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Mudbox 2011


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http://area.autodesk.com/mudbox2011/features

Some screenshots. Looks like they are finally adding blending modes (don't understand why they never had it in the first place), some posing tools, and maybe something like GoZ (export direct to Maya/Max with materials setup just as in Mudbox). Nothing groundbreaking like Voxels or Ptex.

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hi ,seems very intersting.ive tried mud for 30d last year, and it was better sculpt than silo.but you ll need silo for building the mesh.ive not tried ZB yet but the spheres look ok.im glad i found 3DCoat and im getting used to it but its complex to master the process to create assets for realtime apps like Unity3d.

BTW what are vector displacements?

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They finally rewrote the way displacement is handled to support posing. Vector displacement support looks nice. I'm wondering if you can now grow mushrooms on a model in a single click

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hi ,seems very intersting.ive tried mud for 30d last year, and it was better sculpt than silo.but you ll need silo for building the mesh.ive not tried ZB yet but the spheres look ok.im glad i found 3DCoat and im getting used to it but its complex to master the process to create assets for realtime apps like Unity3d.

BTW what are vector displacements?

quote:

Extract maps using a new Vector Displacement method and represent displacements that do not simply follow the normal: for example, forms with appendages, undercuts, folds, and bulges, such as a human ear. Once extracted, maps can be used to help recreate detail at render time in supported renderers, or as brush stamps or stencils in Mudbox to sculpt complex detail onto meshes in a single stroke. Artists can build up a library of commonly-used forms and reuse them on models.

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Wayne Robson (who's a Twitter friend of mine) made a video showing the new features. I had to laugh because unless I missed something, everything he shows is an old feature in 3DC.

BTW Wayne also has a program called MudWalker that he's writing that will connect MudBox to other programs. He's working on a 3DC connection unfortunately he says he doesn't have a copy of 3DC so it will be difficult.

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Wayne Robson (who's a Twitter friend of mine) made a video showing the new features. I had to laugh because unless I missed something, everything he shows is an old feature in 3DC.

BTW Wayne also has a program called MudWalker that he's writing that will connect MudBox to other programs. He's working on a 3DC connection unfortunately he says he doesn't have a copy of 3DC so it will be difficult.

Yeah...he thinks 3DC is a toy and Mudbox is the best thing since sliced bread. For sheer sculpting speed (and viewport enhancements), it might be...but in just about every other category it's way behind 3DC and ZB.

Several have requested SpacePilot support from MB, and he comes across as very condescending...as if MB developers couldn't be bothered with petty such requests. This is what truly separates 3DC, in my book. The developer communicates and tries to accommodate as best he can. AD, makes little to no effort in that regard.

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Personally MB is number 2 for me with ZB being last. Mainly because the UI blows ZB out of the water. My biggest problem with MB now is-- Well first autodesk runs it, but probably related to that ever since AD got their mitts on it it won't run on my computer anymore it just crashes.

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Personally MB is number 2 for me with ZB being last. Mainly because the UI blows ZB out of the water. My biggest problem with MB now is-- Well first autodesk runs it, but probably related to that ever since AD got their mitts on it it won't run on my computer anymore it just crashes.

As much as I love 3DC...it really does have issues....show-stopping issues. That is not the case, currently with either ZB or MB....not when we're talking about sculpting hi-detail. On my little Hobbit character, I've been stalled repeatedly (after having to switch to surface mode for mid-high detail, and after just a few strokes, I hit ENTER and it takes HOURS and HOURS before I can resume. I've had to go to bed waiting on it or just kill 3DC in the task manager and lose all the work I did.

Progress has been stopped because once I get to the level of resolution in Voxels I need to get a decent amount of detail, it really starts to bog down...and that's on a fast quad-core with 8GB RAM and an NVidia GTX 275. I'm really growing more frustrated by the day. If this was on a tight deadline, there is no way I could use 3DC to get it done, the way things have been going.

