mO2 User Manual

1. What are the recommended hardware specs for the mO² plugin?

Graphics – mO²’s rendering engine does most of its calculations on the graphics card so the faster your GPU is the better (Intel Graphics are not supported!). Also, all assets (3D models, textures, environment, etc.) need to be uploaded to your graphics card’s video memory so the more VRAM you have the more complex scenes you’ll be able to create. Once the video memory is full, OpenGL will start to use your machine’s system memo- ry (RAM) but this will significantly reduce rendering performance.

RAM – most of the plugin’s assets are loaded into the the graphics card’s video memory (VRAM) so if you have enough RAM to run Motion 5/FCPX, the plugin should run properly as well.

CPU – mO² uses the CPU for several important calculations so faster chips will yield better performance in complex, animated scenes. Also, remember that it’s better to have a few faster cores than a lot of slower ones.

2. Why are Intel graphics not supported?

Most importantly, integrated GPU’s “borrow” their memory from RAM – this is not a normal way to handle memory and therefore can cause various issues. Also, many features are handled differently than by AMD/ Nvidia cards, which support them in a more predictable way. Lastly, integrated graphics are usually very poor in terms of performance and therefore should not be used for complex calculations such as 3D animation or physically based rendering.

3. Is there anything I can do to speed up mO² in FCPX?

Most importantly, please make sure that Background render is disabled. This can be done by launching Final Cut's preferences from the top menu (or using the ⌘+ , keyboard shortcut), going into the Playback section and disabling the Background render checkbox at the top of the list.

Once disabled, you can still render your Timeline by selecting the desired element and pressing Ctrl+R.
Pressing Ctrl+Shift+R on the other hand will render the entire Timeline, regardless of the selected items.

You can also speed up your playback of an unrendered Timeline by going up to the View menu located in the top-right corner of Final Cut's Timeline Viewer and choosing the Better Performanceoption.

4. Can I use my own models/textures/environments?

Yes, even though mO² only uses assets that are stored in its Libraries on your local drive, you can import your own models and textures into them.

5. I can’t see the On Screen Controls in Motion 5, how to enable them?

By default, Motion does not display the selected Generator’s controls so you need to enable them manually. You can do it by changing the tool to Adjust Item or by simply right-clicking on the generator within Motion’s viewport and picking Control.

6. Can I use Motion's behaviors to drive my mO² scene?

Motion's behaviors link to specific parameters. But mO² can't create a set of position/rotation/scale sliders for each object within the scene because neither Motion nor FCPX could handle that amount of parameters in a single project (it already takes them a bit of time to create the existing ones – selecting the Generator for the first time takes a while). Because of this we use a single set of parameters and use it to handle the currently selected object. As a result, if you for example select your Camera, apply a Wriggle behavior to its Position Y parameter and then select a different object, this behavior will no longer be attached to the Camera's position, but to the position of the newly selected object. The same rule applies to all Materials.

There is a quick and dirty way around this if you really need it though – once you apply your behavior, transform it into keyframes (using the ⌘+K keyboard shortcut). They will be applied to the Camera's parameters and saved within mO² so even if you select a different object, they will be left in place. Just remember not to use too many of them, having a lot of data (keyframes) in a single project may eventually affect performance.

7. Is mO² compatible with mObject projects, models or texture packs?

There are a couple of things worth noting on this topic:

Most importantly, please note that mO² is not an update for mObject but a completely new plugin. It has been written from the ground up and therefore will not be able to use its scene files etc.
mO² uses a completely new shading system that requires a different set of textures (mObject used parameters such as Specular and Specular Exponent whereas mO² uses much more intuitive Metalness and Roughness channels). That being said, you can still import textures from mObject’s Material pack manually into mO²'s Texture Library and build materials from them (you’ll find these files in your /Library/Application Support/mObject/Materials folder), but before doing so, please keep the following things in mind:
- Diffuse textures contained highlights and shadows which may result in a weird material behavior in certain lighting situations (Albedo shouldn’t have any lighting in it, just a flat base color of the surface).
- Specular textures won’t really match any of mO²'s material channels because they did not describe any physical property of the material. But you should be able to achieve some interesting results by dropping them into the Roughness channel and checking its Invert checkbox.
- mO² calculates Ambient Occlusion on the fly so AO textures should not be used. If you wish to use them anyway, simply load them into the Material’s Cavity channel.
Models from mObject packs were provided in OBJ format so you can import them into mO², but there are a couple of things you need to remember:
- OBJ’s material and texture info is stored in MTL files which weren’t included (mObject stored it in its custom format) so these models will load with a default material,
- the models’ textures can be imported manually into mO²'s Texture Library and re-attached to their materials. But due to mO²'s new shading system you may want to do the same thing as with materials - put Diffuse textures into Albedo, Specular into an inverted Roughness channel etc.
  
