The return of Mudbox?

[MauricioPC]

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/mudbox-f ... -p/7424482

http://www.cgchannel.com/2017/10/autode ... in-mudbox/

Now, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t Jill Ramsay that nice lady that answered a ton of questions from us back when Softimage demise was happening and was super helpful?

If it’s her, than I’m prone to believe in it. That would be cool because I prefer Mudbox to ZB. And I also believe Maya couldn’t handle Mudbox tools in it.

[Rork]

I wouldn't believe AD on their pretty blue eyes yet......

MB was, and still is a nice alternative for sculpting to ZBrush or 3DCoat. The layer based approach in MB draw me in when first introduced to it.
But I haven't touched it in years, and for the 3D painting part there are other more capable apps out there nowadays.

Some of the MB sculpting tools ended up in Maya, and for the most part will suffice for most users. The ones who are into heavy sculpting/modeling are not using MB anyway.
It's just AD's way of trying to keep everybody under the rental umbrella for all 3D related applications.

After all the stagnant development, I was pretty sure that it was going to follow apps like Matchmover, ImageModeler etc.

rob

[Bullit]

I don't think she is that lady Mauricio. She had another name that i don't remember right now.

[FXDude]

Would be funny if such an announcement was for another software we know.

[Hirazi Blue]

I don't think she is that lady Mauricio. She had another name that i don't remember right now.

I think Mauricio is correct. Jill Ramsay was active (and very helpful) on this site for a while... ;)

[Maximus]

honestly there is nothing that is better and easier to use than mudbox for painting. The ease of use and the photoshop layer system for painting is unmatched.
All the other softwares are way more complicated for such task that should be very intuitive and fast. As far as painting goes, Mudbox is #1 for me.

For 3d sculpting is a disgrace tho, performance wise is a choking machine, always buggy with slow refresh, when you have a dense mesh (not even that much at 4 mil poly) and you try to fine tune or detail something, the viewport becomes unresponsive, activating wireframe makes the model go wild, and i have 2x 1080.
i couldnt have a slowdown on zbrush with a 40mil poly model on my i7 990x old machine. The technology behind mudbox is just bad. They gonna have a lot to catch up with zbrush, uvs, app interchange, map exports, is simply inferior to zbrush. Sculpting in general, mesh handling, tools, on top of tutorials support material and all that.

BUT it is extremely cheap so, it'll do the trick

[MauricioPC]

Yeah, I'm not a lover of the rental system (as my avatar shows), but $80/year is pretty cheap for a software that's usable, good in some parts and still used in studios.

[Rork]

Just get 3DCoat, you'll be a happier person.... ;-)

[pezetko]

Looks similar to a return of the Silo modeller. I have seen a glint of development but I wouldn't build any pipeline on it. For $10 month/$80 per year, it's cheap for guys like me that need it rarely, probably even Mudbox 1.0 is still good enough for me. Any serious sculptors are on Zbrush anyway.

[McNistor]

But unlike Silo, Mudbox is owned by Autodesk which has the cash to make it a real solution (again)
I, for one, would love to see it around Zbrush feature wise and with a faster viewport - it's GPU based I think. Given that one can save a .obj file for your sculpt and raster images for the textures, I wouldn't even pay attention to the rent model should they keep it low enough to be worth it. Modeling/texturing apps suffer a lot less from format constraints, the main pliers rent-only companies use to hold you by the you know what.

I'm using Zbrush for a few yrs now and I still hate lots of its UI idiosyncrasies. The fact that the community is comprised by a large user-base that never used another 3d app before, or even a PC, for graphics, like lots of sculptors coming from traditional, clay and such, is not helpful either. You'll hear the old unsophisticated arguments, well known by now, like "it's the user that matters" or "nah, the UI is fine, you'll be fine once you learn it". Well, I've learned it and I still think it's stupid.

[Bellsey]

If this is true from Autodesk, then I have one thing to say - it's about time.
And it's good to see Jill back as well, she did alot with training and transitional stuff when the Soft EoL stuff was going on.

As for Mudbox itself, it's such a great software and honestly it's every but as good as zbrush and in many ways vastly superior. The thing that many overlooked was that it's proper 3D sculpting and painting. You're actually working directly on your model and you get proper feedback and preview. And because of that you need a meaty machine and video card. Zbrush isn't 3d like that and so it can run on a somewhat average machine, hence why there's always this comparison between the two on performance.

