Update: moma (modo Renderer inside Maya)

What is moma? ____________________________________________________________
moma is a “poor man’s” integration of Luxology modo’s render in Autodesk Maya. It’s more like the type of communication that a network rendering manager would have with modo rather than the type of integration you see with Arnold or VRay, to mention some. In this case, instead of being fed with a LXO file previously created with modo, the data is being generated from Maya, and a constant communication is kept to update and query scene values.

What are the limitations? ____________________________________________________
Due to the way it works, there’s some extra time that is added to the render time (converting geo, gathering and setting values, etc…), which is not noticeable in simple scenes, but increases in more complex situations. For that, moma has an ‘Update’ mode that doesn’t require the geometry to be converted again, and it will just update everything but geometry changes (eg: materials, textures, lights, environments, camera, AOVs, etc…), which makes the whole process faster. Still, it will be slightly slower than rendering the same scene directly from inside modo.
Also, don’t expect the same flexibility and interactivity as rendering from inside modo. Things like modo’s render preview are not included, to give an example.

When will it be available? ____________________________________________________
Availability, if it ever gets to be available, is to be determined, but best case scenario will be pretty soon (soon in human terms, not in universe terms). I’m the only one who has tested it so far, so consider it as an alpha version and expect bugs.

Currently supported features:
- Geometry
- modo SubDs
- UVs
- Vertex animation (deformations)
- Cameras
- Cameras animation
- modo Area lights
- modo IES lights
- modo Point lights *
- modo Directional lights
- Layered texture (required to mimic modo’s shader tree layers approach)
- File texture (with most of modo’s image node options)
- modo’s BDRF shader
- modo’s Occlusion node
- modo Shader node and shader visibility options per material
- Alpha options per material (including Shadow Catcher)
- Constant color environment
- Physical Sun environment
- IBL (including sIBL format support)
- Physical Sun
- modo’s GI settings
- modo’s Antialiasing/Raytrace Settings
- modo’s AOVs
- Multilayer EXR, PSD and Targa support as render format
- Render region
- Linear workflow
- Option to open Maya scene in modo
- Maya render layers *
- Maya display layers
- Motion Blur
- DOF
- modo Stereo camera *
- Clipping plane
- modo Gradient node *
- Show render buckets

* = Currently working on it

For full specs and additional info on moma, visit Jacobo Barreiro's site.