Mudbox 2012 review

Rebuild Subdivision Levels

The new Rebuild Subdivision Levels tool adds a feature similar to ZBrush’s Reconstruct Subdiv, allowing users to recreate lower subdivision levels for imported high resolution subdivision surface objects. Rebuild Subdivision Levels works fast and manages to do pretty much the same as ZBrush’s equivalent tool, though sometimes there are problems with polygons on the symmetry axis: Rebuild Subdivision Levels can create a non-mirrored structure on the center line. On a side note, it would be nice to see Autodesk add support for exporting files with a ZBrush-compatible point order, so that you could swap work between the two software easily.

Region, Lasso selections and Freeze

New region and lasso modes make selection, freezing, masking and weighting of complex shapes a lot faster

Region and Lasso selection modes have been added. This makes it much easier to use selections and masking during the sculpting process. It used to take a lot of time to paint the Freeze, Mask and Selections in Mudbox 2011 and earlier versions.

Freeze can now be performed using either a sculpted surface layer or painted details. In the first case Freeze will be performed using relative displacement of vertices, in the later case it will be done according to the luminance of the paint layer.

Multiple joints and pose presets

Mudbox used to be seriously lacking in posing tools functionality, as there was none before Mudbox 2011. That version fixed the issue a bit by adding single joint deformation and the ability to import pre-made skeletons. Now it’s possible to create multiple joints instead of just one joint, with support for symmetrical joint pair creation. You can also now add joints to imported skeletons.

So, in theory, you can now construct a whole skeleton inside Mudbox, but it’s not that straightforward. Getting the hierarchy correct is sometimes tricky, so you may prefer to import skeletons via FBX from 3ds Max and other Autodesk software.

A pose presets feature has also been added, this lets you store different poses and then use them later. Posing is based on weights and is non-destructive. This makes it easy to test your object in the required key poses and also to sculpt hard to reach areas. Sculpting can also be performed while an object is being posed and changes are carried to the other poses correctly.

One thing that could have been automated is the storage of the initial base pose, so that you can return to when needed. Currently you have to this manually.

In any case, the posing improvements are a welcome and great addition. The existing usability issues, however, make the posing work somewhat cumbersome and it’s not really a favorite task to perform in Mudbox 2012.

Interface improvements in 2012

Since its early Skymatter days, Mudbox development has focused on usability and ease of use, and Autodesk has stayed true this path.

More recently, Mudbox has been released as part of the Maya Entertainment Creation Suite, and during the last few versions a Maya-style visual appearance and menu functionality has been implemented in the software (probably with the intention to simplify this connection).

The space bar can be used to quickly access all main menu items from anywhere in Mudbox interface

Mudbox 2012 UI improvements aren’t huge, but some streamlining has been done. When you press the space bar, a "hot box" menu pops up, which allows you to perform quick selection of all main items using icons.

The right button menu has been changed to a new marking menu system, similar to Maya’s. These context-sensitive menus offer easy access to various Mudbox tools with less cursor movement, which is especially useful if you use a tablet.

The Object List and Layers menus are still the same they were in 2010 and 2011, actually almost the same as in 1.x. You can’t sort, group select or perform any typical mass operations you would expect to be able to do utilizing this kind of list, which is somewhat disappointing and old fashioned.

Another issue that may be bugging some users is the lack of ability to properly save the workspace – if one would like to store open windows, panels and their positions, this is not currently possible. So you have to manually repeat the operations every time you boot up Mudbox 2012. This is especially irritating if you work on a project that requires to have many windows open, like having many ImagePlanes or Stencils property panels open for quick access to visibility. Also, when importing new models to the scene, some "Properties" panels you might have open get "disconnected" and you have to re-open them, which is very annoying.

In addition, some preferences don’t get stored properly, they reset every time you restart Mudbox. Camera sensitivity settings are one of such example.

Image planes seem to have quite a few issues – if you change Mudbox’s window aspect ratio, the ImagePlanes drift off their place. This is problematic if you’re working on a likeness or trying to accurately place details. Also, when you zoom the viewport in, the ImagePlane exhibits erroneous behavior, moving in a way that makes you quickly lose control over it and a restart of Mudbox is needed.

Another probably more irritating issue with ImagePlanes is the lack of ability to re-locate ImagePlane and Stencil files applied to cameras if you’ve moved them to another location on disk. In this case, placement and everything else is pretty much lost. When the scene is loaded after you have OK’ed all the warnings about missing files, you don’t have any filenames or other info left in the properties (unless you’ve happened to rename your camera to store the image name).

License and price issues

As CG work is a quite global business, it’s somewhat annoying, especially for freelancers and small companies, that Autodesk offers different pricing based on regions around the world.

The result is that Mudbox 2012 costs a lot more to purchase in Europe than in the USA, for example. The difference in price is actually quite big – at time of writing, a full license costs $601 (equals to 464€) when bought from Amazon.com and the cheapest price found from Amazon.co.uk is £829 (993€). The difference is over 520 euros between European and USA users. It is even more glaring if one would buy the license from a local reseller, a quick check showed that the prices start from 1000€ and go upwards. When compared to the pricing policies of ZBrush (Pixologic) and 3D-Coat (Pilgway), this feels somewhat harsh.