I wanted to do something to showcase what 3DC could do, but it looks like Mudbox is going to have to take over. I personally think Andrew should drop what he's doing with Ptex, once he has the current issue ironed out (sounds like he's close), and make priority No.1 the hideous merge calculation times. As I stated before a number of times, Voxels do present some great possibilities, yet it also presents its share of headaches and bottlenecks. That is why I wanted Andrew to try and mirror the surface tools (hopefully with the same speed or better) over to the sculpt room. This way, those of us who would rather forgoe the benefits of Voxels in favor of less hassle with the long merge times, have a good option to turn to within the application....instead of having to leave it and use ZB or MB to get the job done.

You can offer all the workarounds you want, but at the end of the day, they are mere band-aids over a sucking chest wound. The focus of development truly needs to get back to sculpting. Mudbox isn't that much older than 3DC, and it overtook ZB in raw sculpting performance (although you need a fast system to do it). 3DC, with Andrew at the helm can do the same, I'm sure. We just need to quit asking him to divert his attention to fringe feature requests, and let the man focus.

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yeah he should just actually stop for awhile adding new things and focus into empower the app, to put sculpting at same speed of ZB at least. It would be a real benefit for the app. Just empower it, debug, refine existing toolset, and focus into sculpting/painting.

Voxel are great, but to really have success the app can't make users wait for hours into a powerful machine.

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I think the high detail issue with 3DC is the only real annoyance i have currently. Merge times are not an issue for me since i only go high-res when i am 100% happy with the form/pose of an object, but i can see how it would irritate people that do use the pose tool etc.. at high res for whatever reason.

The bigger problem seems to me that you need a far higher poly count in 3DC to achieve the same detail as ZB (i haven't tried MB). The marching cubes algorithm works wonderfully for smooth organic surfaces at medium-high detail levels, but no matter what i do i just can't get the fine details i can in ZBrush. The thing is even if 3DCoat was optimized heavily so you could sculpt a 20-30m model at the same speed that Zbrush allows, you still will have the detail problem. I know many people suggest that using surface mode helps, but i can't say that i'm having much luck. The problem with using pinch etc.. in surface mode is that you immediately loose the single biggest advantage that voxels have over polygons - surface uniformity, and you are still working with the same wacky polygon skin layout.

I know that you can't compare the programs like for like, because they are different in their fundamental technology, but i'm yet to see anything made in 3DC achieve the same level of detail as ZB. That's not to say people aren't making great stuff with it, there are a lot of super talented people making some incredible work! it's just that last 5-10% that is missing in the surfaces, and it makes quite a big difference imo.

When i asked Andrew about the possibility of a different rendering approach for the voxel room (maybe pure voxel rendering, or something else) he said he had no plans to do it soon. Maybe marching cubes really is the best method for rendering a voxel volume for sculpting, Andrew must have had a good reason for doing things this way, he's a hell of a lot smarter than me that's for sure! If that's the case then the reality might be that voxels require a super high density to compete at very high details with polyonal sculpting. Maybe we will just have to accept that you need 80m poly characters in 3DCoat and such.

I'm really not sure what the solution would be, a different (more efficient) means of rendering the voxel volume that doesn't have as many extranious polygons as the current method, or a method that drops the polygonal skin altogether. We cerainly need an increase in efficiency somewhere, maybe Andrew can clear things up a bit.

Sorry if i'm derailing your thread, i'm just thinking out loud.

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I still don't understand the reason for needing such high detail in the mesh. Unless you're exporting the high res model to be milled or printed in real life or something. Otherwise I've done just fine with high detail in the paint room.

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I still don't understand the reason for needing such high detail in the mesh. Unless you're exporting the high res model to be milled or printed in real life or something. Otherwise I've done just fine with high detail in the paint room.

That's a fair point, i guess it's just a question of prefered workflow. Personally i just like to work on the high res ala ZBrush, painting doesn't seem to have the same feel (maybe more a psychological thing).

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Probably psychological because it looks just like you're sculpting on the screen. Especially if you're just working on fine details that you didn't do in voxels. In fact the painting room gives you even more options like using Materials. Stuff that would be harder to do if you sculpted the fine details first.

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I still don't understand the reason for needing such high detail in the mesh. Unless you're exporting the high res model to be milled or printed in real life or something. Otherwise I've done just fine with high detail in the paint room.

