After modo's very impressive scores in the CG upgrades survey, we interviewed President of Luxology, Brad Peebler, to find out what he thought of the results.
Fans
CGenie: Luxology's modo scored extremely highly in the survey - a relatively new application (first released 2004) it has rapidly gained standing amongst its peers and has now become a staple part of the workflow of many of the world's leading studios such as Pixar, id Software, Eden FX, Studio ArtFX and The Embassy Visual Effects. With the upcoming 401 release, the software is proving to be a very serious competitor to some of the larger names on the market.
How users rated modo on the statement
"I am a big fan of the company that makes this software"
Ok Brad, so it seems you've got some fans. In fact 96.9% of the modo® responses agreed they were big fans of you Luxology folks... does that help ease some of the inevitable workload stress you're experiencing finishing off modo 401?
Brad: Nope. In fact, I think it's worse. If we were at the bottom of the pile there would be nowhere to go but up. Now we have to get this release complete AND make sure we don't fall from grace! Seriously though, we've put a ton of effort into our community over the years, so it is nice to hear that they appreciate us as much as we appreciate them. I think I'd give our community a 97% approval rating. Oooooh those 3%!
It's actually pretty easy for us. We're all 3D artists as well, so we feel the pain tools can sometimes deliver. We love to push polys and chat about it. We love to make cool software and we really love seeing what killer images come back to us from the modo user base. It is a matter of passion for us, which is a real advantage. If this was just "work" there is no way we could keep up.
Support
CGenie: One area you shone brighter than anyone was around support. Indeed you were the only company in the survey that scored 100% for the statement 'the support for this software is excellent.' This is a pretty exceptional achievement - is this something you consciously strive towards? As modo's user base expands, do you think you'll be able to maintain that high level of service and the personal touch?
We actually do have a little "secret sauce" that allows us to keep our users happy with regards to support, but you're crazy if you think I'm giving out those secrets with the likes of Petit lurking around here.....!
Brad: We try to maintain two technical support reps and three customer service people on staff for each and every customer. It's a lofty goal, but it seems to be paying off. Sure we lose money with this strategy, but we're counting on volume! You don't believe me? OK, you got me. That's not it at all. We actually do have a little "secret sauce" that allows us to keep our users happy with regards to support, but you're crazy if you think I'm giving out those secrets with the likes of Petit lurking around here.....!
Fine. I'll give you a hint. Community. Before we had software on the market, we were building a community. We foster open and honest communication. We had a micro-social network before social networking was "cool." It is not easy to build and maintain a community like ours. In fact, it is a constant labor of love to maintain a balanced ecosystem. This is where the "secret sauce" kicks in so I'll stop here.
New features
CGenie: modo users really liked the number of new features that came with each modo release - you were a whisker away from the strongest team in this category and, probably more importantly, you ranked very high with your users with 97% mostly or completely agreeing with this statement. Is it becoming more of a challenge to keep adding dramatic new feature sets to an increasingly feature-rich application - particularly, as you've observed, now that modo is no longer being seen as a ‘speciality' application, rather a fully fledged 3D application.
How users rated modo on the statement
"Each upgrade gives me lots of new features"
Brad: Definitely not, the hardest part of our job is deciding what NOT to put in. The secret to moving the 3D industry forward isn't to engage simply in the "feature war" but to find a way to implement workflows in an intuitive, innovative manner that accelerates the end user toward final image. At the end of the day, nothing else matters.
Do we pack a lot of features into each upgrade? Absolutely, but they are carefully chosen and thought out. You probably want to know how we do it. Fair enough. Nexus®. The first thing we ever developed at Luxology was a next-generation software development platform called Nexus. To keep this simple, modo is a child of Nexus. Nexus heavily leverages GPU and multi-core CPU as well as other modern frameworks such as OpenGL. Nexus is a highly layered, cross-platform, time-varying, generalized architecture for media application development. It's a mouthful, but more importantly it is an enabler. Subsystems in Nexus, such as the tool pipe, allow us to very rapidly extend the core toolset in modo with generalized updates that improve multiple tools at once. The core UI system (based on forms) is an XML-based declarative interface system that allows us to prototype and iterate through major revisions without engineers having to be involved. In fact, even end-users can create complete custom user interfaces, and we often get our best ideas direct from our user base. These are just two of many systems that allow us to move very, very quickly. The folks at id Software really "get" this extension of the UI thing and we featured them on a recent modcast.
It's really all down to advantage architecture. We invested a tremendous amount into Nexus from the very beginning. I love it when a plan comes together.
Innovation
CGenie: In some aspects you could be perceived to have an easier job than older applications when innovating as there' are lots of ideas in competitors that you can 'borrow,' but at the same time you do seem to have a habit of coming up with your own 'slants' on features. Take something like the fur feature in modo 401, how much of the design comes from looking at what works and doesn't work in competitors, and how much do you just develop from scratch?
