Modo 401 was released yesterday. USD $395 to update and USD $995 for new seats. While its new animation and enhanced rendering is here, as a modeller, very little has changed. There have been very minor updates to the sculpting system (still a pale refelection of something like Zbrush or Mudbox), the painting is at least multithreaded, but a pale refelection of something like Bodypaint or ZB, and the UV system has been sped-up some, but still isn’t as complete and or advanced as a stand-alone UV tool like UVLayout Pro. Indeed, they are slowly marching towards a “complete package” (similar to Newtek’s Lightwave) but so far hasn’t impressed me that they can ever truly aim at something like Maya, Max, or Softimage without a significant enhancement to their animaiton sub-system. Right now, it seems OK for motion graphics, but it is a devil to really animate. Luxology is showing things akin to character animation on their web site, but be very cautious before parting with your money. While it may be true that some of these projects were modeled and rendered in Modo401, the actual animating appears to have taken place in external programs (like Messiah or Motion-builder) and the animation has been re-imported into Modo. In other words, you need to do your animaiton elsewhere before rendering in Modo.
Details of the upgrade can be found here: http://www.luxology.com/modo/product_information/documents/modo401_Improvements.pdf. The modelling, sculpting, painting, and UV sections I think speak for themselves.
