Modo Discontinued, 10 Year License Extension Provided
It’s a sad day for the 3D graphics industry: Foundry has made the decision to discontinue their popular 3D modeling app Modo.
According to the announcement, it’s to “focus on its core offerings, and invest in new solutions that meet the evolving needs of the media and entertainment community” – I interpret that as them pivoting towards AI generated content. Not a great sign for the industry.
After two decades of 3D workflow innovation, we have made the difficult decision to wind down development of Modo, following the release of 17.1.
This will enable Foundry to focus our efforts on our core products and new solutions for the media and entertainment industry.
We understand that this news may come as a surprise, especially for those of you who have relied on Modo over the years. We want to express our deepest gratitude for your loyalty and support. The passion and engagement of the Modo community has been inspiring.
10-year license extension
The app will receive one final update later this year and after that it’s over. Their forum will shut down in December and downloads+documentation will be removed from the site in November 2025.
All currently licensed users can apply for a 10 year license extension, but Modo will not receive any updates or patches anymore. So it remains to be seen how long it will actually remain functional.
Still firing up the ol’ Softimage XSI over here, so hard core Modo users will probably do the same as well.
But it’s sad to see another one go :(
It’s sad for the 3D industry in that Foundry would rather kill one of its products than abandon the subscription model for Modo which obviously does not work. But for Blender, this is a major milestone and should be marked as a day of celebration for the Blender Community! Blender has outlasted one of the major pieces of commercial software —
While Autodesk may not fall by the wayside anytime soon, I could see them abandoning Maya and 3DS Max within the next ten years or so. Who knows, in ten years, we might see that Blender and Lightwave 3D are the two major 3D software contenders.
Bart. ask yourself, could you have seen this coming 10 years ago? Could you have seen that blender would be the success it is today?
10 years ago ??? Ten years ago I had already been using blender for 10 years and I haven’t see Blender increase much in success over 20 years. Independent creator use it because it’s free, but I don’t know about huge million dollar projects relying on Blender. I don’t see this as a positive sign for Blender since Blender has always tried to make a place for itself in the industry, so logically if the industry if abandoning products they have invested millions of dollars in because they feel the industry if evolving towards something different, i don’t see how is that good a news for Blender. With AI, it’s not just creation tools that are being questioned it’s also the open source model which is being brought down. Most Ai solutions are black boxed.
Blender has been used by SFX companies working on Marvel movies, and as one example Real By Fake use Blender in preference to Maya for some types of SFX work. Companies don’t advertise what software they use, they advertise using show-reels of what they have done, so market penetration is hard to judge unless you go and survey the companies concerned.
What a shame. I was with Modo from 1.0. Used it for modeling for a most of the 2000s. Granted, many of it’s revolutionary ideas are now ‘inspiring’ other apps, it was still so wonderfully thought out from a modeling workflow that I still miss it and try and emulate it with Blender addons. Rest in peace buddy, you did good.
Also, animating was next to impossible!
I realize that a lot of people have used and love Modo over the years and have a lot of good things to say about it, so this is not meant to be hostile. I myself had never heard of Modod before starting with my current employer a little over two years ago where it is the primary 3D software. I have spent MANY hours trying to learn it to the point where it is a second language so to speak and have not arrived there. To be honest, I have hated every moment of it. Were the features and tools that Modo users praise new or first in the industry at some point? From my Blender perspective it all feels so clunky, destructive, and very click heavy. Maybe I have just been very biased against it, but in my day to day work I am more than happy to see Modo go.
Modo is the opposite of clunky…you’re just not familiar with it.
Blender is far less efficient for modeling, but won’t seem that way if you’re used to it.
I haven’t ever used Modo but I do know that it has enjoyed a dedicated fan/userbase. Sad to see it go…
Just download it and try it out, it’s a tool worth to have in your 3d arsenal, and it will be yours for 10 years!
I think it’s a great complement when using it with Blender. Many Modo users were doing it with Blender already so why not the other way around?