If we can get to the very foundation of the request, past the generic "feature request" and really understand what problem the user is trying to solve; we can often provide them with a more complete or general solution than simply implementing a given feature
Brad: Considering my two co-founders, Allen Hastings and Stuart Ferguson, have been coding 3D applications since the mid 1980s there isn't much that we are "borrowing". Of course, we look at other apps to see what works and what does not. But we spend as much time - or more - thinking about unique and/or better ways to approach a problem. Our CTO Stuart Ferguson taught me an important lesson a long time ago - in fact, he gave a killer presentation to the core Luxology team just after we founded on this very topic. The presentation was called "Why ask why?" and the premise was that it is more important to listen to an end user in order to really understand WHY they want a specific feature than to simply add a feature. If we can get to the very foundation of the request, past the generic "feature request", and really understand what problem the user is trying to solve, we can often provide them with a more complete or general solution than simply implementing a given feature. Much of the software on the market today (and I'm not speaking specifically about 3D) is simply a collection of implemented feature requests rather than well thought out solutions designed and implemented to solve a deeper issue for the user. This to me is a real problem with the software industry today.
Value
How users rated their CG software on the statement
"I feel that the upgrades are good value for money"
CGenie: In your recent modcast you were discussing the survey and you felt Blender was an ‘unfair entry' for the value for money question. Yet, I'd dispute this and probably interpret it the opposite way - you are producing software which users are ranking only a few points behind an application that people get for free. To me you seem to have struck a strong balance between the features and cost to provide something that users deem of great value. Do you have any particular criteria for what makes 'an upgrade'? When do you know when to stop adding features and say this is 301, 401 etc?
Brad: Don't get me wrong - I think it is amazing that we scored so strongly in value against an app that costs nothing. My point in the modcast (Please do not take modcasts too seriously! We tend to get a little daffy) was that Blender being free is a pretty obvious "value". I suspect we scored so well against "free" because the real value of software is not only about how much you pay for it but what you get out of it for the amount of time you put in. Here we really excel.
Bugs and stability
CGenie: One of the weaker results (though even here you scored 75%) was around bug fixes versus new features. The comments themselves were perhaps more reinforcing. The only negative that could be picked out for modo was that users feel it's time to focus on bugs and stability a bit more. Is this something you've made any particular plans for with the modo 401 release?
Brad: Pass.
Just kidding. In fact, XSI had similar challenges in the pre- 4.0 releases. I think it has a lot to do with the maturation of your code base. The first few releases of modo were fairly tumultuous development efforts. We were adding completely new subsystems to the architecture and ripping out and replacing complete engines. The code has settled down significantly and that allows us time to make a more robust application. It is an area of extreme focus for us. We also have a killer beta team of production artists who are using modo day-in and day-out in a number of high-pressure arenas. These people provide us the best feedback we can hope for to track and kill bugs dead.
Competitors
How users rated modo on the statement
"It'd take a lot to get me to move to a competing software title"
CGenie: 91% of users agreed that it'd take a lot to get them to move to a competitor from modo. That's some pretty strong support for your product, and as we move into a tighter economic environment I imagine the efforts you've made to build a secure market share will start to pay dividends.
Brad: They know I'll come to their house.
Speaking of user base, do you know that we most likely have a larger technology install base than Max, Maya or XSI? Aside from modo we also deliver Nexus-born technology via technology licensing partners. To date we deliver a product called PhotoView 360 to the SolidWorks community and our Nexus render layer to the Bentley Systems microstation community. These two communities represent over one million customers.
Also, it is not about using just one 3D package or "switching" - the fact is many people use multiple 3D packages. We even make it a couple of clicks in the modo user interface so people can navigate the camera just like in Maya (or 3ds Max) so "the modo" just fits right in.
Community
CGenie: You run a great podcast (or sorry modcast!) on your site which I've always found is a great way of keeping that connection between yourself and your customers. Your whole team also seem to dig through the forums regularly and generally get involved. Is this a conscious decision to really get involved with your community or just something that you've found has evolved from general interest in your customers' work?
There are few things more exciting to me than to go to our forum and see killer images created by an artist in Brazil with modo. How cool is that?
Brad: Little bit of column A, and a little bit of column B. We've always sought out ways to communicate better with our install base. From our forum to Luxology.TV, our community blog and of course the modcasts, we are very prolific communicators. We are very Web 3.0 if you ask me.
As I mentioned earlier, we love this stuff. There are few things more exciting to me than to go to our forum and see killer images created by an artist in Brazil with modo. How cool is that? We love to talk about it. We love to talk to users. So we literally just can't shut up about it. Can you tell?
The future
CGenie: After you and Andy's attempts to calculate growth projections in your modcast, I won't ask you to calculate your growth in market share. However, we'll be running the same survey next year, is 401 going to improve these scores?
Brad: You know, I was even on the math team in high school! I'm sorry, Mr. Kennedy. He would be so ashamed of that numeric fumbling. My mathematic epic fail aside, 2009 looks to be a lot of fun for us. One number that I do like to check now and then is the number of images in our Gallery. To date, there are 2,087 published images in there - we published the first image on 10/19/2006. Love that.
CGenie: Thanks very much for your time, and keep up the great work!
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That's not a very good reason to dislike a company or their software. Think about why there are identical error messages in Lightwave and modo - it's probably not because modo illegally copied anything from Lightwave. If you've never used the software why not give it a try rather than talk about stuff that happened 6 years ago?
