Exploring Modo

Today as part of the Live Brief project I started exploring rendering and working in Modo. Harry, also working in our group used an early asset of our Oil Rig model and rendered in Modo with an ocean simulation, which we really loved the look of.

 I think it's a good chance to start pushing into other software, and so far, I'm really liking Modo.

 This threw up the problem with our compositing. We want to include some fluid effects from Maya which would need to interact with the oil rig, this means compositing the smoke render (from Maya) at the right depth in the render of the oil rig (from Modo).

 Below is the composite we finally managed to achieve. I know it's a bit quick so I've included some stills down below.


Below is a test render out of Modo, with a simple material thrown on, we really like the shadows and the depth in the render.

 We explored a few different ways, firstly using alpha channels and deep compositing. We first learned how to render depth channels in both Maya and Modo, but had trouble matching the depths between the programmes.

We found, with help from our lecturer, that we can make use of Mayas blackhole material option. This is the render of the basic smoke effect from Maya, with the smoke interacting with the model.

This allows us to combine the render from Modo, with the smoke render from Maya correctly.

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