Architosh Staff ([email protected])

1 Sep 2004

 

Apple Expo: Notes on Luxology's new 'modo' 3d modeling app

Luxology's new modo application indexes the extent to which new software companies can reshape the IT industry with groundbreaking features and innovation

There's a powerful new weapon at the disposal of digital 3d artists and it's called modo. Built by some of the best software engineers and visionaries in the industry (many of which are from NewTek, the developer of the Emmy-award winning LightWave 3D application) modo by Luxology brings some stunning new innovations to the world of 3d.

modo Showcased at Apple Expo Keynote

Brad Peebler, President of Luxology, showed off some of modo's capabilities during yesterday's Apple Expo Keynote speech in Paris, while Phil Schiller, Apple VP, lauded the application as a "next-gen" app, the kind of new software tool that can happen when a software developer taps the underlying technologies in Mac OS X.

Brad Peebler said that Luxology wrote modo from the ground up to reflect the needs of professional 3d artists working today. The company's senior staff and executives have a deep history and connection to the working world of animation studios and have brought that understanding to the foundation of modo.

During the presentation modo was shown off working fluidly with a 150,000 polygon model of a hippo, doing real-time dynamic modifications to its form. Brad remarked that the power of the G5 is ideal for making such real-time work possible and noted that modo takes full advantage of Apple's Quartz Extreme and OpenGL implementation. In a rendering demonstration modo was able to render the 150,000 poly hippo in less than seven seconds, all in radiosity. Using a technique called "instancing" whereby the one hippo was multiplied by several factors of ten to make a near infinite army of hippos, modo was able to render that scene in radiosity in under a minute. All of the hippos were casting individual shadows on each other and rendered in radiosity.

Brad Peebler remarked that modo is capable of taking advantage of network rendering and is a perfect candidate for Apple's new G5 based Xserve (1U) rack servers. One of its senior engineers is an expert programmer in multiprocessing systems and modo is fully capable of taking advantage of more than one processor, as in a dual processor G5 or AMD box.

modo Details - One of the World's Most Advanced Interfaces

While modo is a capable and innovative new polygonal and subdivision surface modeler, perhaps its most striking feature is its groundbreaking user interface (UI). Luxology proudly shows off modo's UI on their website (www.luxology.com) through several large QuickTime movies. In addition to insanely fluid and flexible customization of the modo UI, modo has several innovative features in its interface such as slider detents. Slider detents are like vertices snaps for nice numbers such as 180 in a slider on degrees of rotation. As you move the mouse and across a "nice number" there is a slight pause under the mouse which aids the user to choose that nice number. Such little attention to details with new techniques like detents are extremely valuable and Luxology believes that its innovations in UI design are part of the reconsidered "ergonomic" needs of 3d professionals.

For more information on Luxology's new modo 3d application visit them online at: http://www.luxology.com

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