Modo | What happened to This Great 3D Software

Today's video is dedicated to a forgotten software, that used to be considered industry standard years ago but didn't last: Modo. Let's discover its story together.

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[dsolidmodel]

That's exactly what happened… Foundry has wrapped things up. They’ve shut down years and years of work by talented people, pushing aside those of us who passionately love and use Modo. I’d really appreciate it if you could address the whole situation. Your videos are watched not only by Modo enthusiasts but also by others who deserve to know what Foundry has done. Business is business, but shutting down a project that they’ve been systematically phasing out for years is another story.

Thank you

[stevenwmclean]

I used to be a Modo user starting from version 2 all the way up to 8, and I must say it was an incredible piece of software. I invested a lot of time and effort into it, and the community around Modo was active. Everything changed when the Foundry took over. Their licensing system and subscription model was a major turnoff for many of us. Around the same time, Blender had a significant interface update, and many of us Modo users were willing to give it a chance, despite the initial learning curve. It's disheartening because Modo is genuinely fantastic software, despite the bugs and glitches.

[musashidanmcgrath]

Modo was such an innovative and exciting program back then. It was so ahead of the game with many of its features. Once Luxology sold out and Brad Peebler got fired it was game over. They just didn't know it yet. Another slow, painful death by corporation. RIP Modo.

[oyuki]

Thank you for choosing MODO as your theme. I look forward to reading your report again when MODO17 is released.

[FloTasser]

I was so hyped by Modo around 2010. It is really unfortunate. It's also so sad how Foundry slowly, probably by accident, killed Mischief. That program was a really great breath of fresh air in drawing software.

[jessebrady]

Me, working on my studio's latest project in Modo, while watching this video... "huh..."
Haha, I largely agree with the assessment that performance and stability struggles caused most people to peel out around 901 and after. That's definitely been my biggest gripe as well. It's for sure worth noting that the upcoming version of Modo is focusing primarily on performance and speed, with a rewrite of a bunch of core systems, so we'll see how that goes! Personally, the hardest thing to replace for me would be Modo's extremely unique approach to "Order of Operations" rigging... it's so good, that I don't understand how other software could operate without it. I continue to have the opinion that on paper, Modo is insanely good, and would allow you to create almost anything with great efficiency....but that performance cap really does limit what you can accomplish. Looking forward to seeing if V17 starts to turn that around

[lucianodaluz]

It still has the best poly modeling and UV tools, but that´s all. Hope to see it shine again.

[tomh.]

I started with modo 302. I bought every upgrade up to Modo 10. When Foundry took over the quality started to slip. When Brad Peebler left, modo basically died then. I miss it. It was easy to use. I've been trying to get fluent with Blender since 2.8, it gets better all the time, but it still kicks my ass.

[Intercepto]

Interesting how Blender success happened at the point where 3D industry started switching to subscription only. It is sad for Modo, I've heard many times it has one of the best modeling tools around. But I feel if they stayed independent they would have much better success, instead they were bought by the Foundry and things went downhill from that point.

[pixelfondue]

I have to say, overall that's a really good video. You did your research and tried to be fair. I can nitpik with some things. It's been a roller coaster for Modo users. Once they were acquired by Foundry there was a bit of a culture clash between a Silicon Valley startup (Luxology) and what was essentially a Film VFX software vendor owned by a giant investment firm. Foundry didn't ever create their own software, they purchased in-house FilmVFX software and sold it commercially. It has been bought and sold a couple times since and I think is on their 3rd CEO since acquiring Luxology. Pretty much all but a couple of the old Lux folk are gone at this point. However, it's very much NOT dead. They release updates all the time, at a faster face than ever (every couple of weeks now). They have a new product manager and some new devs who are all great. I do think they need to address 'The Blender issue' - but so does every other 3D software company. Blender has all the advantages of a free open-source program with almost none of the weaknesses. They have full-time paid developers, they have access to commercial software plugins that goes through a bunch of workaournds and loopholes to NOT conform to the Open Source rules. At the end of the day, as much as some people love Blender it could be considered pretty anti-consumer. Yep, it's free. But very much not everybody wants to use it - even if you give it to them for free. They would rather pay to use something else. If all those 'something-else' options go the way of the dodo (like Clarisse just did) then Blender isn't really that great for consumers.

[coinopanimator]

It was also expensive. The Foundry never even tried lowering the price and focusing on it being the best modeller.

[mariomanganelli]

It's great to see you have done this video about Modo. For now, Modo is alive and a new version has been (silently😅) released every year. Anyway, I have seen changes in the last year that gave me a new hope about the development. Also, I think most people and users underestimate the "shoe" thing that happened to Modo. Modo is widely used in this industry as far as I know, and I saw recently a few job openings for different big brands where it was the only DCC mentioned. Probably without that segment, modo wouldn't be able to survive. Lightwave didn't look outside the media and entertainment industry and fell down much worst than Modo.

[jakecarvey]

I was the Lead Artist at Naked Sky Entertainment in the first game projects, and was responsible for bringing Modo in as our central 3d tool for combining multiple modeling, optimization, texture, and baking workflows. As President of SpinCycle Animation and then iXL Animation we had worked with the Lightwave guys for years for KidsWB! and others, and I was a very early beta tester on pre-release Modo and was also a presenter for them at the NAB conference. Good memories and powerful tools. I still use it sometimes, but not as often as I once did.

[sn]

I adore Modo, it's still my favorite modeler. I had to surrender my license for financial reasons but boy do I miss it. Blender (which I have huge appreciation for for being free and very capable) doesn't hold a candle to modeling with Modo. Modo truly spoiled all who used it.

[MrDebranjandutta]

I learned 3D on Modo, the interface when compared to max and maya was so clean and intuitive. When blender had its UI overhaul, I felt they were deeply inspired by Modo (which in turn was later replicated by C4D).

[CharacterDev]

If I had a lot of money, I would repurchase the software from the Foundry and rebuild Modo from the ground up.

[PrimitiveBaroque]

The Modo developers are paying high attention to the instability problems and are doing some architectural changes to address that. Personally, I think it was because the architecture to combine Lightwave's Modeler and Layout, which was one of the factors to create Modo in the first place, needed to be thought out for scalability and adapt to newer CG demands. It was risky, to be sure. Besides all that is true about Modo from the market perspective, it's still a great software overall. It's also an underrated motion graphics package with MeshOps.

[leoismaking]

I did professional archviz and product viz for years with Modo. FANTASTIC program. Probably still the best traditional hard surface modelling toolset ever, and the render engine was very solid, too.

Eventually, when I switched to doing more coding and less art, I stopped updating. After being several editions behind and hearing great things about Blender 2.8, I started learning Blender instead. Nowadays, I use Blender because of the amazing community support it has and, well... it's free. But I still have a great deal of fondness for Modo, and do still occasionally miss a feature here or there.

[basspig]

The one I remember is Caligari true space. I was using that in 1995. It was fairly easy to learn.

[UmbertoUderzo]

Man, i started with Modo 301 and upgraded each single release until a few years after Foundry entered the game. But really, it was frustrating to find same bugs release after release and in last years each new release was celebrated as epic, but in reality with no noticeable enhancements from my point of view. It was nice anyway. And i still have it installed somewhere on my ssd.