Mudbox's sculpting is easily a match for Zbrush, but the latter does have some very powerful brushes which kinda puts it in front, but Mudbox is more than capable. Painting in Mudbox is terrific, in zbrush its horrible. But outside these two core componants, Mudbox is superior in so many ways. If I was demoing Mudbox now, I could beat zbrush in many ways. It's interop between Maya and blendshapes, not to mention Photoshop is great; has Open Subdivs an you can even rebuild the subdivision levels from an obj; a great GATOR style transfer function where you could transfer layers between two objects of with different topology; texture map baking; and Ptex. Even the retopo feature is great and matches zmesher, it was actually released first but no one really noticed. Zmehser came out and everyone thought it was ground breaking.

I would demo this stuff all the time and it would really wow people, yet it was insanely hard (nigh on impossible) to convert a Zbrush user. The userbase was/is too large and too entrenched.
Zbrush is very good but I wouldn't say it's pushed things in terms of innovation, not in recent releases anyway. If AD are going to get Mudbox going again and go against zbrush, they have to take it up a notch. If they can get some of their tech from Meshmixer in there, then that would really be interesting

[wesserbro]

I dont know why but in mudbox (unlike zbrush) sculpting feels like you're working on substance with weight and density. If it had such a rich toolset as zbrush has - it would definitely be the app of my choice.
Its a shame huge wealthy company like autodesk would not leave several active developers on the project through all this years, even if not to compete with pixologic, but just to implement some interesting original features. Its not that digital sculpting is in its final stage with zbrush and there is no room for improvement, right?

[McNistor]

@Bellsey
I haven't played with Mudbox in ages. Like 5 yrs if not more. Probably more. Even then, I remember how the graphics card was essential. I'll look to see if there's still a trial version to see what's changed.
I agree with whatever pluses you've mentioned here, but Zbrush does have lots of features Mudbox doesn't and it's not just some specialized brushes - there's Dynamesh which is great for rough concept brainstorming, there's Zremesher which is not a final solution, but it gets you a step closer by enabling you to sculpt on a subdivision multi levels geometry. And then there's the noise maker, fibermesh, nanomesh, shadowbox, liveboolean, all of which are kinda tier 2 on the importance scale (in my view), but they do add up and unless Mudbox has changed in all these yrs I've ignored it, regarding sculpting and geometry creation it's not even a contest between these two s/w.

I'm afraid Mudbox's better than Zbrush's painting system is not going to matter a lot in the decision making of lots of potential adopters, painting took off with Substance painter and Mari.
Mudbox needs a massive new feature infusion in order to capitalize on the advantages it already has over these, of which are not that many IMO, but substantive, the main reason I'd like to see it come out the limbo it's been into.

[kissb]

I still use mudbox a LOT more than zbrush. basically zbrush for concepts, mudbox for everything else, even simple texturing stuff ( mari for not so simple stuff ).
I'd rather see a timeline with alembic support and better tools for blendshapes before dynamesh though. I fear they will move away from their original target customers ( vfx ) to satisfy game artists. what a shame I mean they have substance already, why implementing a subset of their features, when substance has been built from the beginning around procedural pbr texturing. they'll lag behind forever. just buy them instead and make 'em sink

[Bellsey]

My point was though, that the likes of Zbrush and Mari may have kicked on, and Substance Painter has emerged but certainly no more than 5 years Mudbox was easily up there and could stand toe-to-toe.
Mudbox's problem wasn't features, it was getting people to look at it and give it go. Mudbox was always an augmented solution, something that would work alongside a core 3d software like Maya. Zbrush was rich and could simply be used as standalone. And when you're going against a massive userbase tide of something like zbrush, that is very hard, no matter how good a features you have. (there's alot of parallels with Softimage with ICE here)

If they can get Mudbox going again, it would be great, but is it too little too late?

[Rork]

Is it too late? Yes, I think so.

As you say, ZBrush has become the 'standard' of 3D sketching/modeling/prototyping/<insert stuff>, and everything else will be measured against it.
Even 3DCoat, which is very much up to spec imho, has a small userbase compared to ZBrush.

For Autodesk to revive MB, they -really- have to come up with some spectacular releases. But looking at Maya and 3DSMax, I will not hold my breath ;-)

AD is great in buying progressive tech, but than let it collect dust, until they kill it.
Mudbox will go the same way as XSI, a lot of superior workflow and ideas, but in the end neglected by AD and having dwindling sales and/or usage. AD's graveyard is riddled with tombstones of great applications.