Luxology's modo 401 comes with SolidWorks importer

Four months after its preview at SolidWorks World 2009, Luxology's SolidWorks importer is finally here. It's part of modo 401, the latest release of Luxology's modeling, sculpting, rendering, and animation package.

If you use SolidWorks 2009 Professional or Premium, you already have partial access to Luxology's technology through PhotoView 360, a rendering application with which you can turn your SolidWorks models into highly polished images. (Note: PhotoView 360 is different from PhotoWorks, another SolidWorks rendering application.)

With the new SolidWorks importer, you can open SolidWorks files directly in modo 401. This gives you the option to create not only photo-realistic renderings but also animation sequences using SolidWorks files. In modo's environment, you could accomplish a number of things you might not be able to do easily in a mechanical CAD program.

You could use modo 401's instance replicator to spawn an entire crop of objects from a single item. For instance, you can create an entire city-block populated with thousands of Wall-Es with slightly different characteristics, all derived from a single Wall-E model.

You could also add fur, or fur-like texture, to some of your designs. This could be a useful feature in depicting consumer goods with fabric-covered parts. Curve rendering, another new feature in this release, lets you draw a spline, then generate a wire or tube following the flow of the spline. With this tool, you could create images of electronics with wire works and cables in significantly less time.

With the new SolidWorks importer, you can bring your SolidWorks assemblies into modo 401's animation environment. Luxology states, "Animation improvements in modo 401 include inverse kinematics, dynamic parenting, channel constraints and modifiers ... Pre-built animation assemblies provided with modo 401 allow users to apply animation to their models automatically." Bear in mind, however, that the assembly constraints from SolidWorks won't be retained. So you will have to use modo's animation tools to redefine the assembly joints' motions.

The new release of modo includes a COLLADA plug-in, allowing you to create interactive 3D scenes with SolidWorks design files. The XML-based, open-source COLLADA file format is widely used by digital content creators. Software packages that support COLLADA include Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, LightWave, Cinema 4D, Softimage, and Google SketchUp. According to Luxology's announcement, modo 401 supports stereoscopic rendering, up to 32 cores across a network of 50 workstations.

Luxology hosts a modo community site and an asset-sharing area where users can upload textures, materials, environments, rendered images, and video clips. modo 401 is available immediately ($995 for full version, $395 for upgrade). It runs on Mac and PC platforms, available for 32 bit and 64 bit Windows OS.