modo 302 tips / tutorials

[Snake Man]

I opened this Modo 302 tips / tutorials topic here in ArmA editing as there is no other more suitable place at the moment.

I'd like to know few basics with 3D editing using Modo 302.

For example in ArmA you use the "export" version of O2PE to export your p3d into 3DS format, then you use Modo with Import feature to load the 3ds mesh in. Then you're off to edit.

First I'd like to know how you setup the backdrop for BLUEPRINT so that you can start to model tank or aircraft etc. Col.Klink made a nice tutorial for this in O2 back in OFP times which I used, but I dont know how to do this in Modo yet. I can load ONE backdrop but I cant do that X cross section so I have blueprint on the screen in 3d space so to speak (I hope you know what I mean).

I'll try to post some ArmA (for now) related tips for this first topic if hopefully this topic gets alot of activity and posts

[Snake Man]

Another question; maybe it was just me, but when I tried to export/save my model in Modo 302, there was no 3DS format saving possible, there was the OBJ which O2 reads, but when I clicked it, Modo said that this format cannot contain the polygons or something like that (I dont have the exact warning here now).

Err, how do I export models with textures / selections from Modo to O2PE?

[T_Rex]

From what limited experience I've had with O2, I can't get any non-O2 format to import into O2 with the texture mapping.

[Snake Man]

Hmm reading Synide's post earlier... is it true that without his special tools, we cannot export from Modo -> O2?

[Synide]

I opened this Modo 302 tips / tutorials topic here in ArmA editing as there is no other more suitable place at the moment.

I'd like to know few basics with 3D editing using Modo 302.

For example in ArmA you use the "export" version of O2PE to export your p3d into 3DS format, then you use Modo with Import feature to load the 3ds mesh in. Then you're off to edit.

First I'd like to know how you setup the backdrop for BLUEPRINT so that you can start to model tank or aircraft etc. Col.Klink made a nice tutorial for this in O2 back in OFP times which I used, but I dont know how to do this in Modo yet. I can load ONE backdrop but I cant do that X cross section so I have blueprint on the screen in 3d space so to speak (I hope you know what I mean).

I'll try to post some ArmA (for now) related tips for this first topic if hopefully this topic gets alot of activity and posts

Nah, don't use any of the export features in the beta version to get your stuff out of p3dm format...
All the formats that beta version produces will give less than perfect results.

Instead I've already given you the means to go from O2 mlod p3dm's to Modo.

It's the p3dm2lxo.exe tool.

This will give you a 'perfect' translation of a given lod's geometry and texture mappings over to Modo.

Have a look on the Lux website, there are a whole ton of free small .mp4 video's on how to do stuff like backdrop setting up and the Modo installation folder has a swag of stuff on how to's as well...

Hmm reading Synide's post earlier... is it true that without his special tools, we cannot export from Modo -> O2?

That is tru'ish... If you have lxo2p3d.exe (Modo->O2) then you'll get a 'perfect' copy of what you have in Modo over in O2.

You can however export .obj for instance from Modo and import this to O2... but that method will give you some problems.

Ok..... thinking.... oh well...

See this PMC thread

Cheers, Sy

[Snake Man]

Thanks Synide, read the other topic just now, excellent stuff.

Now I'm getting hang of the things in modo, watched some tutorial videos so now I think I can place a backdrop image and rotate it, very nice. I'm not sure about the scale, so lets say to make it match the blueprint and real life sizes, but then again we can always scale the whole model when its done so this should not be a problem(?).

So still to be the newbie here I have one more question: are we now completely and 100% safe to build brand new models with Modo 302 that we can fully export them (with lxo2p3dm tool) to O2 without problems?

And also, would it be good idea to convert all WIP p3d's to Modo lxo format so all the editing would be done there, then only to export and finish them off for ArmA in O2?

[Snake Man]

Is it just me, or are all those interesting video tutorials for 302 only available if you pay some extra for it?

[Synide]

there's quite a few little short ones in the modo installation folder.
there's quite a few little short ones available through the lux website.
there's also numbers of them around various other 3D websites... usually all just small sized...

