CGTalk - Mudbox to EIAS

Ideas

05-11-2009, 01:23 PM

Started playing around with Mudbox 2009, and I have to say as one of those who found the Zbrush interface totally opaque, intimidating, confusing, not user friendly etc. I was surprised and pleased with Mudbox. To me it is straight forward and relatively simple. But without having other Autodesk products on my machine - namely Maya - I cannot work out a way to get texture maps, normal maps, displacement maps out of Mudbox and into EI. This is a shame because despite lacking a lot of the more mature Zbrush tools it is a really good 3d paint tool (quite apart from its sculpting capabilities).
So, anyone got any hints, tips, workflow wrinkles?
Michael.

Ideas

05-11-2009, 01:34 PM

This is my first attempt at sculpting in Mudbox. Exported the .obj, converted in O2F and put a basic Mforge texture on it.

Gigayoda

05-11-2009, 01:38 PM

Ideas

05-11-2009, 02:06 PM

Hey Michael,

How long did it take to model that in mudbox? I've been eyeing that since the list of autodesk products that ported to the mac recently. Otherwise model seems to be taking pretty good shape. Keep us posted.

Took about a day. They have a set of base models that you can use to start off with, the head being one. So, started with that and as I went along experimented with some of the other tools and tricks that are in there, most of which didn't make it into this head.
The model in itself is pretty bland, but what interested me was getting into the Mudbox workflow (on the Mac) to see how easy or difficult it would be. I was impressed!
The attachment is a screenshot of the base head.

richardjoly

05-11-2009, 03:28 PM

This is my first attempt at sculpting in Mudbox. Exported the .obj, converted in O2F and put a basic Mforge texture on it.
Well Michael, that seems pretty straightforward... How is the mesh in EI? I hear the models could become poly heavy...? Watching the tutorials it looks like a very interesting tool (and fun to use)

Ideas

05-11-2009, 05:38 PM

Well Michael, that seems pretty straightforward... How is the mesh in EI? I hear the models could become poly heavy...? Watching the tutorials it looks like a very interesting tool (and fun to use)

Hi Richard, I hope you can get the details out of the screen shots. But essentially the model I posted was about half a million polys. I then subdivided once more because I wanted to try putting some hair in and the count quadrupled to over 2 million. So, no, it's not light on polys. Then again Animator had no problem rendering it out quite niftly. Also some Mforge settings can slow things down to a crawl sometimes.
The ideal would be to bring in the low poly and displace it with the high res displacement map, but right now I would be very happy to use the paint and texturing tools within Mudbox and be able to import them and use them on the high poly model.

MagicEgger

05-13-2009, 11:30 PM

Ola,

You can use a Low poly model with Encage (EIAS Subdivision plug-in), with a excelent Displacement map from Mudbox and the new Sea Level feature on EIAS 8.

Thanks

Tomas

Ideas

05-14-2009, 01:59 AM

Ola,

You can use a Low poly model with Encage (EIAS Subdivision plug-in), with a excelent Displacement map from Mudbox and the new Sea Level feature on EIAS 8.

Thanks

Tomas
Thanks Tomas, haven't got Encage - is that a must for the pipeline to work?
Michael.

AVTPro

05-14-2009, 09:22 AM

Hey Mike,

Nice looking model. Can you show the mesh wire. I'm curious of sudvdision density.

I haven't Mudbox much, I'm using ZB, but they seem very similiar to me.

MagicEgger

05-14-2009, 10:40 AM

Ola,

Take a look:

http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/products/encage

and some samples:

http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/display/category/C16/

Thanks

Tomas

Ideas

05-14-2009, 12:36 PM

Hey Mike,

Nice looking model. Can you show the mesh wire. I'm curious of sudvdision density.

I haven't Mudbox much, I'm using ZB, but they seem very similiar to me.

Hi Alonzo, this is the lowest subD level. The highest is very hard to see because it's so dense. If you want I can post it.

AVTPro

05-14-2009, 10:30 PM

Thanks Mike.

That's a decent resolution for EI, I was wondering what was your render resolution.

Yes, I would like to see. Maybe you can make the draw colors clearer in the preference?

Hope you don't mind if I post a displacement/color test here?

Oh and where's the character I rigged for you GRRRRRRRR!!! :)

AVTPro

05-14-2009, 10:41 PM

I used encage with this.

Thanks Tomas. I am happy to see Encage is directly downloadable to users. I use the sealevel, it's easier and better for displacement. No more cutting up PSD files.

[http://i370.photobucket.com/albums/oo147/Jabez_03/disp.jpg

Ideas

05-15-2009, 01:20 AM

richardjoly

05-15-2009, 03:52 AM

Whoa! That's a bloody tight mesh, is it adjustable in any way like denser only in the areas that needs it? I can't believe uniform extra tight density is the only output available... Can't this lead to wrong "behavior" when rigged and animated?

AVTPro

05-15-2009, 04:35 AM

Very nice smoothing. I thought it was in EIAS? it should be huge right. Just Like ZB.

Anyway, Having Mudbox on Mac should be awesome for everyone, knowing a lot of people didn't quite take to the ZB interface, I hope Mudbox does the trick for them.

keep up the great work. It's inspiring.

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