Buy Silo 1.42

Silo 1.42 by Nevercenter

What makes Silo 1.42 the modeler of choice for artists like Glen Southern, James Edwards, Mike Hovland, Xen Wildman, and many others?

by Glen Southern

Complete Polygon Toolset - Robust, Powerful, Non-limiting

Advanced Subdivision Surfaces - The fastest implementation

Streamlined Workflow - straightforward, customizable

Unprecedented Customization - Easy, sharable

Speed & Lightness - Loads faster, takes less memory

Innovation - Customizable Setup, Topology Brush

Learning Curve - Clean and Straightforward

Modeling Nirvana - Quick, Easy, Streamlined

The Price - At $109.00 You Can't Afford Not To

Toolset
Silo offers a robust package of the most powerful polygon-editing tools while avoiding a glut of tools which are of limited value or too specific. We've researched the tools that have proven themselves to be most useful over time and honed them into the most efficient, straightforward and intuitive implementations we could imagine. The result is a comprehensive toolset which can be learned and mastered quickly.

Highlights include an interactive split tool which allows you to draw edges and holes anywhere on your object, interactive bevel, interactive shell, extrusion and extrusion along normals, path extrusion, interactive face loop splitting, context-sensitive bridge and connect commands, interactive edge slide, interactive polygon-by-polygon drawing, arrays, virtual and real mirroring, true boolean operations, and many more not mentioned. A wide array of selection options speeds the flow and ease of modeling.

While many other modeling programs put limitations on your meshes like disallowing polygons with more than 4 sides or not allowing your mesh to be "open" (where not all edges have faces on both sides), Silo lets you work with any conceivable geometry that your project might require. Moreover, Silo "cleans up" after you, so if you delete a vertex in a 3-sided face you're not left with an invisible 2-sided face that will give you headaches later on (instead Silo will turn it into an edge).

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Advanced Subdivision Surfaces
Subdivision surfaces (sub-Ds) are rough polygon models that have a smoothing algorithm applied to them to make a continuous smooth shape based on the original rough polygon shape. When you edit the low-polygon model, the smoothed version updates automatically, giving you control over the smooth continuous surface using only the geometry of the low-polygon model. Many studios have converted in recent years from using NURBs surfaces to using sub-Ds since sub-Ds don't have all of the restrictions inherent in NURBs surfaces.

Silo's implementation of subdivision surfaces is one of the fastest around (go ahead and compare it with other programs, pushing around polygons on a subdivided mesh). And unlike most other programs, Silo lets you jump between different levels of subdivision with the simple press of a button (or with the customizable mouse, you could assign the scroll wheel on your mouse to switch between subdivision levels).

Silo also takes the subdivision paradigm much further than most, allowing you to subdivide any geometry, not just meshes. You can draw out a line segment, subdivide it to make a smooth line, adjust the smoothed line using the original control points of the line segment you drew out, and then use that as a path for an extrusion or a lathe operation.

Silo allows you to set specific edges to be "creased" or to subdivide only portions of your model to create shapes that combine smooth and sharp elements.

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Streamlined Workflow
Why are modelers in some of the biggest video game companies and graphics studios in the world switching to Silo when "bigger" applications are already out there? One reason is Silo's incredibly straightforward, customizable workflow which allows you to work with improbable speed and ease.

Many of Silo's functions are context-sensitive so that there's not a separate command to extrude edges and to extrude faces, just a single Extrude command. The Bridge command will bridge faces together if you're in face selection mode, but in object selection mode it will look for the two nearest faces between the two objects and bridge them together. These are just a few examples among many.

Those who do 3D modeling all day every day for work notice that every extra click counts against you and every awkward transition between tools gets multiplied. We've put significant effort into removing those extra clicks and smoothing transitions. For example, you can select an edge, bevel it, adjust the bevel, drop the tool, and deselect with a single mouse click-drag-release, calling the Bevel command with a keyboard shortcut right after the mouse click. To some it may sound silly to get that kind of optimization, but pro modelers will know what we're talking about.

Custom interfaces can be made in Silo to accommodate any workflow. At the most basic level this means the ability to add buttons for any function to your workspace and to assign keyboard shortcuts to commands. However, in Silo you can create buttons that float around your manipulator, always staying near the center of the action. You can also use any image you like for the button and place it anywhere you like on the screen, to make more important buttons bigger or more significant in appearance. "Button pages" allow you to group buttons together and cycle through the groups by pressing the Tab key.

Silo is the first modeler we know of to offer 100% customizable mouse settings, so any function can be assigned to any mouse/modifier combination, including the scroll wheel. You can use this to make Silo behave like your animation program or another program you're used to, or to eliminate the need for keyboard shortcuts and buttons altogether.

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Customization
Since 3D modeling is such an artistic endeavor, we believe that Silo users should be able to make Silo look and act in the way that best accommodates their creative drive as well as their particular workflow. For every person this is different , which is why we've made Silo so completely customizable.

