New Years and Modo's Remote Config

As the cool kids say nowadays, new year, new me(ntal issues)!

A lot of exciting plans for this very site and beyond, including reference wikis for a lot of common subjects in tech art, like Linux Terminal commands, VEX snippets and even some math refreshers. Currently researching my options in the site host for wiki-like pages. It will hopefully be a centralized source of reference for specific knowledge I might require while doing day to day tasks.

I'm also busy working on my asset store. Can't give an ETA yet but will definitively happen this year, so look forward to that. Besides, I've also been busy with new personal projects, so expect some new drops of hard surface and environment modeling goodies soon.

But let's start the year with a smaller tip on Modo's Configs, or the files that store your application preferences. On Windows you can find it on "C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Luxology\MODOVERSIONXX.X.CFG"(and a corresponding .bak backup folder in case you screwup badly your main one).

You can also access it from Modo itself from the top menu bar: System > Open User Configs Folder. Inside this directory we can all files that store Modo's preferences, from hotkey mappings to floating windows position on the viewport. And that's the thing: Not all of those configs have the same relevance. Some are too valuable to lose when you want to upgrade to a new Modo version, others like the last fbx import settings used you don't care as much.

What if we had a way to read the more relevant configs from a location on the cloud, or a source controlled repository, so you can separate your "true" preferences from Modo's temporary generated stuff?

Well, there is: Go to the folder above(the "Luxology" directory), and enter the "Configs" folder, in other words, config files not tied to a specific version. Inside there, add a "redirect.cfg" file and add the following lines to it:

<?xml version=”1.0? encoding=”UTF-8??>
<configuration>

<import> C:\Path\to\Configs </import>

</configuration>

Of course, replace the "C:\Path\to\Configs" to the path where you're storing your configs. Now all you have to do is grab all the configs you want to store safely and use across Modo versions to the path you specified in the redirect.cfg. Custom hotkeys configs, which Modo calls InputRemapping.cfg is a prime candidate to that operation. Also, the path that you specified is not read recursively, so you can create a "Legacy" folder with working configs for older versions for backup, etc.

If you do it correctly, you'll notice that whenever you make changes inside Modo to a preference that you redirected, it won't recreate the config file in the Luxology folder, it will update the file in the redirected path instead. This is how you can keep using the same preferences for several years, just tweaking and updating what's needed.

Modo configs are very nicely structured and are a deep topic, so rest assured the subject will be covered more in future posts.

See you next mission.