Hi Chris,

From the point of my home use/hobby of modeling:

>>1. Will MoI and Silo compliment each other

Yes,

>>2. Is it overkill to have both MoI and Silo

No. I use MoI along side a poly modeler, at this time Hexagon (I have others that I dont use often). I have used Silo and have given thought of making purchase, I am just waiting to see the release of 2.1
I think both programs have their own strengths, what may be difficult in one can easily be done in the other. Simple example, I would start a model in Moi for base construction where booleans/ complex surfaces can be made without worry of problems with meshes, as the mesh is created on export, any tweaking /subD can then be made in the poly program. It certainly works for me.

>>3. If only one is needed to model what ever might be asked of me to model, which would you choose (non biased please)

I make many types of models as an hobby, so I do use both nurbs and poly, your own needs may differ, so it is difficult to say. For example, if you created only organic models, then you would probably be better just with Silo (due to the subD), but saying that, it can also be easier to build a base model in MoI, with complex surfaces/booleans then export the mesh and finish details in the poly modeler.
I think that due to the very reasonable price of both MoI and Silo (which together can be less than some other products) I think having both is a good option.

4. Would you say forget MoI and Silo and go for....

Difficult to say, as it would depend on your budget, your learning curve, and your needs. Personally I could build just about anything with the combination of MoI+Silo (although my organic models are not too good, the tools are there in those apps)


Regards,

1. Will MoI and Silo compliment each other

Yes

2. Is it overkill to have both MoI and Silo

No because if the answer 1.

3. If only one is needed to model what ever might be asked of me to model, which would you choose (non biased please)

I would say Silo > MoI ... You can actually model everything you want with subd's (silo) ... it's less accurate for hard surfacing, and way more boring
in some area (forget booleans way of modeling :P), but with some patience and skills it's possible.

The opposite it's not true, now way to do pure organic modeling in moi with the actual tool set. And even if the toolset will be enhanced in the
future, it will never be as flexible as poly/subd's can be, whatever the task.

4. Would you say forget MoI and Silo and go for....

Good question ... this required to well know the other packages around, and I didn't ... I like modo quite a lot for rendering/poly modeling
(mostly because I'm coming from lightwave so there are no leaning curve) ... But again, if I can, I jump in MoI every time it's possible.

Btw you should read the CG Channel review, it's a good way to know the benefit and the limits of MoI.

Others have really answered but here's my tuppence worth ;-)

1. Will MoI and Silo compliment each other

Yes - different beasts. You can start in MoI and then export and finish in Silo, though not the other way round.

2. Is it overkill to have both MoI and Silo

No - gives you options depending on what you want to model. Most people seem to collect apps as there is not really one that fits all needs :-)

3. If only one is needed to model what ever might be asked of me to model, which would you choose (non biased please)

If you only do mechanical type hard edged modeling then you could perhaps just use MoI. But i agree with what has been said before, polygon would be more flexible for different purposes, both hard edged and mechanical. But with the price of each, get both.

4. Would you say forget MoI and Silo and go for....

Only you can answer this one. I also came from a 2D graphic background and this depends on budget and needs. I've ended up with a number of applications. I've settled on modo as my main app, MoI for nurbs and zbrush for organics (a lot of learning going on just now). Along the way I've tried Vue, Poser, Carrara, Hexagon and Silo but none of them really 'fit' with me. Hexagon/Carrara combo came closest before DAZ took them over.

Chrispoole,
are you planning on texturing as well with your models? If so I would suggest both but also buying a rendering software or I think a better way would be Moi and Modo. If minor animation by moving things around then Modo will work for that as well. If your thinking about doing major animation then maybe Lightwave, Softimage, Max & Maya of course depending on budget what your expecting to do.
When modeling I think of Moi as my mechanical building software and Modo, Lightwave, Silo, Hexagon and so on as more of an organic modeling tools depends what your going to spend your time doing. The other programs do a good job in mechanical as well but I feel they have limitations in some regards for mechanical and take a lot of time when doing mechanical. Plus Moi has a feel to it that doesn't match any of the other modeling programs with the use of ease. That is my 2 cents on this subject good luck in however you decide.

Hi,

Many thanks for the quick responses, they are appreciated.

I believe Silo looks like the first choice as it can produce most things MoI can, maybe not as efficent in certain areas but still able according to the Silo forums. I think I might purchase both and learn Silo first and hopefully some of the modelling technics will be transferable.

Once again many thanks and I hope you'll see me in the forums from time to time.

Chris

Get both! Each covers a different part of technology. And no, modeling techniques are no transferable.
Cheers
Lemo

Yes, polygon and nurbs modeling are very different. Skills in one don't transfer well to the other.