  For best results Metalness textures should be created manually in an up such as Photoshop by selecting pixels that are supposed to be made of metal (for example using the Color Range selection) and making them white while leaving everything else black,
- mObject didn’t provide an option to save customized models to the library. mO² does so once you set up your model, simply right-click on it within the Scene content and pick “Save to Library”. After that it will become available in the Model Library, from which you can load it into all of your future projects without the need for any further customization.

As for using textures meant for other 3D apps, it depends on whether they have been created for the Metalness/Roughness material workflow or not.
If not, it doesn't mean that they won't work at all. Textures such as Albedo (also called Color, Diffuse, Base Color), Normal, Glossiness (inverted Roughness), Illuminance, AO, etc. are still valid and you can create new mO² Materials using them. Of course Specular textures will be most problematic, but you can try using them in the inverted Roughness channel, as mentioned above.

Lastly, remember that even though Materials created using non-native textures may look OK in certain situations, they will be far from the ones created specifically for the Metalness/Roughness workflow. mO²'s Advanced Shaders Material Pack is not only built with this workflow in mind but it's made up mostly from actual scans of real life surfaces, allowing you to reach even higher levels of realism.

8. Which Material Workflow should I choose when importing my 3D model?

Physically Based Rendering (PBR) is a concept that can be achieved using different kinds of texture sets. The two most popular workflows are called Metalness/Roughness and Specular/Glossiness:

Metalness/Roughness is used natively by mO² and it defines the surface’s behavior with respect to light-based on whether it’s a metal or not and how rough (matte) it is. Materials based on this workflow will usually have textures with “Metalness”, “Metal”, “_M”, “Roughness”, “Rough” or “_R” in their file names.
Specular/Glossiness is a bit less intuitive as it requires info about the surface’s specularity, as well as its shininess (an opposite of roughness). Materials based on this workflow will usually have textures with “Specular”, “Spec”, “_S”, “Glossiness”, “Gloss” or “_G” in their file names, which will be automatically converted to Metalness/Roughness before placing them into the mO² Texture Library*.

Also, since for many years, 3D applications (such as 3DSmax or Maya) allowed the user to create materials using surface color (often called Diffuse), Normal, Specular Intensity and Specular Power, mO² includes the Legacy option that will attempt to convert them to a usable form in Metalness/Roughness workflow.

Note

Materials converted from Legacy or Specular/Glossiness may differ from how they look in other renderers that support them natively.

9. Why doesn’t mO² load textures provided with the model I’ve downloaded?

Unfortunately it depends on the model’s creator. Let’s take an OBJ format as an example. It contains the entire geometry data, as well as names of the materials that are applied to specific parts of the model. But all remaining material settings such as surface color, links to texture files, etc. are stored in a separate MTL file. Sometimes this file is almost empty (you can check and even edit them using TextEdit) or is not provided at all so there’s literally no way to tell which texture should be applied to which material (or if it was even meant for this model).

Another example would be FBX which stores everything inside a single file but is still vulnerable to human error. If it was exported using incorrect settings, you may end up with a file that will search for textures on the model creator’s desktop instead of in the folder next to the FBX file.

C4D files don’t suffer from these issues (assuming that textures were actually included) but since they are based on the “legacy” workflow (with settings such as Specular Intensity, Specular Width, etc.) their materials need to be converted into Metalness/Roughness, which isn’t always perfect.

