(Devil's Advocate question) Compare MOI to...

 From:  WillBellJr
645.2 In reply to 645.1 
I understand how you feel - I (unfortunately) have modelers out the gazoo - (Lightwave's modeler, XSI's modeler, Hexagon 1, (the now defunct) Hexagon 2, Amapi 7.5, ZBrush 2 (now 3), Silo, Rhino 2 (boy if I had kept all the money in my pocket that I've spent on software - I'd be rich (and prolly bored... ;-) )
(In my defense, there be so many sales and incentives, it's hard to resist them at times - well for me anyway...)

The thing is, each modeler has its advantages and disadvantages (as with all software) - everyone claims to have the best uber modeler (hence my current evaluation (again) of Modo...)

I felt the same as you when I first learned about Rhino; it was easy to draw out curves and loft, revolve or patch your surfaces together - crazy fast and easy. Unfortunately for me, with Rhino, it was never easy to get a exported mesh out that was "friendly" to my polygonal apps (the triangles killed the surface smoothness and polygon density also made it hard if you wanted to animate.)

Now here in 2007, we have MOI, Michael as made some good advancements in the meshing routines so that it's not that hard to get decent >ngonal< exports out to other apps - just look at all the great C4D and other renders around here.

Time has also brought me experience - any kind of model I create in MOI (Rhino) should be mostly used as props and background objects; buildings, furniture - anything that doesn't require>bending< type animations. Those special>character< models should remain SDS or native to the rendering app at hand (XSI, Lightwave etc.)

So I'm very interested in MOI (and NURBS modeling) again for the ease of model creation (compared to polygons and subdivision surfaces.)

I'm sort of in a quandry because now that I've forced myself (this time) to work with the Modo demo, I've actually become proficient with it and sort of like it - I just can't see myself spending $700 for yet another SDS modeler (even with the 3D garage training incentive thrown in...)

So in my opinion, you need to determine>what< you're going to do with your models - for static renderings (architectural, still life etc.) renderings, MOI is great because you can create your objects so easily and polygon count and mesh topology is not so much of an issue.

If you're looking to create characters for animation, then you need to look at your>export path< and determine NOW if you can successfully get MOI models into your animation package and get them to look good and animate the way you need (or would like) them to.

Retopology tools like TopoGun and Silo's retopology toolset also makes it possible to take hi-poly models, clean up and trim them down to an animation friendly state - extra work in my opinion (over perhaps just building it straight SDS) but it depends on your workflow and project timeframes...

I'm definitely leaning more towards MOI than Modo for one cause I feel Modo was just the Lux guys walking out of Newtek (with source code CDs in pocket); I had to chuckle when I saw the Modo 301 preview video - the animation timeline just totally looked like Lightwave to me - granted perhaps Lightwave 10 or 11.

I believe if I hold out long enough, Newtek will do some great things for Modeler (hell, they should steal from Modo! Modo certainly seems to support all of LW's file formats and other internals (MDDs Morphs) - hmmm!) For now LWCAD makes Modeler a joy for me again.

I'd rather give my cash to Michael at this point - hopefully when the documentation is done, the best practices and modeling methods will be detailed so there won't be too much guessing as to how to use MOI's tools thus making modeling with MOI that much more faster!

-Will