Modo 401

Product information
Name: modo 401 Purpose: Model. Paint. Render. Animate. Last updated: 11 Dec 2009 Current version: 401 SP2 33836 Status: Beta OS: Mac OS X, Windows 32-bit/64-bit Forum Report bugs Feature list Product info Maintainer: Luxology Contact for technical issues: [email protected] ...
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modo 401 is a Digital Content Creation tool from Luxology. It has COLLADA support through the modo COLLADA plug-in.

Compatibility

The modo COLLADA plug-in requires modo 401 SP2 (build 32834) or later, running on either Mac OS X (Intel or PowerPC) or Windows (32-bit or 64-bit).

Exporter

The modo COLLADA exporter can output geometry with normals and multiple UV texture coordinate sets, lights, cameras, materials, effects, and transform animations, all using a “common” technique that is compatible with a wide variety of third-party tools.

The exporter can also output a modo401 profile technique, that provides a human-readable form of many of modo’s items and their internal channels and animation envelopes. Users familiar with the COLLADA file format can also directly edit the exported files using a plain text or XML editing tool.

For additional compatibility with third-party tools, the exporter can also output profiles for a number of third-party DCC tools, such as Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, that describe a number of elements that are not part of the standard COLLADA specification.

modo COLLADA 401 SP1 build 33836 released

11 December 2009

Package Name: modo COLLADA 401 SP2 build 33836

Release: Build 33836

Release notes: modoCOLLADA_33836.pdf

Highlights of Build 33836

11 December 2009

• Node elements with multiple instance_geometry elements (SketchUp).
• Mixed geometry mesh types per node during scene load (SketchUp).
• Save and load pivot transforms and their inverses.
• Scene load of transform for straw in styrofoam cup sample.
• Fixes for transform sequence read/write order.
• Recognition of post- vs standard-rotate transforms.

Known Issues as of Build 33836

Sorted roughly by priority:

• Polygons elements with holes (SketchUp).
  • Single inner loops in process for future build (33018, 33092, 33100).
• Polygons elements with initial vertices at concave locations.
  • Fix in process for future build (33092).
• Hole conversion in polygons elements with variable maximum index offsets (SketchUp).
  • Fix in process for future build (33141).
• Polylist elements with initial vertices at concave locations (SketchUp).
• Polygons elements with more than one hole (SketchUp).
• Deal with transform sequences for ambient light (create a locator).
• PolyRender channel I/O.
• Render Camera target for Shade Tree Render item.
• Add user value to export cfg for modo COLLADA build number in asset tag.
• Polygon "face" or "subdiv" types: polylist/triangle extra param to note all polys of same type.
• Item tags.
• Add "item_name" to modo profile, for unfiltered name I/O.
• Profile defs should sit in separate .h and .cpp files for each profile.
• Use package API for light target channels (cameras already enabled for modo 401 SP2).
• User channel saving and loading. (Needs more user channel APIs?)
• Group list saving and loading. (Needs packages API?)
• modo profile sub-type for locator vs group locator.
• Fix distant relative image file path I/O.
• Observe double-sided option in Google Earth/Sketchup profile.
• If all transform axis keyframes have values at common times across all axes, then output scale, rotate, and translate animation channel elements as triplets instead of per-axis values.
• Handle combined-triplet channel transforms on import as well.
• Matrix animation subscript indexing (see sample 3ds Max files)
• Profile params for rotate pivot and pivot compensation transform types.
• Import up-axis.
• Import units.
• Resolve relative inter-file URLs in instance nodes during a scene load.
• Polygon part tags.
• Arbitrary polygon tags.
• Fix remaining usages of "io" class variable.
• Full shader tree I/O for materials.
• Need full envelope I/O for render, materials, cameras, lights, and meshes.
• Keyframe behavior mode.
• Morph sets.
• Loading and saving skin controllers. (Test with Spore models.)
• Support for ZAE zip compression sub-format.
• Performance optimizations.
• Triangulate scene saver option.
• Physics library.

Previous build 32945

21 September 2009

Changes in Build 32945

• Mac OS X version built on Leopard (10.5) to fix missing symbol.
• Item mask observed when writing out common material properties.
• Fixed crash when saving modo profile param animation.
• Effects that have transparent color load with transparent amount.
• Handle third-party extra technique profiles attached to lights.
• Handle texcoord array in STP form (from 3ds Max).
• Work around issue with progress bar during import.
• Support for constant effects (for the XSI Bike headlight).
• Fixes for texcoord index lookup for multiple UV map sets per polygons, polylist, or triangles.
• Applied NCName filtering for geometry names.
• Skip writing image libraries when all texture locators are unlinked.
• Support for polygons elements (as seen in “formica rufa” model).

Previous Build 32654

31 August 2009

Changes in Build 32654

• Valid scene file saved for scenes that only have ambient light.
• Search more than one technique profile within a single extra element.

Previous Build 32619

28 August 2009

Changes in Build 32619

• Recognize multiple instance nodes pointing at same node, and convert to modo instance.
• Export geometry instances during scene save.
• Filter out scale transforms for cameras during scene load.
• Allow animation envelopes with missing interpolation inputs.
• Better handling for isolated or post-rotate transform sequences.
• Load polylines defined by the <lines> element.
• Defer to global asset up-axis when visual scene does not have asset of its own.
• Basic light sub-type I/O (area, dome, cylinder, photometric, etc.)
• Primary light material color I/O.
• Relink texture locator UV maps after scene load with component-based (instanced) mesh items.
• Preflight checks to prevent invalid libraries generated for scenes with empty meshes or no meshes at all.

Previous Build 32472

21 August 2009

Changes in Build 32472

• Dramatic speed-up of scene saving (over 20x for some scenes).
• Support for saving and loading cameras with targets (to be enabled once modo 401 SP2 is released).
• Additional light channel save and load support in the modo401 profile.
• Moved scene up axis into <visual_scene> / <asset>, instead of using a custom modo401 profile param.
• Added a progress bar during scene load.
• Fixed a crash caused by initial rotation transforms that affect fewer than three axes.
• Fixed various compile-time issues for GCC 4 (Snow Leopard).
• Additional error handling.

See also

• Luxology modo 401 extensions

External Links

• modo 401 Product Information
• modo COLLADA on SourceForge