In general, if the textures are not being loaded into mO², chances are that the model was exported incorrectly, resulting in the mentioned issues. If this happens you should ask the model’s creator for a proper file.

glTF 2.0 is a solution to all of this. This format was created by the same team that brought us OpenGL and it was meant to standardize the creation of PBR content, making it ideal for mO². It supports pretty much everything you’d want in a model file and it was designed with Physically Based materials in mind so all you need to know is which PBR material workflow is used in the one you wish to import (Metalness/Roughness or Specular/Glossiness) and everything else will just work.

10. How to animate an object within the scene?

The easiest way to animate an object is by using an Object Behavior. mO² includes an entire library of animations that can be applied to your object.

Once a behavior is picked, its Start and End Times can be adjusted to match your animation. Its intensity can also be adjusted on Position, Rotation and Scale separately.

When a more complex animation is needed, it can be created in Motion 5 using keyframes. mO² has been tightly integrated into Motion’s interface, which means that you can keyframe your animation the same way as you’d animate Motion’s built-in layers, cameras or lights:

Reveal the plugin’s parameters by selecting the mO² generator and navigating to Inspector -> Generator tab
Select the desired object within mO²’s Scene Content view
Modify one of its parameters and add a new keyframe to it
Go to a different frame, modify it again and a new keyframe will be added automatically. After that, the parameter will change its value when moving from one keyframe to the other

Even though you can animate objects in Final Cut Pro X, it only supports linear keyframing so it’s not suited for creating organic animations. Instead, we recommend animating the scene using Motion 5 and saving the template for further use in FCPX.

Note

Neither Motion nor FCPX can handle the number of parameters that would be necessary for even the simplest scene (each model, Instancer, Material, etc. would require its own, dedicated set of parameters!). mO² uses a single set of parameters that affect only the currently selected object, so if you select a different item, these parameters will no longer be linked with the one you had selected before. Because of this, Motion’s built-in behaviors will not work on mO²’s parameters, Object Behaviors need to be used instead.

11. Can I use a video as the background for my mO² scene?

Yes, you can do this either by setting it up as the source for the Drop Zone Background mode or by switching it to Alpha Channel.

The Drop Zone mode is mainly used for a more complete integration of the background with the mO² scene – refractive objects will actually refract the image used as the Drop Zone's source and objects that use Planar Reflections will reflect it as well.

When in Alpha Channel mode, mO² doesn't have any information about its background so refractive and reflective objects will use the Environment instead. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to set up and can be used to export mO² scenes on a transparent background for further use in other editing and compositing apps.

12. What’s the difference between Direct and Environment Lighting?

Environment Lighting uses the Environment texture and lights the scene based on its brightness and colors. Using actual images will introduce a lot of variance in lighting and therefore may improve the realism of your renders. It is also the quickest and easiest way to set up fantastic looking scenes.

Direct Lighting comes from actual light sources such as Point/Spot/Directional lights. It requires a bit more knowledge than Environment Lighting but many concepts from regular studio lighting apply (setting up Key/ Fill lights, etc..) so a bit of playing around will provide enough experience needed for using them in production.

Note

If you wish to use only Direct Lighting in your scene, simply switch the Environment to None and it will no longer light its content.

13. Is it possible to create a mirror-like Material that is not metallic?

Mirrors are created by applying a thin layer of metallic, reflective material (such as silver) to a sheet of glass and can’t be created using dielectrics. Since you can’t find such materials in real-life, you won’t be able to create them in mO ².

14. My scene is too dark, how can I make it brighter?

Three main things affect the scene's brightness:

Camera Exposure – once you select the currently used Camera, its parameters will show up in the Inspector, inside the Camera Settings group. The Exposure parameter located near the top works exactly the same as exposure available in real-world cameras and camcorders – bumping it up will increase it the amount of light perceived by the Camera, resulting in a brighter image.
Environment Lighting – using a dark environment will often result in a dark scene. To make it brighter, try loading a more intense Environment map or increase the current one's Brightness parameter located in the Environment's Color Correction group.
Lights – if you need to make a specific area of the scene brighter, finding the right Environment may be difficult. An easier solution is to add an Area Light to your scene. Additionally, if you only wish to brighten the shadowed areas while maintaining the overall lighting of your scene, adding an Ambient light will be the best way to go.

