Modo - a new modeling tool

When my friend first told me about Modo , I didn't know what to expect. I mean, "another modeling tools"? So I got a chance to play with it brief, and judged by so many reference from the application, I have a very strong feeling that this application to target to the existing Lightwave user. As a 3D Studio Max user, I feel not very comfortable with the interface, but then, maybe after I really mastered 3D Studio to a point which I find myself very productive that I will start looking into this Modo thing. Sorry but I simple got to much to do than spreading myself even thinner to learn a new tool.

But, heck, the UI of Modo does look good.

Here's the cloth after modification under Adobe Illustrator CS. 

Here's the scanning of the Mongolian gown before any modification. 

Turn a Mongolian gown into a cloth

Besides working on the 3D model, I also maintain a Chinese dance site that I involves. Recently I need to create a Flash animation to promote a Mongolian dance piece that we did last October. At the background I want to have a nice piece of Mongolian styled cloth. I found a Mongolian gown form a book, and decided to use it as the base of the cloth. Here's how I did it:

1. Import the bitmap image. You can just drag and drop your image on the Illustrator document.

2. Select menu item [Object]->[Envelop Distort]->[Make With Mesh...]

3. Enter column and Row of the grid that you want the image to divide into. In this case, I used a 4x4 grid, which worked pretty OK.

On my Pentium 4 2.8GHz with 1Gb memory, it took 15 seconds to re-calculate the bitmap everytime I moved a vertex. I wonder if there's anyway to speed things up. Let me know if you have any idea.

Welcome to my weblog

Welcome! This is the first post of this blog, and though I don't know how this blog will last, I hope that it will be the time when I finished the tiny 3D animation that I dreamed of doing since a long time ago. I was always wanted to do an animation, and 3D animation technique advancement these years convinced me that it's the way to go. But why an animation about a Mongolian dancer? I always find Mongolian dance pretty, powerful and elegant, and I actually thought of a short story about a dancer, so this is just a natural combination of two things I like.

Here I will share the progress of the project, which I am still at the stage of learning the 3D tools (3D Studio Max, BodyPaint 3D ...) and preparing materials (like sketches, cloth texture). You will see my sketch along the way.

Currently I am full time doing this thing because .... sigh .... I am still job hunting. I very much enjoy working on the project, but at the same time I need to make a living somehow. So ... well ... if you are a Christian, pray for me.