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Autodesk Mudbox 2009
CGSociety lets a number of celebrated artists loose on Autodesk's Mudbox 2009. Now also available on OS X, Mudbox 2009 has surprised and impressed.

Mudbox 2009, the second generation of Mudbox is an amazingly easy to use digital sculpting tool that takes away all the technical aspects of working in 3D and lets your imagination and creativity flow. This may sound corny, but it really is that easy to use, and impressively fast.
The latest version added several new sculpting brushes, along with an entirely new, and much anticipated painting system.

Autodesk seems to have focused on making Mudbox easy to learn.
The new app takes advantage of some of the latest graphics cards out there, being able to run with realtime reflections, ambient occlusion and Depth of Field.

Navigating a scene, camera and objects is practically the same as other apps, but also quite intuitive, making it very easy to dive in and start sculpting. Just in case, there are several how-to tutorial movies that pop up the first time you use Mudbox, that pretty much cover everything you need to know. They've even included a bunch of base models to get you started, from a head, to a cube, to a tree stump. This new version also allows you to have several meshes in one scene, so you can work on multiple objects all within the same scene.




SPEED
This new version of Mudbox is amazingly fast. I was able to smooth my models over the 32-million polygon range, and except for the time it took to do the conversion, there was no perceived slow down. Once smoothed, sculpting and painting are just as fast as they are on a 6,000 face polygon model. They've also sped up displacement and normal map generations considerably, taking advantage of multithreading. Having said that, Autodesk also quickened up the display of Mudbox itself. Camera movement is much faster, and displays now include realtime shadows, reflection mapping, ambient occlusion mapping and depth of field. You can actually work on your model with all of this turned on and hardly notice a dip in performance.

SCULPTING
New in 2009 are the wax, scrape, and foamy brushes. Unlike the regular sculpt brush, these three brushes build on themselves, so if you cross over them, rather than cutting through, they will add to the stroke you are drawing. They basically add or take away material, rather than push it around, making it feel more like a real clay material. Similar to those brushes is the fill brush, which fills in material into holes and scrapes. They've added an imprint brush, which acts like pressing a textured surface into your model. Again this is a very tactile feeling tool and makes it feel like real clay. To use it you simply pick a stamp texture to use, and drag it out over your surface.

A demo for the Mac version of Mudbox 2009 has in the last couple of weeks, finally been released. However, I have been sent Mudbox 2009 for the PC.

Similar to the imprint brush is the new spray brush. This brush works with a stamp texture as well, but acts more like a mask in front of the brush and its scale position are based on your brush stroke.

Another new addition is the repeat brush that uses a stamp to repeat along the stroke. The image can be aligned to the stroke or left to its global orientation. Added to all the sculpting tools is a an option called steady stroke. Steady stroke delays and smoothes your pen strokes, creating cleaner lines. I left this on most of the time, as I'm still getting used to a tablet.

They've also added a heads up display to the mirror option, making it much easier to tell what axis you are mirroring on. Actually there are heads up displays for all the tools, making it very easy to learn.

Harsh Borah
Local artist Harsh Borah gives his impressions of the new Mudbox 2009 software. "Real-time painting alphas and projecting textures onto a 3D surface are some of the most important updates I've been waiting for. With all these extra options available, there is no need to even go into external software. You can sculpt, detail, texture and shade your models right into Mudbox 2009."

Mudbox has me super excited about working in 3D as a development and creation tool. It's going to take me a while to find my 'voice' but I'm going to have a lot of fun learning. It is one of the first 3D applications I have used, where creating in 3D no longer feels like you are working on a computer. I highly recommend testing the trial version from the Autodesk web site.

Along with the internal tutorials, the help pages, there are a multitude of Mudbox 'experts' sharing their techniques online. Don't forget the CGTalk forums as well, for an independent analysis, direct from the community. You will be sculpting away in no time. Seriously, you just have to try it.

Reviewer
Stephen Mann is the Lead Character TD for Charlex|3D in New York. He's worked on several films, ride films, and many commercials, including 'X-men', 'The One', and 'Robots'. He has also taught animation for the last ten years at the New York School of Visual Arts. His latest work can be seen in spots for Verizon, Subway, Dunkin Donuts, and Dodge.

Source : http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=5021&referer=newsletter