The Lotus in its natural habitat (Modo 401)

@unknownuser said:

• Vertex tools: vertex should be used like lines or faces, or should be able to select them,pushpull them, move them etc;

You can actually do this right now, but only one vertex at a time: make sure nothing is selected, then place the move tool over a vertex and click. It works best if you want to move the vertex along one of the axes because you can lock in the direction of the move with one of the arrow keys. It's a bit clunky, but after a while mouse-click + up arrow + VCB (for displacement distance) becomes second nature.

As for SU 8, something more elegant for vertex manipulation would be appreciated (with a soft select as in Silo) but I think SU's current UV tools implementation is its biggest shortcoming. Maybe it's fine for wrapping low-res photos onto cubes for Google Earth, but for anything else it's unbelievably primitive.

I would also greatly appreciated to expand selections one at a time, as in other 3d progs: in other words, select 2 adjacent polys, edges (or verts!) in a loop, and have the up arrow (or some other key) add the next logical item to the selection set. Double clicking an edge to select a loop would be mega as well, or double clicking the second poly in a loop to select the loop etc. The ability to save a selection would be helpful as well, although there are workarounds for this...

I like blue + blurry + noisy for the mood they create. They grey reads more like an old photo and the final ones without noise seem a bit too "real" without being hyper-real (which would be a good way to go: either completely abstract (like the first ones) or ultra-realistic).

Very nice to have this function as a pseudo-built in rather than the clunky workaround previously required to make lathed objects. Thanks!

Yes, always thought provoking stuff; the antique keyhole in the ultramodern lockset is an intriguing idea...

Believe it or not, I actually raised Silent Running in conversation this morning! Good luck with the render. It'll be nice to see this one progress.

Give it a try and you'll see it works.

I always enjoy seeing your renders because, unlike the vast majority of professional-class renders, yours have an element of art to them instead of making ultimate photo-realism the only goal. So keep them coming!

Trying to find anything less than perfect in these two renders is a bit of a task, but it might be possible to improve a few things: the corbels could be roughed up a bit (they look like smooth plaster against all the concrete); the palm tree is gratuitous (a single, off-centre tree in that environment is extremely unlikely and is not necessary to create an "exotic" feel; the entire environment already does that); and the texture you used for the pavers in the foreground looks a little low-res and might benefit from some bump (or more likely: detail has been lost in resizing the image for posting here...).

A major thank you for this thread. I downloaded gimp and am impressed--it's far superior and much more polished under Vista than the release I tried a couple of years ago on Mac.

The "make seamless" filter works pretty well, but I am eager to try out the adobe filter too. I wonder if the Nvidia normal map plugin will work? I'll give it a try too.

Very helpful. Thank you!

Have to say I'm glad that ugly stucco tower didn't get built! Vue seems quite impressive; the sky/clouds atmosphere are instantly believable. The palms have a somewhat 2d look to them, but overall very nice.

Really nice work: a modern interpretation of the arts and crafts sensibility. Set 1 does seem oversaturated. Set 2 looks like the goal is to depict some small town scenes. Set 3 looks like the goal is to call attention to the design details of the highlighted house (in a thoughtful way). For commercial purposes, obviously set 3 is the winner so far.

With my mouse (Logitech bluetooth), I could never get the middle mouse button to function properly in SU on my macbook (ie to orbit when pressed down then return to the previous tool) until I uninstalled the logitech software. After I did that, Mac OS recognized the mouse and the mmb works perfectly. Maybe same for you?

You might want to take a look at the self-paced tutorials on dynamic components that Google put in the 3d warehouse. They give a pretty good overview of the steps required.

Some general thoughts after playing around with modo 301 for a few months, and 401 for only a couple of hours:

The render engine in 401 is a major upgrade, bringing it up to the level of Vray. Renders in the various previews are spectacular.

The program is quite complex, with hundreds of options for modeling, UVing, rendering etc etc. Yes, the basic interface is well-done, but it is not something that one is going to master in a couple of weeks (unless you have substantial experience with similarly complex programs like Max, Maya...)

Perhaps to counter this, a number of "presets" have been included in 401 to make things easier: there are rendering presets, all sorts of nice textures (and a modo version of the 3d warehouse to upload/download others), some useful content for arch viz. You just open your assets folder, click on what you go, and that's it.