You have more control in a true sculpting environment than having to rely on switching to image-based sculpting to get where you want to go. I'd much rather sculpt all the detail I want in Voxels or a overhauled Sculpt Room and simply use the Paint Room to...well, Paint. When I initially started with this character, I wasn't getting the fine control I wanted in the Paint Room, that I could get in Voxels/Surface tools. Again, having to leave Voxels to do high detail is not what Andrew intended, I'm sure. It's just that the problems Voxels introduce force a convoluted workflow. What's more is, there is no multi-level/multi-res workflow in Voxels, so once you increase the resolution, you're pretty much stuck with it....or lose much of your work.
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Agree with the points made by AbnRanger. Even with my personal style of work being abstract I frequently push the limits of my machine (i7 920 8GB)

Starting to get quite annoyed with overnight calculations that have hung.

Started to calculate the potential cost benefit of blowing the annual bonus on Zbrush or Mudbox. Don't tell the girlfriend but.

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Agree with the points made by AbnRanger. Even with my personal style of work being abstract I frequently push the limits of my machine (i7 920 8GB)

Starting to get quite annoyed with overnight calculations that have hung.

Started to calculate the potential cost benefit of blowing the annual bonus on Zbrush or Mudbox. Don't tell the girlfriend but.

If you are serious about sculpting, you should have at least one of these apps in your toolkit. Not that I don't like what 3dcoat is offering or where it's going (I think it has a bright future) but there's no way in hell I'd even wait 5 minutes for a surface to voxel conversion. Workflow and features are only part of the equation for me when sculpting. Lack of performance is a deal breaker though. If you want to push lots of polygons around, for now your only options are zbrush (first choice) and mudbox - and mudbox only if you have the beefy hardware required to reap any benefits. I've been sculpting on a modbook (macbook tablet pc conversion recently, and 3dcoat and mudbox just aren't good options on that machine. Zbrush performs wonderfully though. When I'm ready to really push a sculpt I transfer over to a better machine.

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If you are serious about sculpting, you should have at least one of these apps in your toolkit. Not that I don't like what 3dcoat is offering or where it's going (I think it has a bright future) but there's no way in hell I'd even wait 5 minutes for a surface to voxel conversion. Workflow and features are only part of the equation for me when sculpting. Lack of performance is a deal breaker though. If you want to push lots of polygons around, for now your only options are zbrush (first choice) and mudbox - and mudbox only if you have the beefy hardware required to reap any benefits. I've been sculpting on a modbook (macbook tablet pc conversion recently, and 3dcoat and mudbox just aren't good options on that machine. Zbrush performs wonderfully though. When I'm ready to really push a sculpt I transfer over to a better machine.

I bought 3DC as a replacement for Deep Paint 3D (for all intents and purposes, the program is dead and has been for years now). I wasn't serious about sculpting then, but have become more so recently. Having hit those limitations, I realize what you're saying. If, in the near future, you had the same capability in the Sculpt Room that you now have in the Surface Tools, does that change your workflow any, or would you still feel that you needed to take your rough model over to ZB for detailing?
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I bought 3DC right after v3 was officially released and it was a great replacement for Deep Paint 3D (for all intents and purposes, the program is dead and has been for years now). At any rate, I wasn't serious about sculpting then, but have become more so recently. Having hit those limitations, I realize what you're saying. If, in the near future, you had the same capability in the Sculpt Room that you now have in the Surface Tools, would that change your workflow any, or would you still feel that you needed to take your rough model over to ZB for detailing?

That's a really good question. Part of the problem with just giving a yes or no answer though, depends on more than just increased performance levels for me. Zbrush 'feels' better as a sculpting tool. There are many subtle workflow advantages too, such as polygroups, WAY better masking capability, especially when combined with the transpose tool. It is so easy to rapidly pose something in zbrush because the masking behavior also changes when you use the transpose tool. I can just ctrl_click_drag in that mode to do a quick interactive mask that is pretty smart at pick-walking itself over topology to cover appendages and stuff too (like if I wanted to deform just a foot or finger I could start dragging close to that area and zbrush knows to mask everything above that in the topology. Masking actually just works better in zbrush too. I've had times in 3dcoat where it doesn't prevent deformation, which makes it unreliable. Plus I can use zbrushes deformation tools like 'inflate' which is awesome for doing fine detail work using masks. There are so many little things that make the experience more enjoyable, and considering how young 3dcoat is at this point, I can't expect Andrew to match that, despite how fast he works. There are also overall benefits to detailing with polygons, namely subdivision history, and more stable, non-destructive posing - something I really try to avoid in 3dc except during blockouts. This will probably be less of an issue as andrew focuses more on improving the surface tools and there becomes less of a need to go back and forth.