Hi Chris,

You wrote: "maybe not as efficent in certain areas"

I think you may be getting a kind of mistaken idea of the degree of difference in efficiency - for mechanical shapes it is not like MoI is just a little bit more efficient, it is more like for shapes that involve one piece cutting another the poly modeling approach can be so extremely less efficient that it can become just not really very feasible to get stuff done without spending a really huge amount of time.

In general the boolean tools in poly modeling programs are just not very reliable, here are a couple of threads discussing this on the silo forum:
http://silo3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14401
http://silo3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13986

Don't get me wrong - Silo is a really great polygon modeler. But if you need to do mechanical shapes, it is not just slightly less efficient, it is really not the proper tool for that kind of a job at all.


Also I think that you will find that poly modeling actually has a higher learning curve than MoI - one of the nice things about MoI is that you can get a lot of stuff done by working in 2D by drawing curves. In a lot of ways this will probably be more familiar to you coming from a graphic design background, it is generally more similar to stuff like Adobe Illustrator / Photoshop than poly modeling is.

In poly modeling you tend to be working more in a "sculpting" type manner manipulating points in a 3D cage directly, it is kind of a special skill to develop on its own, not really a lot in common with 2D type drawing.


If you only need to model things occasionally and don't really have a whole lot of time to spend refining your skills in a new toolset, then I would actually think that MoI is really the most suitable thing for you.

If you need to do highly organic stuff like human faces, creatures, characters, stuff like that - that stuff is way better to do in a poly modeler than in MoI. However, that doesn't mean that stuff is "easy" to do by any means, if you need to do those kinds of models you should plan to spend quite a bit of time to learn how to do it in the poly modeler as well. This type of modeling is just not an easy task even when you are using the right tools for it.

But certainly a lot of this is subjective as well, different people can feel more comfortable with different things, there really isn't any substitute for trying things out yourself to see what suits your particular needs best.

- Michael

Chris,

Funny - I narrowed my search the same as you did. Both MOI and Silo seem indespensible.

Definitely indispensible when they finish the new surface tool which will allow you to retopologize MOI objects into a more game/animation friendly form - that's what I'm hoping and waiting for!

-Will

Hoping I don't send like an advert :)

3dcoat has just done a new beta which has retopo-whatever tools, might be worth a look ?

edit - video link

http://207.44.140.6/~dcoat/Tutorials/3dc_retopo.swf

this was done by one of the users from an earlier beta

3D Coat is the new "Jewel" with this hugely affordabable, brilliant, 3D Paint/3D Manupulation app.
(A great partner to MoI!)

My problem with 3D-Coat, similar to ZBrush is that it's not all that friendly to hard surface model imports (NGons are typically spit out in distaste.)

Being a scifi / space-nutt kinda guy, my modeling leans more towards hard surfaces than organic...

I'll take another gander at 3DC and its new retopo since it's a function I really need to make MOI more prominent within my modeling pipeline which is something I truly desire!

-Will

The Current update info on 3D Coat.

ok, it seems beta update postponed again... Too much changes and too raw still. The upcoming list of changes:

1) selecting packs of faces/verts/edges and operating them
2) subdividing individual faces, incremental subdivision (if you have subdivided some face and want to subdivide neighbour face later, it will be subdivided like they was subdivided at once)
3) splitting any configuration of edges, nor only edge rings
4) merging vertices together
5) making retopo mesh from current low-poly mesh
6) import retopo mesh
7) interface adjusting
8) cursor flicking fixed
9) GMA945 issue fixed (i hope)
10) importing mesh with 3 types of uv-smoothing (smooth but keep edges, smooth all, smooth but keep corners)
11) baking tool improvement (speed, bugfixes and possibility to work with input meshes with many uv-sets)
12) maybe something forgotten....

Will.
Most apps seem to dislike ngons. The quality of MoI .obj saves without ngons seems just perfect to me.
Are Ngons something that really are of value?----

Brian

.

Hi Brian, nope, in lieu of "Export Zen" (all quads), my models typically have NGons.

From past experience, I just try to avoid triangles like the plague since they always caused ugly facets in my surfaces when trying to render.

Granted, this avoidance was developed in "earlier generation" applications, Rhino v2 for example - the exports from there were so ugly going into lightwave at the time it made it unusable for me. (Of course now we know that LW has it's own issues with how it's not all that great with surface smoothing or working with surface normals)

However, majority of times I don't need to subdivide my models, just load, perhaps a bit of retopo, and paint.

Local subdivision and sculpting is nice (dents and dings for example) but not always necessary for me. 3D-Coat immediately wants to subdivide your model upon import (unless I'm missing something on that import dialog...)

I'll take your advice and see what triangles and quads will do for me (ultimately everything reduces down to tris anyway...)

I'll pop in and ask if there are any plans to better support hard surfaces - no import subdivision, just working at the poly level; retopo, and some minimal poly edting (which seems to be in there already.)

-Will