Brad Peebler delights the audience at Develop 3D Live with naughty talk.

By Jon Peddie

At the Develop 3D Live conference, Brad Peebler, founder of Luxology and now president of The Foundry, which acquired his company last year, gave a hu­morous and interesting talk on thinking outside the box and creating novel and unusual prod­ucts, patterns, and designs—and of course, using Modo to do all that.

Peebler cited the story of a designer working on the Star Trek series and complaining about the pressure to design a new world for every episode. While getting out of the car one day, he stepped in a freshly de­posited pile of dog feces. Instead of seeing it as a disaster, he saw it as an opportunity and photographed the pile of dung, which now had peaks and valleys from his stepping in it and pulling out of it. That became what was known on the set as the shit planet, and it was used in more than one episode.

Peebler used that example to show how everyday things could be photo­graphed, combined, and turned into tex­ture maps that looked organic. Start with a form, or a texture, warp, morph, copy it, and make a pattern. Then attach it to a model (a knight in the example shown in the images below), and you get interesting, com­plex, and novel-looking patterns.

Modo offers 3D modeling, paint­ing, and rendering in a single integrated package for the Mac and PC, and re­cently added 3D sculpting tools, ani­mation, and network rendering. The company came to the Develop 3D Live conference to talk about the ways in which Modo can help designers visual­ize design files. Luxology has done an impressive job of breaking into the CAD market where its competitors have been entrenched.

Our take

Modo had an audience of fans when Peebler spoke at Develop 3D Live, showing the popularity of its tools and ease of use. Founded by Luxology in 2001 by Allen Hast­ings, Stuart Ferguson, and Brad Peebler, the company was previously responsible for software tool development at Lightwave. It was a natural and logical merger of the two companies. Estab­lished in 1996, The Foundry produces a range of software for visual effects across commercials, animation, episodic television, and film and has won numer­ous awards.