Let's switch gears a bit. modo has been showcased in previous Steve Jobs' keynotes and just recently Luxology won an Apple Design Award at this year's Apple WWDC. Obviously, you guys are a hit when it comes to Apple.

We love Apple and Apple products. Every version of modo we sell contains a license for Mac and Windows platforms -- so Windows users have "no" reason not to get a Mac. They already have the license!

Apple has been very good to us and we have come to know many of the people there as friends. They are not far from us here in the valley.

When you first started modo was the Mac platform part of your target platforms? Did you develop it from the beginning using Apple's developer tools? How important is the Mac platform to Luxology?

The Mac is central to what we do. I use one personally not just for modo but for everything. I love Aperture, Keynote -- all that stuff.

And yes, we use Apple's developer tools. We had our top Mac programmer, Matt Craig, go to WWDC when we got the Apple Design Award this year. Matt was so into it he was going crazy!

When we first started the company the Apple developer tools (Xcode) were a little rough. But some of our friends at Apple told us we would not regret going with Xcode. We took them at their word and in many ways we have been able to assist Apple in improving Xcode, Shark and GL Profiler.

Making the move to their [Apple] developer tools was one of the best decisions we made on the Mac. I have to credit Matt Craig here for that one.

How important is it for you guys to be recognized for the Apple Design Award?

As a small company it feels really good.

We don't get all the kudos that some of the bigger packages like Maya get and so we appreciate such a highly-regarded accolade from Apple. The award is kind of like a milestone that will always be there for us. So often people do not pause to go, "hey that went well" it is always an attitude of let's get onto the next thing right away. The Apple Design Award kind of forces us to relish the moment, and everything we've accomplished with modo.

modo has received much praise for its interface design. Who is responsible for it at Luxology? Is this one person's magic -- genius -- or is this a team effort?

There is only one team of developers at Luxology and yes, it is a team effort. There are two very different things that people refer to when they praise our user interface (UI). One is simply the look. The app just has a really nice clean look to it. This was very definitely a group effort. I will give some credit to Allan Hastings for the original design prototype on the icons and to Mark Brown who created about 98 percent of the icons you see in the app. It's not easy to represent a "vertex slide" operation in 32 by 32 pixels!

The other area where we spark a lot of interest is in the fluid nature of the UI. The "feel" of the app. There was a core mantra internally that has driven the app this far in terms of customizability and this is that "the user always knows best."

Ultimately the user should be able to change the application to best fit his or her workflow. Again, the design philosophy is that software should fit the task you are doing at that moment. Sounds simple, but so many other products try to bend you to how the software was designed.

Is animation in the works for modo?

Right now, animation is the domain of products like Lightwave, 3ds max and others. Accordingly, we put a lot of work into making modo work cleanly with those applications both from the data standpoint and also the little things like making the navigation of modo able to be set up like Maya.

Many of our customers actually like the simplicity of not having animation controls in their face. If you just want to crank out a design visualization, or test how your product packaging will look like, or build an asset for a game, you may not need animation.

As for Luxology, we came from an animation background and we are anxious to bring something to market. When and how it comes to market is in a future chapter!

Thanks for taking the time Brad.

Thanks for the opportunity.

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