15. My project is running too slow, how can I optimize it?

If you only wish to temporarily speed up rendering to navigate through the scene, the best way to do this is to switch to the Constructor Mode, in which the heaviest post-processing effects are disabled.

That being said, some features affect performance more than others:

Objects – each object has its own set of properties such as position or rotation, their animations, etc. that need to be saved in the scene. At some point the amount of stored data will start to affect Motion's and Final Cut's performance. This means that if you can choose between a model merged into a single mesh with a lot of polygons and a model built from several meshes with less polygons, we recommend picking the first one. Invisible objects are also present within the scene so if you've got a lot of unused ones, deleting them will improve performance.
Textures – each graphics card has a finite amount of video memory. If a lot of different textures are used in a single scene, they may not fit inside it. If this happens, OpenGL will start to move them to your system memory, resulting in a significant performance drop.
Instancers – Instancers work best for duplicating a single object many times. The more objects are dropped into it and the more complex they are (an object within an object), the slower it will become, even if the resulting amount of instances is the same in both cases. Additionally, animating the Instancer's parameters or objects inside it will also affect its performance so changing their position, rotation and/or scale them via Modifiers will work much faster.

Please note that each effect requires a certain amount of processing power so the more of them you have enabled, the slower your render will be. Each can be either disabled or adjusted via parameters located in the Render Settings (link) section:

Ambient Occlusion – AO is the most system-intensive effect in mO² so disabling it will greatly improve performance. You can also make it a bit faster by keeping its range at a relatively low value.
Depth of Field – this effect blurs each pixel by a certain amount. If the blurring range is large, it will render slower so if you can keep your Focus Amount low, it will improve your scene's performance.
Motion Blur – just like Depth of Field, this effect blurs pixels so the stronger the effect, the more calculations will be required.
Shadows – to generate shadows, the scene needs to be rendered from the Light's perspective. For Spot Lights, it's indeed just a single additional render, but since a Sphere Light covers a much larger area, casting shadows from it requires not one but six additional renders of the entire scene so if you can change your shadow casting Sphere Lights into Spot Lights, doing that will significantly improve your scene's performance.
Planar Reflections – just like shadows, they require re-rendering the scene so if your render doesn't necessarily require it, disabling this feature will improve your rendering speed.

16. Is there a way to improve Anti-aliasing in my scene?

The first thing you can do is adjust mO²'s AA settings (available in Render Settings -> Anti-Aliasing group) to make these artifacts less apparent:

Camera Jitter – mO² uses Temporal Anti Aliasing that regenerates detail by slightly jittering the camera at each frame. This is very useful in static scenes but it can make aliasing more visible in other situations. In general, if your scene’s content is moving all the time, you can even bring it down to 0
Reduce Ghosting – this checkbox reduces the “echo” effect caused by moving objects. Disabling it will reduce aliasing but note that by doing so such trails may become more visible
AA Sharpness – a sharper image will have more aliasing so you can reduce it by lowering this value

Another thing worth noting is that aliasing is always more apparent in areas where really bright pixels show up next to much darker pixels. Such contrasts can be caused by a couple of things:

Tiny light sources. Small highlights = more visible aliasing so if you’re using Spot or Sphere lights, try increasing their radius
HDRI Environments with high intensities and contrast will have the same effect as small Area Lights. mO² doesn’t include such Environments but if you decrease Gamma too much on any of them, you may end up with a very contrasted Environment texture that could make aliasing more apparent
Very low Roughness. Shiny surfaces have much sharper reflections so aliasing caused everything mentioned above will be more visible on them. If your Material doesn’t need to be perfectly smooth, try increasing its Roughness. Doing this alone will reduce most aliasing problems

Lastly, remember that Anti-Aliasing is meant to hide artifacts caused by insufficient image data. This means that if you can't achieve the desired quality when working in HD, simply increasing your project's resolution to, say, 4K should result a much more accurate image.

17. Is my 3D model’s scale important?

mO² uses physical units across its engine so rendering a spoon that’s 10 meters long or a house that’s 10 centimeters tall will most likely look unnatural. Scene scale is especially important when combined with effects such as Depth of Field – just like in photography, focusing on a huge object will usually result in a fairly sharp image (also due to a wider Camera Field Of View) and a tiny object will introduce more DoF, as if it was shot using a macro lens. Ambient Occlusion is also very sensitive to the scene’s scale – it will generate very weak shadows for extremely large models and very dark ones for extremely small models.

