Mudbox 2011

[oglu]

yea this is a huge update... and those vector dispmaps are really a great feature...
you can do more with it as you may expect...

[musashidan]

I have to say I'm surprised. I wasn't expecting as many new features as this. It'll be interesting to see if the new .FBX plugs actually work flawlessly between Mud/Max. And if all the annoying Mud/Max UV bugs have been sorted.
Looks like AD might actually finally be putting some serious effort into closing the gap between Mud and the other sculpting apps.

[musashidan]

yea this is a huge update... and those vector dispmaps are really a great feature...
you can do more with it as you may expect...

Yes, the vector maps do look like an excellent feature. I wonder if the release of the SDK last year was what enabled such a leap in new features this time around? And may be a huge factor in many new features being added by 3rd parties also.

[oglu]

let me show the new vector displacement in action...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPezIU0c4zc

[kojala]

wow.. that vector displacement rocks

[musashidan]

I'd still like to see some features like cavity masking and replace that ridiculous 'imprint brush with something more akin to DragRect.

[oglu]

I'd still like to see some features like cavity masking and replace that ridiculous 'imprint brush with something more akin to DragRect.

help --> suggest a feature

[musashidan]

help --> suggest a feature

C'mon Christoph, it's not as if Mud devs need somebody to suggest such obvious features as these. Mud's been around long enough to already have them. Last time around we got the 'drybrush' tool. How hard would it have been to have a cavity mask 'on/off' button?

[oglu]

this is the only way to vote an feature up on the list...
all those feature requests are tracked an on their list...
same with bugs... if noone reports the bug its at the end of the todo list...

[soulburn3d]

A bit more on Vector Displacement maps, here's an image I did while on the beta...

http://www.neilblevins.com/artgallery/media/spore_3.jpg

I started by making this geometric shape in mudbox into a brush...

http://www.neilblevins.com/artgallery/media/spore_3_bubble_geom.jpg

And here’s the resulting vdm brush

http://www.neilblevins.com/artgallery/media/spore_3_bubble_stamp.jpg

I then started with a fresh sphere, and stamped this vdm all over it. I then used the "Fill" brush to place the more noisy detail on the surface of the sphere without affecting the bubbles. That was using a custom stamp using the reaction diffusion KPT filter in photoshop.

Then exported the result to 3dsmax (The full highres mesh, since neither brazil nor mentalray in max have a good way to use VDM displacing yet). Added the microscope shader, which includes a small bump map, and rendered in Brazil, slight tweaking and compositing in photoshop.

VDMs are really cool.

- Neil

[mecos]

that's pretty cool.

...but am i the only one who doesn't like this dark semi-slick interfaces. the older mudbox interface was pretty ugly, but very easy to read.

[soulburn3d]

...but am i the only one who doesn't like this dark semi-slick interfaces. the older mudbox interface was pretty ugly, but very easy to read.

Just be happy they didn't get rid of the icon color like Adesk did with max :)

- Neil

[musashidan]

Very nice demo of the VDM feature Neil. What kind of polycount did you export straight to MAX? And do you use Max pro-optimise or Meshlab or....? I remember a while back Wayne Robson was working on some sort of Decimation Master plugin for Mud.
How would a renderer, in theory, read the map?

Regarding the pervading darkness: it seems to be some sort of grand scheme of Autodesk UI colour unification considering all the latest AD tech has it.

[mookiemu]

Wow! Looks great. Love the idea of a posing tool! Vector displacement looks great! Finally a reason to come back to Mudbox.

[soulburn3d]

Very nice demo of the VDM feature Neil. What kind of polycount did you export straight to MAX? And do you use Max pro-optimise or Meshlab or....? I remember a while back Wayne Robson was working on some sort of Decimation Master plugin for Mud.

It was about 4 million faces I believe. And no, I don't use a polygon reduction tool, I use my 16gigs of RAM :) God bless 64bit.

How would a renderer, in theory, read the map?

The map is just rgb data, with each channel representing a different part of the displacement data. So all you need are shaders that can sue the data and a renderer that will support displacing that way.

Regarding the pervading darkness: it seems to be some sort of grand scheme of Autodesk UI colour unification considering all the latest AD tech has it.

I'm fine with the interface going dark (although for those who aren't fine with it, I'm always pro giving the user the option), all I want to avoid is the colorless interface, since colors are vital to using an interface efficiently.

- Neil

[mookiemu]

Any idea on the official release date for mudbox 2011?

[oglu]

here an other great mudbox feature... uv tiles...
you can paint hundrets of textures seamless onto one object...
this is also working with layer and blendingmodes...
not new in 2011 but there are only a few people out there they know about...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro_Ruhu-SGs

[Roger Eberhart]

Can Mudbox 2011 paint properly on the UV mirror seam of flipped, overlapping UVs? It's pretty common in games to UV half your model, then mirror the second half to conserve UV space. Mudbox 2010 had problems painting along the mirror seam.

[oglu]

move the overlapping uvs to the second uv tile and paint with symmetry on...
and use for ingame the texture in the first uv tile...

[Roger Eberhart]

Can you see both halves while you're working, or does the half that is on the other tile get that gold material (if I'm remembering correctly from the 2010 trial).

[oglu]

you can see both... and its working since mudbox 2009...

[Roger Eberhart]

Has the speed improved much on the Mac? I downloaded the demo of 2010 and even with a beefy Mac Pro (8 core, GTX 285, 8 gigs of RAM), it was really slow compared to ZBrush.

