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Autodesk Decides to Reinvest in Mudbox


druh0o
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It's hard to see where they are going with this, especially if they keep the subscription price around $10/mo. My guess is they are trying to put some minimal development effort into keeping it in their portfolio, in order to placate their Max and Maya customer base, who want to keep using Mudbox as their sculpting app. It has one major thing going for it, still....a very clean and simplified UI, and easy to learn and use. It also has the best implementation of Sculpt Layers that I've seen. Been trying to get Andrew to emulate it, for years, now. Despite many other user requests for it, Andrew seems reluctant to do it. 

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I think they also realized there is still no serious competition to Zbrush. The market is open to competition, but no one has stepped up to the plate to really match Pixologic. There is a lot of money to be had there.  I hoped 3D coat would be the serious contender but so far its not showing signs of serious competition. If Autodesk gets back into the 3D Sculpting game (even with texture painting thrown in), it will change the current dynamic we have now. The biggest one at risk would not be zbrush so much as 3D coat.

 

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1 hour ago, RabenWulf said:

I think they also realized there is still no serious competition to Zbrush. The market is open to competition, but no one has stepped up to the plate to really match Pixologic. There is a lot of money to be had there.  I hoped 3D coat would be the serious contender but so far its not showing signs of serious competition. If Autodesk gets back into the 3D Sculpting game (even with texture painting thrown in), it will change the current dynamic we have now. The biggest one at risk would not be zbrush so much as 3D coat.

 

3D Coat is already a better sculpting app than Mudbox, by a mile, and that is why AD probably threw in the towel years ago. Because for them, it wasn't generating enough revenue, and it was facing stiff competition from 3D Coat, and ZBrush was adding more and more modeling tools, which Mudbox still doesn't offer. 3D Coat has way more brushes and tools just in the Sculpt workspace, than Mudbox, and the brush feel is already on par with Mudbox.

I hope Andrew will finally get around to adding Sculpt layers and revamp some of the tools like Pose and the Curves tool, but let's stop pretending 3D Coat sculpting is subpar. It most certainly is not. It's a firm 2nd behind ZBrush, and considering that 3D Coat is more of a multi-purpose app, rather than a specialty, it doesn't need to beat ZBrush in sculpting, head to head. It already does in most other areas (Retopo, UV and Texture Painting). When Mudbox comes out with 37 new feature and bugfixing builds in a year, then maybe we can talk about it making a comeback. But for now, they've merely shown a pulse by fixing a host of bugs.  

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2 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

3D Coat is already a better sculpting app than Mudbox, by a mile, and that is why AD probably threw in the towel years ago. Because for them, it wasn't generating enough revenue, and it was facing stiff competition from 3D Coat, and ZBrush was adding more and more modeling tools, which Mudbox still doesn't offer. 3D Coat has way more brushes and tools just in the Sculpt workspace, than Mudbox, and the brush feel is already on par with Mudbox.

I hope Andrew will finally get around to adding Sculpt layers and revamp some of the tools like Pose and the Curves tool, but let's stop pretending 3D Coat sculpting is subpar. It most certainly is not. It's a firm 2nd behind ZBrush, and considering that 3D Coat is more of a multi-purpose app, rather than a specialty, it doesn't need to beat ZBrush in sculpting, head to head. It already does in most other areas (Retopo, UV and Texture Painting). When Mudbox comes out with 37 new feature and bugfixing builds in a year, then maybe we can talk about it making a comeback. But for now, they've merely shown a pulse by fixing a host of bugs.  

Naturally I agree with the sentiment regarding Autodesk "throwing in the towel" in part due to 3D Coat. To call 3D Coat sub-par to zbrush, love it or hate it, is a tad accurate. It doesn't need to be of course, but at this point in time, zbrush is just too far ahead. I also agree that 3D coat is better, sculpting wise, than mudbox though if Autodesk prioritizes mudbox again to be the zbrush competitor, 3D Coat could get knocked back a peg. 

With regards to being a multipurpose piece of software, that is both a pro and a con. It means that you may not be used for all tasks, but rather one specialized task, you may be part of the pipeline but not THE PIPELINE itself. Zbrush can UV, model, paint and render. Some of the best digital sculptors, even for game art, work in zbrush for the most part, even with retopo. Now they could send it to 3D coat for retopo, UV and painting (though when that happens its usually stylized, like with Blizzard), in fact 3D Coat is the go to application for hand painted textures. A lot of the baking will be done in a substance or marmoset based application as well. In short it means 3D coat is not usually going to be used for the sculpting, but perhaps the retopo and painting (depending on art style). This means 3D Coat, even if its decent at sculpting wont be used. This can be changed with further development, the so called catching up with zbrush.

I'd argue that since 3D coat is not necessarily pulling away sculptors in a significant quantity, autodesk may instead try to re-target that market. They also have access to studios directly, many which work with autodesk suits already, which love it or hate it can lead to more seats and users.