The things that SU does well remain clunky in modo for architectural work. There is no inferencing (a major shortcoming), using real world dimensions is annoying, and most importantly, just playing around with masses (ie drawing out shapes and push/pulling them, cutting holes for doors and windows and so on) is much less intuitive. The many options you have in modo are often the source of the problem: when you create a square in modo, for example, you can enter dimensions, location and number of segments into a mega version of the VCB. So you could, if you wanted, make one big square consisting of 9 smaller squares by specifying 3 segment in the X axis, and 3 segments in the Z axis. Great, but the problem is next time you use the tool to create a rectangle/square, you will have to reset the tool or you will get a 3x3 square. Apart from the big problems like the lack of inferencing and useful dimensions, the continual need to set tool options before use can really get in the way. In SU, of course, you have no such complications because in general tool options are quite limited. In these circumstances, less is more.

The opposite is true too, of course: once you have beveled the corners of objects, or used subdivision, SU feels extremely primitive. Organic modeling is the real strength of modo (and the weakness of SU) so I can see why modo can feel magical, but SU's abilities are also quite "magical" in their own way.

There is also nothing like dynamic components (a major drawback).

What I can imagine is the workflow that has been mentioned earlier: do base work in SU, export to modo for detailing and (theoretically) modeling. But...modo (while a cheap alternative to Max etc) still costs $$$, so I am beginning to think that the ideal toolbox (for Arch Viz interiors) for me would consist of:
-SU Pro for base modeling rectilinear and regular curved forms
-MoI for modeling non-organics/hard surface
-Silo ($129; simpler interface than Modo, more "usable" for many people) for details, organics
-Thea Render (if it lives up to its hype and isn't too expensive)

For me, I find it really frustrating (although sometimes challenging and interesting) to use software for things it's not designed for, so I would rather use multiple programs, using each of them to do what they are best at. All of the above should actually "play nice" together as well.

Modo 401 appears to be both quirky and demanding about hardware specifications, at least at this point, so using it might mean an upgrade.

The modo community is great. However, for people like me who started modeling using SketchUp, I have found it challenging to find training/info about a lot of little details related to polygon modeling, UVing and other processes. For similar people, I would stress that modo (and Silo and any other polygonal modeling programs) employ an entirely different modeling paradigm that you may not find easy to grasp. If you can, great-I envy you! But don't expect that this will be the case. (Pete, you will have no problem!)

So: if you're interested in the modeling capabilities, I would suggest downloading ANY polygonal modeling program and try it out. Some of the best introductory tutorials are found at nevercenter.com, where you can also get a 30 day trial for Silo, I think. As mentioned, ease of use is high for silo, and hardware requirements low. The fundamental processes and tools are essentially identical to what you'd see in modo. There's no render engine built into Silo, btw.

If you're interested in modo for rendering? It can produce stunning results, like VRay, and you'd get a full-fledged modeler and lots more for only an extra $100. But that's still out of my price range, and Thea is promising to be affordable while offering great features even its first version. Fingers crossed for that. The few samples they released look quite promising.

Intangibles: Luxology, the people producing modo, interact with the userbase almost daily on the forums, are extremely responsive, provide excellent customer service and are obviously extremely committed to their product and are not owned by a multi-national conglomerate.

So there you go...

Sounds strange. I go from Mac to PC and back with no problems--although SU crashes fifty times on Mac for every once on XP...

Not sure that the gamma change works for me, but I agree there is something not quite right about the original renders. Maybe its that the foreground suggests that it is nearing sunset but the sky is midday, deep blue. Maybe a different sky (with some orange/gold) would fix the disconnect between it and the foreground lighting and shadows.

Another Artlantis render (v2). 3 mins

@unknownuser said:

Gus ....you nailed it!! cheers to you!!

I agree--that looks spectacular and relatively easy to model. When I tried using subdivide and smooth initially, I could not figure out how to control the subdivision. I was trying to draw elaborate grids etc etc and nothing seemed to work. Never occurred to me that a few well-placed control lines like the ones in your model would do the job.

I will give this a go later today and see how it goes.

@solo said:

Are you needing this for a product display or is it for a bathroom design? If indeed it is for a product then I understand your need to total accuracy, and would suggest using the blue prints to get the dimensions right and maybe even using Rhino for the modeling. It looks very much like the Kohler Botticelli brand BTW.

Thanks for the great renders--you spent much more time/effort than you should have. The sink is for a bathroom design and I agree that total accuracy is not needed for this project. The real motivation for my post, which I should have made clearer, was to find out if there was an equivalent to SketchUp for this kind of modeling--in other words, an easy to use and learn program that handles beveling, filleting and merging complex curves as easily as SketchUp handles rectilinear forms (and many curved ones). The more I look, however, the more it seems that SketchUp is truly unique in its combination of usability and capability. SketchUp will remain my modeling workhouse, but I'm trying to see what (if anything) I should add to my workflow to make life easier when encountering "difficult" objects that SU doesn't natively handle well. I see Rhino has demo and is working on a Mac OS version, so perhaps I'll spend some time on it.