I do still go back and forth a lot from surface to voxels, but never at the detail levels some of you are doing... wait time for me is typically a few seconds at the resolutions I sculpt at in 3dc. Anymore than that and I probably wouldn't bother with it.

The one area where I don't think anyone is going to compete with zbrush is performance though, unless developers find ways around the 3d accelerated rendering dependencies of their apps. The only answer to that in the short term is to use better hardware. I can still work on fairly detailed sculpts in zbrush even on my little modbook tablet pc. It only has an integrated graphics chipset and 256 megs of ram. But with 4 gigs of system ram, even a dual core 2.2 ghz machine can do well with zbrush. I actually enjoy working this way more than I do on a bigger, faster windows machine at work with a 21" cintiq.

As far as painting goes, I'm with you on that. 3dc is much more suitable for games work for me than zbrush too since zb doesn't really support image editing the way 3dc or ps do. I also have modo and I prefer 3dc over that for painting a lot of things (except transparencies =]).

Anyway, I ramble. =]

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That's a really good question. Part of the problem with just giving a yes or no answer though, depends on more than just increased performance levels for me. Zbrush 'feels' better as a sculpting tool. There are many subtle workflow advantages too, such as polygroups, WAY better masking capability, especially when combined with the transpose tool. It is so easy to rapidly pose something in zbrush because the masking behavior also changes when you use the transpose tool. I can just ctrl_click_drag in that mode to do a quick interactive mask that is pretty smart at pick-walking itself over topology to cover appendages and stuff too (like if I wanted to deform just a foot or finger I could start dragging close to that area and zbrush knows to mask everything above that in the topology. Masking actually just works better in zbrush too. I've had times in 3dcoat where it doesn't prevent deformation, which makes it unreliable. Plus I can use zbrushes deformation tools like 'inflate' which is awesome for doing fine detail work using masks. There are so many little things that make the experience more enjoyable, and considering how young 3dcoat is at this point, I can't expect Andrew to match that, despite how fast he works. There are also overall benefits to detailing with polygons, namely subdivision history, and more stable, non-destructive posing - something I really try to avoid in 3dc except during blockouts. This will probably be less of an issue as andrew focuses more on improving the surface tools and there becomes less of a need to go back and forth.

I do still go back and forth a lot from surface to voxels, but never at the detail levels some of you are doing... wait time for me is typically a few seconds at the resolutions I sculpt at in 3dc. Anymore than that and I probably wouldn't bother with it.

The one area where I don't think anyone is going to compete with zbrush is performance though, unless developers find ways around the 3d accelerated rendering dependencies of their apps. The only answer to that in the short term is to use better hardware. I can still work on fairly detailed sculpts in zbrush even on my little modbook tablet pc. It only has an integrated graphics chipset and 256 megs of ram. But with 4 gigs of system ram, even a dual core 2.2 ghz machine can do well with zbrush. I actually enjoy working this way more than I do on a bigger, faster windows machine at work with a 21" cintiq.

As far as painting goes, I'm with you on that. 3dc is much more suitable for games work for me than zbrush too since zb doesn't really support image editing the way 3dc or ps do. I also have modo and I prefer 3dc over that for painting a lot of things (except transparencies =]).

Anyway, I ramble. =]

So, what is your normal practice, then? Voxel mid-detail > manual retopo that is optimized for ZB (evenly spaced quads) > ZBrush for detail > 3DC for 2nd trip to Retopo, for mesh that will be animated?
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So, what is your normal practice, then? Voxel mid-detail > manual retopo that is optimized for ZB (evenly spaced quads) > ZBrush for detail > 3DC for 2nd trip to Retopo, for mesh that will be animated?

