Luxology announces modo 401 – now available

Luxology has announced the immediate availability of modo 401, the latest version of company’s award-winning 3D software package, for 3D artists working in a wide variety of industries from design visualization, package design, game development, film visual effects (VFX), video production and graphics arts. 

modo 401

Luxology has been adding numerous features to modo for the Mac and PC at a rapid clip and today modo 401 is an end-to-end solution encompassing modeling, sculpting, painting, animation and rendering in an innovative and easy-to-use user-interface (UI). 

modo 401 has a focus of improvements in the areas of rendering and animation, dozens of new features and innovative workflow improvements. “modo 401 continues our emphasis on making the 3D creative process as fluid as possible for designers and artists,” said Brad Peebler, president of Luxology. “This new version is packed with improvements and is clearly our biggest upgrade of modo to date.”

Rendering

New improvements in rendering include caustics, dispersion, blurry refraction, volumetric lighting and Pixar-patented deep shadows. New Instance Replicators allow dense amounts of surface detail with trillion polygon detail. Also new are light linking and support for multiple environments provide precise control over how each part of a scene is individually lit.  modo 401 supports stereoscopic rendering and will render on up to 32 cores across a network of 50 workstations. 

Animation

New and improved features include inverse kinematics, dynamic parenting, channel constraints and modifiers. modo 401’s new animation capabilities facilitate the creation of sophisticated rigs that can driven with a few simple inputs. And new pre-built animation assemblies allow users to apply animation to their models automatically. 

Workflows

User-driven feedback has led to optimized workflow improvements. A new deeply threaded Preview renderer boasts extremely rapid updates and progressive rendering capability. modo 401 boosts artist productivity by facilitating the re-use of assets throughout the content creation process. modo 401 ships with over 1500 pre-built assets. 

“These pre-built assets in modo offer us a way to get to final quality more quickly,” said Gary Fitzgerald of DesignworksUSA. “modo also allows us to capture and re-use our own design assets for greater efficiency.” 

New productivity improvements include some items like:

• new per vertex collision with geometry in most modeling tools
• new Profile Presets simplify modeling of edge-based details like crown moulding or complex bevels. 
• new Fur material enables multitude of material appearances from hair, bristles and fur to water droplets
• new data import and export options: Collada, FBX, 3DM and a new SolidWorks 2009 file importer for Windows only