ImagineFX - Issue 179

Tor Frick

ADVERTORIAL
SIGGRAPH 2019

T

hroughout more than a decade of

AAA game development, Modo

has been a constant in Tor Frick’s

life. Regarded as one of the leading artists

in the industry, Frick has used Foundry’s

creative 3D modelling software since the

very start of his career.

Today, Modo forms the heart of the

art pipeline at Neon Giant, the studio

that Frick co-founded in 2018, where the

improved modelling tools and Radeon™

ProRender GPU render engine in the new

Modo 13 Series – backed up by AMD’s

powerful Radeon™ Pro Duo graphics

cards and massively multi-core Ryzen™

Threadripper CPUs – help him meet the

often brutal development schedule for

the company’s debut game: an as-yet-

unannounced cyberpunk title.

MODELLED IN MODO

“We’re doing pretty much all our

modelling in Modo, from weapons and

characters to [entire] environments,” says

Frick. “Modo is well suited to game art

TOR FRICK: DESIGN WITHOUT LIMITS

because it’s so easy to swap between

different types of modelling,

like subdivision surfaces and low-poly

work. It’s all seamless.”

Frick, who describes his long-term

goal as “to blur the line between concept

art and production art” also uses Modo

in his wider role as Neon Giant’s art

director, using the software’s procedural

modelling tools and non-destructive

Boolean system to quickly explore designs

for new assets.

“You can drag things around [on

screen] and come up with whatever crazy

mechanical shapes you want,” he says. “At

the end, you get a very clean result that

you can put directly in-game.”

Neon Giant now uses the Modo 13

Series, Foundry’s current cycle of updates

to the software, in production, with Frick

praising the changes it brings to the direct

modelling toolset, particularly the new

Find Shortest Path Selection tool and

improved handling of falloffs. “Anything

that speeds up core modelling workflows

First introduced in Modo 13.0,

AMD’s Radeon ProRender is a

fast, physically accurate GPU

render engine. It quickly became

part of Tor Frick’s workflow,

enabling him to see photorealistic

previews of the models he is

working on, rather than just relying

on the simplified versions that are

visible in the viewport. “Being able

to see how things look with real

materials, not just grey-shaded,

means a lot to me,” he says. “A

model can look correct in the

viewport, but completely different

in-game. The faster I can preview

things the way they’re going to

look later, the better.”

RADEON PRORENDER

Modo’s GPU render engine helps

Tor Frick preview assets accurately

CASE STUDY

Modo’s flexible modelling tools and AMD’s powerful hardware help the leading games

artist meet the punishing production schedule at his start-up studio, Neon Giant

Tor Frick

ADVERTORIAL
SIGGRAPH 2019