I think those are all really great points, Simon. You should bring those
up more on the modo beta forum.
-Tim
On 9/25/2012 12:11 PM, Simon Van de Lagemaat wrote:
Ya Arnold has it's flaws as do all render engines. Modo's strong IC
and portal lights make it much more suitable for interiors but since
we don't do any Archvis work interiors are few and far between.
Arnold also suffers from not being a bidirectionaI path tracer, so
things like caustics are a pita.
I prefer Arnold for heavy production rendering for the following
reasons..
1. It can handle more data. Arnold can handle bigger and more geo,
it's a beast. I tested instancing a tree asset in Modo and Arnold
using sitoa. I got up to maybe 10million trees with billions of
polygons in Modo, Arnold was doing substantially more with trillions
of polygons and doing it faster and smoother. It wasn't just better,
it was exponentially better. I think it rivals or better Renderman in
this regard.
2. Arnold is stable, really really stable. It rarely crashes or
spits out bad or unpredictable data and when it does it's almost
always your fault. Modo's renderer tends to be unstable especially at
heavier loads and it can sometimes do things that are unexpected i.e.
render artifacts, bad frames etc.
3. I like using nodes in Soft using sitoa. Modo's layer system is
really cool for single assets or simple scenes but becomes a nightmare
with a complex system.
4. Arnold's proxy/reference system is awesome sauce. Modo has no
proxy system.
5. Optimization is much easier with Arnold. Better tools for
managing ray visibility on both an item and surface level... the
raytype node in Arnold is the single best thing ever.
6. Linux support.
I love Modo still. We use it for lookdev especially with asset
creation. These are all just hard truths that I've encountered while
using both packages. If was doing smaller jobs i.e. print, archvis,
pure asset creation etc... I would probably still be using Modo, it's
the reason why ILM's art dpt uses it. It's fast and nimble under
lighter loads, that's where it shines. Some people have managed to
wrangle it into a full production pipeline and that's awesome, I just
couldn't do it.
On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 9:33 AM, Tim Crowson
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
@ Simon,
/"Modo is a fantastic app and it has a fantastic render engine for
the type of end user they are focusing on. But as good as it is
it's no Arnold and has a ways to go before it is. /"
I dunno, I don't really think it's that far behind. In fact in
some areas, it seems better. Handles interiors a lot better,
certainly. From what testing I've done, I can't find anything to
really place modo that far behind Arnold. That's my opinion based
on limited experience with Arnold.
I know that you're in a unique position of having experience with
both, so can you elaborate on the differences you see between the
Arnold and modo renderers?
-Tim
On 9/25/2012 11:13 AM, Simon Van de Lagemaat wrote:
Modo is a fantastic app and it has a fantastic render engine for
the type of end user they are focusing on. But as good as it is
it's no Arnold and has a ways to go before it is.
That said, it's a great match for the Foundry who now have the
ability to create content across the entire pipeline which is
probably what they were really looking for.
On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 6:13 AM, Raffaele Fragapane
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Well, they got katana, modo, nuke Mari. All they need now is
an animation solution and they stand a chance to go toe to
toe with maya and soft if they offered bundles, at least in
any shop sane enough to use Houdini instead of maya for fx.
Interesting times ahead. Hopefully this won't mean they will
forsake their work with rman and Arnold in favor of trying to
pimp modo's engine.
At least the foundry is a company focused on vfx and not a
cad one barely tolerating their M&E division.
Sent from not an iPhone
On Sep 25, 2012 9:08 PM, "Ben Houston" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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