Autodesk Mudbox 2009 Review
 Autodesk Mudbox 2009 By Mike de la Flor |
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Autodesk delivers with a much improved Mudbox 2009. The PC version hit the shelves in October of 2008 and the Mac version is slated to start shipping in March 2009. Mudbox 2009 delivers a host of new sculpting tools, a 3D Paint system, and much improved performance. Old favourites like Bulge, Flatten, and Pinch are still there but have been improved, and new sculpt tools like Wax, Scrape, Foamy, Fill and many others have been added. Though the new tools have a slightly different feel than the in Mudbox 1, the adjustment period is brief. In general the sculpting tools are easy to use, intuitive, powerful, and can reproduce just about any real-world sculpting technique. Autodesk has retooled Mudbox 2009 to better manage meshes composed of tens of millions of polygons making it possible to sculpt finely detailed sculptures in real-time. While subdividing models into millions of polygons was easy on a standard computer, to achieve real-time sculpting with tens of millions of polygons a very powerful computer, loaded with RAM and monster video card are required. |
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 The new Mudbox sculp tools can sculpt tens of millions of polygons in real time. | |
Debuting in Mudbox 2009 is a professional-level 3D paint system. The new paint system allows multiple textures types to be painted right on the model in real-time regardless of UV distortion. However, it is advisable to always properly UV map models before bringing them into Mudbox. Mudbox’s paint system features standard brushes like Paint, Airbrush, Paint Erase, and Pencil, but is missing some common brushes like smudge and blur. Regardless of the missing brushes the new paint system makes it easy to create very complex, rich textures. |
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 Mudbox debuts a new professional 3D paint system that makes easy to create complex textures right on the model. | |
The new Viewport Filters simulate various render environments inside Mudbox to preview the model as it would appear in specific lighting conditions like game engines or to create pre-viz presentations. Mudbox 2009 is much improved over previous versions and is definitely worth the upgrade price. Autodesk has delivered on its promises of new tools and improved performance all the while keeping the artist-friendly interface that make Mudbox popular with CG artists. Mudbox 2009 makes it easy to sculpt finely detailed models, create rich texture in real-time and export the data to animation suites like Maya vie multi-threaded displacement map extraction. More than anything else Mudbox is simply fun to use. Price: $750 Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars Manufacturer: Autodesk, www.autodesk.com Pros
Cons
Minimum System Requirements Windows
Hardware
64-bit version of Mudbox 2009
Apple
Hardware
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