All the small short ones are free, it's the big ones like 'The Alley' and 'Modelling the Le Mans Car' and the 'Seahorse', Garage Courseware DVD1 & DVD2 are good too... but big at 5.5Gig... ones that you have to buy... or..... torrent them... they are all over the internet...
bttrove.org, demonoid.com, btmon.com...

what I'm really, really after is the Modo File I/O SDK... so I can make some proper import/export plugins for Modo to.... whatever !

[Snake Man]

If you have links for some torrent files, you're free to post them here, there is nothing illegal of posting torrent links

[Synide]

torrents.rar - dunno if any of these are being seeded... try thepiratebay.org as well...

[Snake Man]

Modo 302 Polygon Reduction Tool

Previously in O2 I had to manually create lower resolution LODs, then I experiemented with the 3DS Max Polygon Cruncher tool and now I discovered Modo 302's Polygon Reduction Tool.

I must say that the only reason why I installed 3DS Max was to use the very interesting Polygon Cruncher, but now... Modo does the same thing and its just another modo feature (and not external program as with Polygon Cruncher).

I cant say if polygon cruncher or modos reduction tool is better, but it is very sweet that you can do this inside modo directly.

To use it, select the polygons on your model, then click the Polygon editing mode and click Reduction tool. Then the Reduct dialog opens and you can type in directly the amount of polygons, or you can use mouse LMB and drag to reduce them. Its so cool as you can also put into the Number digits field like the original amount of polygons and "/2" which means, divided by two... and bang, you got instant half as many polygons LOD created.

Initial tests show that indeed the reduction tool does pretty decent job, at least decent enough if we must choose original models 1000 poly last res LOD or 100 one created in Modo...

Modo gets thumbs up from me.

Check out the results in this post.

[Snake Man]

Is there feature to look single points, ie not connected to create face/poly, which could be selected automatically?

I would need such feature as using the Polygon Reduction Tool it creates on the lower res LODs quite amount of these points. Its not big deal to remove them manually (usually in O2) but it would be cool to clean them out automatically/quickly.

[Synide]

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa15 ... am/sm2.jpg

Look in the 'Statistics' wwindow...

Expand the Vertices>Polygons...

Press the 'plus' sign next to the one that says 'zero'... This is selecting all vertices that belong to 'zero' polygons...

as you can see in the picture there are also 4 vertices that belong to 1 polygon...

Press the delete key... gone.

etc.

The manual is pretty good at describing this stuff... look for the word 'selections'...

[Snake Man]

Awesome, that looks like real nice way to nuke all of them without going into the bits and pieces one by one. Thanks for the tip.

[Snake Man]

I had to reinstall my win xp sp3... and now when I run modo302.exe it chews it a bit and then says: "Setup.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.", uhm any ideas?

[Synide]

dunno, really... could be 101 different things...

previlege, file security, corrupt setup.exe, try running the modo install .exe in 'compatibility mode'.

right-click the .exe and goto 'properties' in the context menu and then goto the 'compatibilty' tab... select the appropriate settings.

dunno anything about sp3 as I'm XP64bit only here... I'll never go back to 32-bit OS's now...

[Snake Man]

previlege, file security, corrupt setup.exe

None of the above. And the compatibility mode didn't work either. Its just one of those things... altough its a goddamn bad thing if I cannot 3d model anymore.

[Synide]

hmmm,

well... "I had to reinstall my win xp sp3..." - could you perhaps explain what process you did to 'reinstall sp3'.

I suspect you re-applied the Service Pack after you have already applied it once to the system - Yes/No?

If Yes, then... yuck, yuck, yuck... not a good thing to do unless you're really, really geeky and know what areas of windows you need to 'play with' afterwards.
If this is the case, then completely re-install Windows and go through the Service Pack's upgrade process again. Dunno, if you can goto SP3 directly after initial XP install. As I mentioned SP3 is only 32bit.

If on the other hand you meant that you already did a complete XP re-install and then upgraded the OS to SP3 then you really do have an issue.

Usually, in the past I've seen this error message and the root of it seem to center around the Installtion Software expecting certain Microsoft stuff to be present and it wasn't.

One, possible way around it might be to explore HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall looking for the Luxology stuff or Modo stuff and remove it from the registry.

Before doing this first have a look at the 'Add Remove Programs' and see if Modo is still in the list.

And, backup your registry prior to mucking about.