[plunq]

So I was just at GDC and the Mudbox demo artist at the Autodesk booth could not show me the posing tools for 2011. He told me that the posing tool needed a model that has already been skinned/bound in another package like Maya or Max. Is this the case? Do you seriously have to rig your character before you can pose it in Mudbox?

I hope the demo artist just did not know the new features... if not that's pretty lame.

Vector displacements look sweet!

[soulburn3d]

So I was just at GDC and the Mudbox demo artist at the Autodesk booth could not show me the posing tools for 2011. He told me that the posing tool needed a model that has already been skinned/bound in another package like Maya or Max. Is this the case? Do you seriously have to rig your character before you can pose it in Mudbox?

That is completely false. You can pose any mesh in mudbox, not just pre-skinned ones. No idea what he was talking about.

- Neil

[DuttyFoot]

here is the gdc2010 video

http://area.autodesk.com/gdc/ondemand7

[mookiemu]

here is the gdc2010 video

http://area.autodesk.com/gdc/ondemand7

wow! thanks for that! Pretty awesome!

[musashidan]

The possibilities of usage of the VDM's looks pretty cool but it's a shame Adesk couldn't incorporate their usage at rendertime in the 2011 releases of Max/Maya.
Also, the posing tools look nice but can you pose multi-objects akin to T-pose master, i wonder?

[Jam-I-am]

The possibilities of usage of the VDM's looks pretty cool but it's a shame Adesk couldn't incorporate their usage at rendertime in the 2011 releases of Max/Maya.
Also, the posing tools look nice but can you pose multi-objects akin to T-pose master, i wonder?


definetly, you can pose multiple objects, quite easily if i might add.

[Jam-I-am]

definetly, you can pose multiple objects, quite easily if i might add.

here is a video demonstrating multi-object posing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5jBw7Tj2T0&feature=player_embedded

[dj]

So i see theres a single click object&maps exchange with Maya now? has anyone tried this?
Is there a way to do this with Max?
I'm mostly interested if theres a "one click" way to transfer model with, few channels (bunch of layers each) from Max? and then when done painting "one click" again, and all the maps update back in Max?

cheers

[oglu]

yes this will also work with max...
and mudbox is saving the images if youn hit crtl+s and max will pick them up...

[marcotronic]

Does anybody know when the Mac demo for Mudbox 2011 will be available? The Win demo has been available since yesterday. I´m still waiting for the Mac thingy...

Thanks,
Marco

[industripop]

*EDIT*

Went here and had to re-fill out all of my info, but got the 2011 Mac demo.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/oc/offer/form?siteID=123112&id=12047753

[marcotronic]

*EDIT*

Went here and had to re-fill out all of my info, but got the 2011 Mac demo.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/oc/offer/form?siteID=123112&id=12047753

Thank you! :thumbsup:

Marco

[MrFunk]

does someone else have weird shadows when creating an antialiased turntable movie?

edit: turned out the shadow resolution was responsible for some weirdness in the movies. it works perfect with 1024x1024

[Clappy71]

yes this will also work with max...
and mudbox is saving the images if youn hit crtl+s and max will pick them up...


Can't seem to find the one click option for Max. How does that work?

[basselito]

When doing highres models to be tileable textures, zbrush has the "wrap" function. Does Mudbox have something similar?

[mustique]

Hi guyz, could you eloborate on your hardware/texture painting performance ratio?

8bit textures at 2048 res is fine for about 7-8 layers.
I'm getting stuck with 16 bit tiffs at 2K res with a total of 4 layers.
Much worse with 32bit textures of course.

> Quadcore intel cpu / 8 GB RAM / 256 MB Quadro FX570 / Win7 64bit

[oglu]

Hi guyz, could you eloborate on your hardware/texture painting performance ratio?

8bit textures at 2048 res is fine for about 7-8 layers.
I'm getting stuck with 16 bit tiffs at 2K res with a total of 4 layers.
Much worse with 32bit textures of course.

> Quadcore intel cpu / 8 GB RAM / 256 MB Quadro FX570 / Win7 64bit

your graphics card has to less memory...
mud needs min 512MB graphics ram cause mud loads all textures into the vram...

[oglu]

When doing highres models to be tileable textures, zbrush has the "wrap" function. Does Mudbox have something similar?

use the flatten to uv feature to paint the whole model...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkH5goz-RO4

[basselito]

use the flatten to uv feature to paint the whole model...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkH5goz-RO4
Thanks but I think you missunderstand my purpose. The mesh it self in mudbox is irrelevant. I'm creating a highres model to generate a tileable normalmap that will be tile mapped on any surface afterwards. You could come pretty far with the mirror mode to make sure each side is similar but it still won't do it fully.

Wrap mode in zbrush (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KagrIKRxq9A)

[oglu]

oh sry... i see...
there is no way to do that...

[Giantbean]

Makes me sad that I just bought 2010. now I don,t have the $ to upgrade and play with the posing toolset and other great features.

[mustique]

your graphics card has to less memory...
mud needs min 512MB graphics ram cause mud loads all textures into the vram...

OK thx.

And what kind of performance can I achieve with, say, a 1 -1.5 GB modern geforce/ati gaming card? How many "painting" layers - at which depth/resolution should I expect?

[oglu]

ive tested it here with my 512mb card...
18x 4k 16bit layer and the vram usage is not more than 300MB...

there is a lag every time i create a new layer but the painting speed is always the same...
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/2255/layertest.jpg

[mustique]

Nicht schlecht!
I assume a new fat VGA must be cool then with lots of 32 bit 4K paint layers.

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