I generally don't do a second retopo. Usually the first is good enough to make a few tweaks and use for final. Recently using GoZ with modo has made this a pretty easy process. Only if I used quadrangulate for the original mesh would I consider doing a full retopo, but then that's still only doing one round of retopo, technically. =]

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I generally don't do a second retopo. Usually the first is good enough to make a few tweaks and use for final. Recently using GoZ with modo has made this a pretty easy process. Only if I used quadrangulate for the original mesh would I consider doing a full retopo, but then that's still only doing one round of retopo, technically. =]

Got it...thanks. I've seen a few tutorials where the artist did full retopo work after coming out of ZB. That's modeling twice, essentially, and seems like it's taking the long way around the block. I'm curious to see where Andrew goes with sculpting, after he finishes Ptex. Surface tools in the Sculpt room would allow him to create some brushes that are hard to do in Voxels, such as the Inflate brush (one of the Weta artists recently requested it and Andrew said it wasn't easy to do in Voxels...I guess without any true normals, it would be).
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"Surface tools in the Sculpt room would allow him to create some brushes that are hard to do in Voxels, such as the Inflate brush (one of the Weta artists recently requested it and Andrew said it wasn't easy to do in Voxels...I guess without any true normals, it would be). "

Not only weta artists, me too. But voxels is the 'true' sculpt environment, not surface. Its hard to do it without true normals. But this is what I use: A combination of negative fill tools (ctrl) with scrape tool. A new custom tool could be fine, just a thought.

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This thread is a bit old, but I wanted to echo the sentiments that voxels are simply not meant for fine detail, at least not in 3d coat's current implementation. The surface stuff helps, and the sculpting room is definitely oddly equipped (or under equipped). I would also echo that I find it odd to paint normal maps, I would prefer to have a real geo base so I have the flexibility to do what I wish with it, and not get locked into my UVs once I decide to paint normal map detail.

Interestingly, mudbox 2011 handles twice the polys that zbrush does on my machine, but that may have to do with the fact that zbrush seems almost independent of the graphics card. Once I hit 4mil+ on zbrush, I get constant crashes. But I can go 8mil+ in mudbox and after a few hiccups it smooths itself out and paints like a dream. Also the vector displacement stuff is super cool, esp. with the new plugin to render it in mental ray.

My wish for 3dcoat is that it gets stress beta tested before version 4. After being in games for 10 years, I've come to realize one of the more valuable (And unfortunately underpaid) team members are QA testers. 3DCoat behaves like it has one key beta tester (Andrew), I keep finding random and frustrating bugs that clearly derive from lack of iterative testing on various workflows. Even things like how I find the brushes either too responsive, not responsive enough or too slow. Odd things like painting along curves is insanely slow compared to using the same brush/size/etc and doing it manually. Zbrush and mudbox kill 3dcoat for sculpting mainly because you can tell they've polished the workflow and brush behaviour. I admit I get frustrated when I see the new features coming in, and the backlog of bugs grows. I don't show 3dcoat to other artists anymore because it doesn't sell itself, no matter how well I understand and can demonstrate the workflow - I get funny looks and mutters of 'Guess I'll stick to zbrush' or 'Let me know when they iron out that weirdness'.

Voxels to me is still the dream medium, but oddly similar to the case of when voxels were implemented in games a decade ago, it seems hardware still hasn't caught up.

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Why is it odd to paint normal maps? It should be higher quality than baking. It's like watching an original VHS tape vs. a duplicate of one. Plus you have the added benefit of painting color and spec in the same stroke so you don't have to worry about trying to match them up later.

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Why is it odd to paint normal maps? It should be higher quality than baking. It's like watching an original VHS tape vs. a duplicate of one. Plus you have the added benefit of painting color and spec in the same stroke so you don't have to worry about trying to match them up later.

Haha, I think you've got some good points! Might just be a case of old dog/new tricks. Maybe part of it is to develop a mindset that the normal painting is strictly for finer detail.

How do you find combining a baked normal map (for the more broad shape differences) and a painted map (for details)? Assuming this is how you approach it...

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Seems to work fine here. You can keep them on separate layers even so you don't accidentally mess up the baked one.it's not even somethign I think about or need to really plan for , I just do as much detail as I can in voxels, then move on. Sometimes that's all of the detail.

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