Then try running the setup.exe. If still no joy then go the extra step and remove the luxology folders from your HDD as well. ( don't forget the stuff down under "C:\Documents and Settings\Synide\Application Data\Luxology" as well...

s'bout all I can think of at the moment... sorry.

[Snake Man]

Reinstalled xp sp3 means that I had I believe it to be xp sp2 jan 2007 installed before. There were few issues I didnt like for example office didn't work (remember my excel not working hehe), I use excel and word quite often. Then windows explorer started to be very slow on certain dirs, altough I was so scared that it was because hdd is going to break, but I hoped it to be because of the old win install (luckily old install was the case).

So what I did, I inserted the xp sp3 (latest) cdr into the dvd, re-booted my machine up with that, selected windows install and formatted my C: with HPFS (not the quick format), then continued to install xp as usual. C: is my win partition, D: is basically OFP, ArmA, Falcon 4 and some misc small stuff.

All the old stuff is gone, this was not an upgrade.

Anyways I had the modo302.exe which I used to install it the first place, it gave this error. Then to be sure I re-downloaded it again, it gave the same error. So right now I would have to install xp sp2 back and hope modo installs with that... my 3d editing needs will have to be quite strong to go that route again

[Synide]

Hmmm... have you got SP3 right up-to-date through 'Windows Update'?

When the error comes up does the dialog give you the option of viewing the deatils of the error or viewing the data associated with the error?

If so, what does this detail look like?

[Snake Man]

SP3 has been updated to the latest win updates, still not working. I'll just have to accept that until I revert to sp2 or buy new computer, I cannot install Modo 302.

[Synide]

As a last resort then just 'copy' the folders required over to this new SP3 OS.

Might take a while to get right but will eventually work...

[Snake Man]

Does modo have simple registry entries so they can be just imported, or does it require correct installing?

[Synide]

Dunno really as I've never HAD to do it... but at first glance the registry entries look pretty straight forward.
Maybe the Bonjour Render might prove a bit painful... really don't know unless I'm prepared to spend the time to do it.

Or, maybe try this... -> http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=5070129

[seafire6]

I really like Modo and am gradually getting more proficient in its application. I have concerns though about the import to O2; from what I can gather O2 has some rather specific limitations on its models and image/uv maps. For instance, can we have more than one uv/image map per model, can we use procedural maps and I know we can't use bump maps - I'm sorry that I'm jumping all around here but I would hate to spend a lot of time on a project only to find I screwed it up for O2. Any help/advice would be greatl appreciated.

[Synide]

ArmA/O2PE supports multiple UV texture maps per LOD.

What do you mean by 'procedural maps'?
Do you mean 'procedural textures'? - Then yes.
If you mean 'procedural uv maps'. - Then no.

With regard to modo I find it easiest to have a seperate UV texture map for each main 'texture/material'.

Correct. No Bump maps.

When working in modo don't split your geometry up using 'parts'. Use 'selections'.

With my lxo2p3dm converter it will create a 'named selection' for portions of the geometry based on 'vertex selections' and 'face selections'.

eg.
If you have just one or more 'points' and you want those as named selections over in O2PE then you just give them 'vertex selection' names over in modo.

If on the other hand you have one or more 'faces' and you want them as a named selection over in O2PE then you have to have a 'vertex selection' AND a 'face selection' for them.

Get it?

[seafire6]

Thank you for the reply. I'll keep plugging along. As you can see I am definitely a novice , but Modo is a great program so progress comes at reasonable intervals.

[Snake Man]

Or, maybe try this... -> http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=5070129

I was going to try that util, I copied the modo302.exe from dvdr and just for no reason clicked it one more time... and it worked. Its absolutely beyond me how it didnt work before and now it does. Maybe I installed some other software which added some dll/config/etc to allow me to run this setup exe, but anyways, now it works, Modo 302 installed again

[Snake Man]

I wrote tutorial how to create low resolution LODs for ArmA models using Modo 302. Its on our wiki, read it there.

PMC Editing Wiki: Modo Polygon Reducer.

[Snake Man]

This must be like the most basic question but I cant figure it out. How do I take 2 different LXO files and merge them, in o2 p3d files I can just load first, copy-paste it to the second, but copy-paste wont work in Modo?

[Snake Man]

How to apply a simple TGA texture into a model (no matter about uv unwrapping, just slapping the texture in first)?