Of course, all models provided with mO² have been prepared to match their real-life scale but you can easily control your own models’ size during import. After picking the desired file, the model’s X, Y and Z dimensions will be displayed (in meters). Adjusting its size on one of the axes will automatically update the remaining ones so you’ll know exactly how large it will be after placing it in your scene.

18. I have the plugin’s generator selected but I can’t see my animation in Motion’s Keyframe Editor, why?

To make things clearer and more intuitive, mO² only displays keyframes for the currently selected objects (just like Motion). If you wish to preview or modify an object’s animation curve, simply select it within the Scene Content view and it will become visible.

19. When loading my FBX, mO² doesn't load textures included with it, why?

When importing an FBX, mO² will look for its texture files in the locations provided by the FBX itself. If it can't find them, the textures were either moved from their target folder to a different location, or they were never taken into account when exporting the model from the app the FBX was created in.

Luckily, even though FBX is a binary file, it contains explicit links to the texture files used in its materials. This means that if textures are indeed used in this file, we can check where they are supposed to be placed. To do this, simply open the FBX using TextEdit and search for the texture's file name inside it. Depending on the results, we can determine the source of the problem:

if the texture's name can't be found, it means that the FBX was exported incorrectly and loading it into any 3D software will give us materials without any textures. The solution to this is to manually import all of its textures into mO²'s Texture Library and load them into the corresponding Material Channels. Once all Materials are set, the entire model can be saved into the Model Library to make sure it is ready for use in future projects,
if the texture's file name has been found within the FBX, it will often be included with its entire file path. For example, if you can see it as "textures/[texture_file_name.extension]", you will need to create a folder called "textures" next to your FBX and put your texture there. If it's "maps/[texture_file_name.extension]", you'll need to create a folder called "maps" and put your texture inside it, etc.
if the texture's file name has been found within the FBX but it doesn't include the entire file path, the textures most likely need to be placed in the same folder as your FBX.

20. How exactly do mO²'s Drop Zones work?

As you know, mO² allows to use up to 10 Drop Zones per scene. Of course this doesn’t mean that you are limited to just 10 Materials that use them. The plugin simply provides access to a list of 10 global mO² Drop Zones that can be filled with your own Motion layers and then used as Albedo textures in as many Materials as needed.
To fill a specific mO² Drop Zone, select your Material, scroll down to its Albedo Channel, change the “Texture Source” parameter to Drop Zone and pick the desired one from the “Use Drop Zone” list. Once you do this, its corresponding Image Well parameter will be displayed and you’ll be able to drag & drop your Motion layer onto it.
Once you fill a Drop Zone, mO² will mark it as used. Thanks to this, if you select a different Material and change its Albedo “Texture Source” to Drop Zone, it will automatically pick the next unused Drop Zone for you.
If you wish to use the same Drop Zone in multiple different Materials, all you need to do is make sure that all of them have the same “Use Drop Zone” value selected.

mO2 User Manual

mO2 User Manual

CHANGELOG

GETTING STARTED

Tutorials

FAQ

Note

Note

Note

CONTROL PANEL

Scene Content

Note

Context menu

Note

Note

Material Icons

Note

Note

Visibility

Shortcuts

Note

Buttons

Add Object

mTracker 3D Data

Note

Apply Material

Save Scene

Load Scene

OSC

Note

Note

Camera Controls

Note

3D Gizmo

Tip

Rendering Modes

Constructor

Beauty

BASIC TRANSFORMATION

Visible

Visible Side

Position, Rotation & Scale

Anchor Point

Animation

MATERIAL

Materials Button

Save Material Button

Material Preview

Material Channels

Albedo

Note

Note

Note

Normal

Metalness

Note

Tip

Roughness

Note

Illuminance

Note

Cavity

Opacity

Note

Note

Texture Mapping

Enable OSC for Texture Mapping

Note

Mapping Settings

CAMERA

Basic Settings

Note

Note

Presets

Camera Properties

Exposure

FOV

Note

Post-Processing Effects

Aberration