I think there is a rendering tutorial in here regarding Blender and luxology. From........Brain fart...Cant think.

Hi Burr, I think you're talking about this tutorial for going from MoI to Blender to LuxRender:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2652.1

Note that LuxRender and "Luxology" (the company that makes Modo) are actually different things.

- Michael

Wow, great Blender model and render.

Cinema 4D + Vray could be a power combination too. The price is like Rhino+Vray, but VfCinema4D seems to be more matured and Cinema4D is good for animations.

Blender? I hope 2.5 get a new interface. ;)

"PHILBO"!!! Thats it. I should have been able to remember that with so many great posts from him. And yes...I fudged the name. Mind gets weaker as I get older.

also take a look @ the new hard surface tools in ZBrush.... http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=074539

outstanding work from Pixologic team once again :)

Yeah, this looks great. I guess they finally solved the problem of pinched edges when using a normal flattening brush...

What is and when exactly does this pink dots appear in modo, I have been working in modo for quite awhile now and I haven't noticed it?

Ok so I've pretty much decided on Modo. I'm just trying to wait until they release their trial version... (anyone know when they'll do that?)

Main thing I'm after in a modeller is an intuitive interface, and by all counts, Modo has the best.

Cinema 4D is a good package, but as previously mentioned, gets fairly expensive as you add more modules. One thing to think about is whether you're on the American or European side of things. C4D is developed in Germany and Europe is probably its biggest market, consequently pricing tends to the higher because of that. Not only the fact that the Euro is outpacing the Dollar but also the fact that European pricing for most software packages seems much higher than US packages. Also, if you're looking for work there are probably far fewer C4D houses in the US than in Europe. If you're working on your own though that probably doesn't matter that much.

C4d, Modo and Lightwave are all cross platform and well implemented and supported in both Windows and Mac. Maya, I believe is available for both platforms but 3DS Max is not. Max and Maya are getting way out of hand from a pricing and licensing standpoint. Autodesk as owner of most of the big packages is worth thinking about since you may find dealing with a behemoth with near monopolistic pricing power a concern.

Modo is an enthusiastic, inventive company with a great modeling and rendering tools and an excellent community. The amount of video tutorials available from the company (free and paid for) is exceptional. They have excellent, excellent, excellent training materials.

If you're into motion graphics C4D has a killer module called Mograph and a great Hair module as well.

Lightwave is in transition at the moment. It's latest version 9.6 is very stable and an excellent value for the money. The are in the process of developing a new version of Lightwave called HardCore which will probably take a year or so to get up to speed with their current 9.6 version but is a complete overhaul of their core programming base. Probably trying to emulate Modo in some respects. Looks like they are going to a model which will require annual updates similar to Maya and Max but probably not as pricey. Their pricing has been way too low to sustain them in recent years and I can understand the need to raise prices and develop a more predictable, sustainable revenue base.

I'm just a hobbyist so take what I say with a grain of salt. But over the years I have owned each of these programs and currently have Modo, Lightwave and C4D. Any of these are a great addition to MOI.

Good luck.

Thank you Brian - that was a good overview :)

And if you have no money Blender can be an excellent choice :) What do you want more :)
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/
* Very fast inbuilt raytracer
* Oversampling, motion blur, post-production effects, fields, non-square pixels
* Tile-based and fully threaded
* Render layers and passes
* Render baking to UV maps and object to object baking (full render, ambient occlusion, normals, textures)
* Render engine tightly integrated with the node compositor
* Halo, lens flares and fog effects
* Vector motion-blur post-process effect (using node compositor)
* Realistic defocus (DOF) post-process effect (using node compositor)
* Edge rendering for toon shading
* Interactive preview rendering panel in any 3d view
* Ambient Occlusion
* Radiosity solver
* Export scripts available for external renderers such as Renderman, Povray, Virtualight, Lux, Indigo and V-Ray - See Resources for a full list. http://www.blender.org/download/resources/#c571

* Diffuse shaders such as Lambert, Minnaert, Toon, Oren-Nayar, Lambert
* Specular shaders such as WardIso, Toon, Blinn, Phong, CookTorr
* Node editor for creating and mixing complex materials
* PyNodes: write your own Python shaders with realtime feedback, no need to compile
* Material previews rendered by main render engine
* Fast, realistic subsurface scattering
* Blurry reflections and refractions
* Tangent shading to give any shader an anisotropic effect
* Versatile procedural textures system
* Reflection maps
* Normal, displacement and bump maps

hehe, looks ok - but I guess the main thing I'm after is a good interface, and nice easy modelling.

I tried Blender a tiny bit, but the interface isn't terribly good :)

(reminded me a little of zbrush LOL)

Both have interface that you must to learn in deepth ;)
But both are hugely insanely whacking exceedingly bitterly extremely poweful and first in their category ;)

I said a few days ago "What is and when exactly does this pink dots appear in modo, I have been working in modo for quite awhile now and I haven't noticed it?"

Now I have seen it!, damn what a heck is this? pink dots? they seem to happen only when exporting from Moi as a .lwo

Is there any solution to avoid these, are they bad vertices...?

Hi olio,

It has nothing to do with the geometry (I guess), but it more depends of the surface/lighting settings. I had this kind of trouble with MoI geomtry (once), but also
with models build inside modo.

This pink dots are 'rendering error', some kind of division by zero stuff, I don't know more.

Try to change some lighting settings (reducing lighting power), disable any hdri env map, remove reflection/splecular on the surface that seems giving pixel of the death, until you find what appends ... and maybe create a bug report with a scene sample, so they can fix it.

SP2 is supposed to come at the end of the month, I hope it will be completely fixed :S

This may seem 'non-traditional' but I would suggest Hexagon and Carrara Pro as excellent companion applications for MoI.

Hexagon is a decent enough polygon modeler, same for Carrara for the texturing, lighting, animation, and rendering. The cost of ownership of these apps is low, much lower than anything else except Blender, and the learning curve is somewhat gentle.