular, are greatly improved. Modeling, painting and workflow are all addressed, giving the entire app overall a bit of attention and a polished feel.

Modeling in modo has always been smooth; the new functionality in modo 202 keeps that flow. Thicken is an excellent new modeling tool that is similar to a standard bevel but different enough to be beneficial. A good example is creating a simple pillow type of object. Starting out with a simple plane, a user can get the shape roughed out with minimal fuss. Once the user has determined the appropriate silhouette for the pillow they then activate the Thicken tool, which is located under the Basic modeling tools by default. Once activated a few values can be adjusted and in no time the object is created and can either be a full volumetric shape, with no confused normals, or inverted if that is the users intent. The tool is not revolutionary, but likely to provide great value to those looking to speed up production tasks. Also new to modeling in modo 202 is the option to display objects with a bounding box only: a simple addition but one that will prove very important to users working with very large scenes. Similar in usefulness are new grid view options aimed specifically at game artists. The game and unitless grids allow for greater flexibility without resorting to any special efforts for a game developers tools group. Rounding out the modeling improvements in modo 202 are some UV layout tweaks. Chief among them is the overlap feature, which, though not unique to modo, is a welcome and worthy addition. Both 3ds Max and Maya have a similar feature, which helps artists to see where the UVs are overlapped by displaying the offending polys in a unique color. Again, this is a minor production oriented improvement, one that is likely to show its value over time. UVs have gotten some extra help with the new pinning and relax features. Relaxing UVs is useful for those complex high polygon objects that would take much longer to unwrap without. The ability to both pin and relax at the same time is good stuff.