Sunday, December 21, 2008

Yoshii's Daily Monster Archive



Nice collection of monsters made by Japanese artist Hiroshi Yoshii, who crafts a new monster on an almost-daily basis. Excellent display of Modo skills. I'm currently learning and using Modo and it's a pretty darn cool tool. I especially like the 3D paint tools. If you have ever used Lightwave, the common opinion is that you will feel right at home with Modo.

Here's a link to Yoshii's blog. It's in Japanese, but there's some more good stuff there.

4 comments:

Rickart said...

I've seen this stuff before... it's really fun, and he's got some cool materials he's using on these to get that glinty lacquered look.

Mr Goodson said...

Modo is 3d software, right Ronnie? I looked it up and it's about 700 bucks retail. Did you pay that Ronnie?

Surly Bird said...

Ellis, I did. I went ahead and ponied up - an early Christmas gift to myself. I have both read and heard good things about Modo for some time, and even tried the demo out a while ago. The $200 discount was the motivating factor for the purchase. I can declare it on my taxes too, as I use it at work as well as home. That's the theory, anyway.

While I'm still just learning Modo, I really like it. The 3D painting function is unlike any other application I've seen (better, in many respects than Zbrush or Mudbox). For my work flow, I need to be able to produce additional high-frequency detail on the guns I build. Things like bumps on the grips and engraved manufacturer names are doable in Photoshop and using programs like Orb or Crazy Bump, but Modo is a lot more intuitive and flexible. The modeling tools are top notch, very powerful and precise. And it plays well with other programs. I use XSI and Maya at work (XSI my main work program and Maya my prep-for-game tool). I haven't done any renders yet, but the renderer is reported to be super-fast and high-quality.

Luxology has really user-friendly policies about licensing, community, etc. Pretty forward thinking.

Rickart said...

There is an artist that I worked with at Centerscore who is a big fan of Modo... he used it for all of the 3d renders we were doing on our games. No less than Pixar is using it to model characters for movies like Wall-e.

There's a really great community surrounding Modo with loads of sharing of materials and such that people build. The price point is pretty nifty, too. The only downside of Modo is that they are still building out the animation system for it. The last time I checked you can animate with it, but can't rig a skeleton. It's on it's way, but it may be some time before that's all in place.

Still, from what I understand, you can model, UV, texture, etc. in Modo, rig and animate in Maya and then bring it back into Modo to take advantage of Modo's great rendering.