Foundry Launches Modo 11.1 for 3D Artists and Designers

"The new vertex map tools in Modo 11.1 add even more functionality and flexibility to an already powerful tool set," said William Vaughan, 3D production manager at New Balance. "Foundry's focus on improving the existing tools has paid off ten-fold."

 Building on the success of the new subscription-based pricing model for Modo 11, the next installment offers:

• Unreal Bridge. Modo 11.1 continues to enhance the connection to Unreal Engine 4 with a new client-server bridge. Game artists can work in an uninterrupted flow between Modo and Unreal Engine, with the Unreal Bridge providing a bidirectional connection between both applications, allowing entire scenes, or selected elements of a scene, to be pushed and updated.  The connection can be remote, on the same machine, or across multiple machines on a network.
• Modeling workflow. The modeling tools in Modo 11.1 have undergone a number of upgrades to provide even greater modeling power, according to the company. The topology pen and standard Smooth tool have been revamped to provide greater control, falloffs are even more dynamic with updates to the move and smoothing modes, while the Loop slice tool and radial sweep are easier to use and offer new functionality. In addition to this, enhanced procedural modeling features include new UV create and smooth operators.
• UV workflows. Designers can efficiently arrange UV maps with the new UV coverage indicator, and easily separate or move and position UVs more fluidly with the new Box Transform tool, the company says. Detecting potential problems with UV layouts and maintaining uniform texture detail is now easier, while enhanced UV to SVG exporting provides better control over the real world size of the output: great for packaging and industrial design.
• Better out of the box experience. Modo 11.1 includes a number of updates to improve usability. Individual textures and materials in the shader tree now have GL channels that override the colors in the GL viewport. The Autosave function let’s designers manually cancel the autosave if it’s about to occur at an inopportune time, template scenes can easily be created and loaded from the preset browser, and the Texture Locator properties form has been reduced for easier use. 

Sources: Press release.