MODO Steam Edition winner announced

MODO Steam Edition art contest winner announced

A vigorous round of voting amongst members of the Steam community has finally settled down, leaving a decisive winner in The Foundry's first ever MODO Steam Edition (SE) art contest. New user Jonathan M. Osment, aka Raben Wulf, nabbed the highest number of votes for his incredible Chitinous Grimstone weapon designed in MODO SE for DOTA 2's Necrophos character, winning a free MARI seat for his creative efforts.

The challenging contest was a learning process for Osment, and it changed his ultimately changed his opinions about MODO SE for the better.

Image by Jonathan M. Osment

When he first heard about the recent launch of MODO SE, Osment was a bit skeptical. Why would anyone want to buy MODO for the Steam Workshop? he thought. After giving it a try, however, Osments reluctance soon melted away, leaving behind a fresh appreciation for this robust 3D modeling toolset. From there, Osments newfound enthusiasm spurred him to push hard and craft what would become the winning entry in The Foundrys weapon design contest for popular Steam game DOTA 2.

Despite his initial hesitation to give it a try, MODO Steam Editions accessible price point proved alluring, he admits. That, and seeing the amazing MODO-created content that industry artists like James OHare and others on the popular Polycount forums have been pumping out. I gave it a shot and well...this is one of those times where I am glad I did, he says.

Once inside MODO Steam Edition, Osment found it easy to make a couple of quick adjustments to the interface pre-sets. As a Maya user, this helped make him feel right at home.

The key to having an intuitive user interface, is to have it be familiar. I was surprised at how familiar MODO felt once I had it running with those simple changes, he says. Everything else just kind of clicked into place. I think what surprised me the most was how polished and full featured the package was. I found I could stay almost entirely in MODO for the entire asset creation process and not lose out on quality.

Image by Jonathan M. Osment

The Necrophos Contest -- which challenged users with modeling a wicked cool weapon for DOTA 2s eerie Necrophos character using MODO Steam Edition -- quickly became Osments crash course for learning the program. It took him a week of tinkering with the concept, modeling, and texturing for his weapon submission, but the finished result is incredibly impressive. I ended up with the Chitinous Grimstone, a bit ancient, perhaps sentient, and clearly not something you want your kids playing with, he says.

Design-wise, the mesh reduction tool was a life saver, says Osment, as it allowed him to dynamically scale down the resolution of the mesh while also retaining its silhouette. He found the topology pen an equally useful and fun-to-use feature too.

Painting, sculpting, and baking all sorts of details onto a lowpoly mesh was extremely fast and efficient, he says. The UV tools were also some of the best I have encountered so far. I was able to get near perfect results in a very short period of time. I had trouble finding any tools or features that didn't seem useful. To say it was intelligently designed, would be an understatement at this point.

When everything was tidied up, getting his polished item into the game and onto the DOTA 2 workshop was a breeze with the Steam export toolset, which was a big help, he says.

After the positive experience, Osment is now looking forward to digging deeper into MODO Steam Edition and exploring MODO 701 to see what else he can create.

Find out more about MODO Steam Edition

Learn MODO Steam Edition with our 12 tutorials on our MODO SE Vimeo channel

Read more about MODO Steam Edition on the Steam store

Read more on MODO in games, film and design

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