Silo allows you to customize all colors, keyboard shortcuts, on-screen buttons, button placement and images, mouse buttons, and more. With our mouse customization as an example, any function can be assigned to any mouse button or the scroll wheel. This lets you assign a total of up to 35 commands to a standard 3-button mouse with scroll wheel, including combinations with the Shift, Ctrl, and Alt modifier keys.

Customizations can be easily saved and shared between users.

The default interface in Silo 1.4

An example of a custom interface with user-designed buttons

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Speed and Lightness of Silo
Silo was programmed from the beginning with an aim to be able to function on some of the oldest computers capable of displaying 3D graphics, so you can imagine how it performs on a modern computer. Our implementation of subdivision surfaces is widely regarded as one of the fastest around, allowing you to work on high-polygon smoothed meshes with ease. This is to say nothing of the streamlined implementation of our tools.

Since it is exclusively a modeling program (rather than an all-in-one modeling-animating-rendering package), Silo can be much more lightweight than other programs that do 3D modeling, loading faster and taking up much less memory. This means that Silo can be open and functioning beautifully while you have other graphics programs concurrently open, even on lower-spec machines, and also that you can easily take Silo with you on your laptop where other graphics programs might make it sputter.

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Innovation

The Topology Brush in action, sketching new topology over an existing model.

The mouse customization dialog allows you to assign any function to any mouse/modifier combination, including the scroll wheel.

At Nevercenter we firmly believe there is much innovation to be had in the world of 3D modeling, and in Silo's short existence we've already introduced several new tools and ideas to 3D modeling. We work closely with a team of elite beta testers to hone and refine these ideas, making certain they conform to our standards of simple, fast, intuitive modeling. We're always on the lookout for new ideas which can speed workflow or offer new ways of working.

Take for example our completely customizable mouse setup. With the mouse customization dialog you can assign any function in the program to any mouse/modifier combination. Shift + Left Click can be assigned to perform an extrude operation, or scrolling up on the mouse wheel to cycle through shading modes or adjust the soft selection radius.

The free Silo 1.3 upgrade included the new Topology Brush, which allows you to take an existing model and sketch out new geometry across its surface with virtual pen lines. Pressing Enter after drawing the lines will generate the new geometry based on what you've sketched. This tool not only allows you to quickly create a model with good topology based on one with bad topology, but allows you to create clothes or hair or other shapes that closely conform to underlying models.

Nevercenter is fast becoming a leader in the development of new ideas. Check out the Nevercenter Labs to see what else the future may hold.

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Learning Curve
Silo is refreshingly clean and straightforward. For those familiar with other modeling applications, it can be surprising how easy it is to pick up and use immediately. You'll likely be comfortable in minutes, and the customization options will help you get even more comfortable by making Silo feel and behave like other graphics applications you may be familiar with.

For those just getting started, Silo offers an extremely focused environment to learn in. The Quick Start Guide and Silo Help will have you up and running quickly. More help is available in online tutorials and videos, and the extremely friendly Silo forums are frequented by the developers themselves. Most modeling tutorials based on other applications can be easily followed in Silo.

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Modeling Nirvana
3D modeling is an intensely artistic enterprise, something that many graphics software companies seem to ignore with the cluttered and abrasive appearance of their interfaces and the tools that have obviously been designed by engineers rather than artists. In the same way that a painter or a poet can create better when they're in a particular environment, 3D artists can more easily tap their creativity when the modeling environment isn't an obstacle in functional or aesthetic ways.

One of Silo's main points of focus is to allow the artist to be in their own modeling heaven when using Silo. The most obvious example of this is in the complete customization possible in Silo's appearance. With the ability to manually set the color of every nearly element in the program, along with the ability to use your own images for buttons (with full alpha channel support) and place them anywhere on the screen, Silo can be made to look basically any way you can imagine. It's like building your own house in the woods to write a novel in.

We've also taken every effort to eliminate unnecessary steps that might stand between you and your work on your model. Some programs have several elements that might prove useful in very few situations, but the rest of the time clutter the workspace or cause you to have to make extra, unnecessary mouse clicks. Silo has been carefully honed to provide super-smooth implementations of the tools that you'll use 99% of the time in favor of ditching the superfluous tools that only end up taking more time than they save.

nevercenter silo price

Price
We truly believe that the best ideas in 3D modeling should be available to everyone; at $109, Silo is equally viable for all sectors of the market. Hobbyists and students can learn and use what the pros are using (without educational version restrictions), while professionals and studios can easily plug Silo into any pipeline without sacrificing other applications.

At hundreds of dollars less than the competition, something must be missing, right? Well, yes. What's missing are the investors, marketing department, businessmen, and expensive office furniture. What you get is a quality product straight from the engineers. It's a growing trend in the software industry, and it makes us highly competitive. Those who subscribe to the "you get what you pay for" mentality are strongly encouraged to contact sales and will be allowed to purchase Silo for the optional price of $1,000 per seat.

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