The demand is there, its just a question on whether or not 3D Coat chooses to match the bar that zbrush has raised. Either way 3D coat will be fine with the texture painting (hand painted especially) and retopo, its just a matter of competing in the other high demand parts of the pipeline. Less is more (application usage) if you don't lose out on quality.

Edited by RabenWulf
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Speaking of sculpting, I think 3D Coat now is better in concepting and rapid prototyping. And also 3D Coat can do something that even ZBrush can't do currently - it's some kind of precise sculpting and contol (thanks to the Snap to the Grid, Transform with numeric values and some other tools). It's that level of control which ZBrush doesn't have for this moment. And 3D Coat definitely can be even better in that field. This is the field in which ZBrush kinda drifts, but 3D Coat is already there!

This is from ZBrush Certification Course Webinar with Ryan Kingslien:

ZBrush Certification Course Webinar with Ryan Kingslien (HD).mp4_snapshot_00.40.04_[2017.10.16_10.11.40].jpg

Edited by druh0o
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8 hours ago, druh0o said:

Speaking of sculpting, I think 3D Coat now is better in concepting and rapid prototyping. And also 3D Coat can do something that even ZBrush can't do currently - it's some kind of precise sculpting and contol (thanks to the Snap to the Grid, Transform with numeric values and some other tools). It's that level of control which ZBrush doesn't have for this moment. And 3D Coat definitely can be even better in that field. This is the field in which ZBrush kinda drifts, but 3D Coat is already there!

This is from ZBrush Certification Course Webinar with Ryan Kingslien:

 

Hmm to be fair, while I am not aware of any direct numerical input for transform operations in zbrush at the moment (3DC does have this, agreed), the new gizmo 3D does offer more precise control than previously with the transpose widget. A numerical value is displayed when using the gizmo 3D, and you can work with increments. Snap to grid and similar snapping features should have been added back in 4r5 if I remember correctly, so its definitely there. I'd argue what drives concepting is not just the feature set but the speed in which the artist can work. Zbrush atm requires a lot less actions to get a lot more done. For example, the gizmo3D can automatically move all or selected sub-tools with a quick click of the button. Parametric primitives, live booleans, shadow box, polygroups with quick hotkey selection, mask and deform modifiers,posing...ect a lot of these relate to concepting quickly. I really wouldn't put 3D Coat ahead of it based on that for concepting.

I definitely prefer 3D Coat's navigation approach and brush control (right mouse button drag) over Zbrush's weird navigation controls, and its reliance on spacebar or S key to resize. In being more conventional, UI wise, 3D Coat has more potential at being accessible. This is something even Mudbox has over zbrush.


Also out of curiosity, what was the purpose of the picture?
I looked up the webinar, and Kingslien is talking about how Maya, Max, XSI are all battling it out for hard surface modeling, which is the lower left. There was no one battling it out for the "soft" and "loose" organic modeling field, which he has in the upper right. This is where zbrush came in, and why it was placed up in the upper right of his graph. With polymodeling, zbrush starts to hit on the lower left which is that hard surface stuff he references. Basically he created a graph showing where software packages are falling into based on approach and target audience. He explains how zbrush targeted the loose and soft "organic" modeling market with little to no competition, and then began to smartly intrude on the territory that max, maya, xsi..ect were battling it out for. This is actually a great message for 3D Coat as well, since it was doing the same thing but on a texture painting/retopology level.

=)

On 10/15/2017 at 3:47 AM, Speike-Styles said:

I heard a whisper that they will be adding VR/AR Sculpting Support. Just like Modo..


That would be interesting. Modo mostly is using it for visualization purposes and some basic operations. I don't think sculpting is on the table yet, or if it ever will be. We need these applications to master quick modeling in VR space first, as sculpting requires a kind of control that's hard to achieve with current VR input. If Mudbox does target VR, it would be mostly a marketing stunt they could turn heads with, but the only way they an really compete is by upping the quality/workflow as it relates to sculpting. They have some serious catching up to do.

Edited by RabenWulf
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52 minutes ago, RabenWulf said:

Snap to grid and similar snapping features should have been added back in 4r5 if I remember correctly, so its definitely there.

Do you mean by that ZBrush has snapping to the grid that works on per-stoke basis? Like for the ClipCurve for example? Or maybe for ZSphere? I never heard about that and never seen that before. Can you please show me?

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29 minutes ago, druh0o said:

Do you mean by that ZBrush has snapping to the grid that works on per-stoke basis? Like for the ClipCurve for example? Or maybe for ZSphere? I never heard about that and never seen that before. Can you please show me?

Hmm you may be right, I was thinking of the grid/snap options under "draw", a feature I never had to use so I was going off of memory with that one. After playing with it, it appears that it is limited to setting up the grip, snapping the grid, but tools seem to at the same time ignore the grid you set up. For clip curve, if you hold shift it will snap but it completely ignores the grid. If so that's a pretty big oversight on Pixologics part.

Also during that process, I came across a numerical input for "position" and "size" inside the geometry panel. So that is there apparently. Some of the stuff they add usually flies under the radar due to obscure implementation. -_-

 

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