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Mudbox Drops to 10$ a Month

Just wondering if anyone has noticed that Mudbox is now 10$ a month ($495 outright purchase). For the price differential (about 40% cheaper outright, 6.6x cheaper if perpetual), maybe now it competes better with z-brush? I have used Mudbox a lot and preffer it to z-brush already, but I would be interested in what Z-Brush users think. For 120$ a year, I cant see how it wouldn't be a tempting offer.

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  • praetus
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    praetus interpolator
    If I didn't own anything I could see maybe using that, but since I own ZBrush I don't know if I'd use mudbox for free. While it is easy to use, it simply does not have the toolset I require for making making models for work. I love the dynamesh and retopo tools in ZBrush and it's nice to know I can make an entire character from primitives and stitch it together in one program.

    We used mudbox for a bit at work and I found it to be incredibly buggy. I was really happy when we moved on to ZBrush. Mudbox is great if you're taking a base mesh and creating something higher poly out of it as opposed to making something from scratch. Also they layers tended to work better for texturing in Mudbox from what I remember, but as a whole, I still think ZBrush is superior.
  • Mark Dygert
    Zbrush upgrades are still free for me, has been that way since I bought it for $299. That works out $2.50 per month.

    Mudbox doesn't even come close to the feature set in zbrush and the value just isn't there either. I bought Mudbox for $600, thinking I would switch over but never did. That $600 went up in smoke a few months later when I was faced with having to re-buy it. If I would have switched I would have been buying mudbox over and over again.

    Mudbox has some neat features, I like its ease of use and zbrush is a bitch to learn and work with, but mudbox just doesn't hold up.

    At this point I feel like I should re-buy zbrush or at least be charged for the next major upgrade, but do I feel the same way about Mudbox, hell no.
  • SaboR1996
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    SaboR1996 polycounter lvl 8
    I used mudbox once, it took me like an hour to create a nice rock.
    zbrush was about 20 minutes for a nice rock.
    I think I will stick
  • authentic
    I found mudbox to be an amazingly easy to use program and now do most all of my high to low poly baking in it and almost exclusively texture in Mudbox. I tried the same with z-brush but never could get the hang of its quirky interface., Admittedly that was many years ago now but as Im now fully capable with mudbox and use mostly autodesk products, the price change is a welcomed relief. Additionally MayaLT dropped its price too so im a happy camper right now =)

    I have a question, is z-brush still 2.5d? Mudbox uses traditional methods (normal/bump/displacements) as well as subdiv geo. The 2.5d thing really threw me for a loop. Never quite understood it. Mudbox was so approachable, day 1 i made cool stuff.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    Loved mudbox v1 years ago, but since the AD buyout its just not been on the same playing field with ZBrush when it came to sculpting features. Texture painting is nice, but there's multiple quality alternatives, all of which afaik offer free point upgrades.

    I think they lost a sizable chunk of their audience when they killed the original Mudbox forums, released mud2009 and then basically told their community to fuck off if they wanted a clone tool without getting the next major release.

    I don't see Mudbox being around much longer, AD just never cared enough to really push it in the directions it needed to go.
  • WarrenM
    Well, if they're offering it up for subscription, it would be weird to just kill it. I imagine they at least have intentions of moving it forward...
  • JordanN
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    JordanN interpolator
    How widely used is Mudbox in the game industry?

    I always wanted to learn it, but all the "behind the scenes" videos of game studios I've seen always shows someone using Zbrush so it kinda scared me off.

    Add that, you got comments here saying Zbrush is much more powerful to work with.
  • Super
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    Super polycounter lvl 18
    Horses for courses. If you want to export a high end model with ease Mudbox makes it a lot easier. It's also much better for texturing. But Zbrush is nicer to sculpt with, but I'm doubtful ZB5 will be free and as someone who only bought ZB 6 months ago that is going to suck.

    Basically on depends on ZB, while they introduce cooler features it also gets even more cumbersome to work with and convoluted with each iteration.

    Those saying Mudbox won't be around much longer are wrong. Mudbox is heavily used in VFX because of it's workflow.
  • unit187
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    unit187 polycounter lvl 9
    Nice try Autodesk, but nope. With Zbrush for scultpting and 3Dcoat for texturing, bugged Mudbox is not a tool I would want to deal with anytime soon.
  • WarrenM
    The only explanation I've ever heard is that the owner has very deep pockets. Doesn't explain what his master plan is but ... that's what I've heard.

    Maybe he's been trying to soak up users for the last decade, become the standard, and then make a killing on the 5.0 upgrade. Who knows?!
  • perfect_paradigm
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    perfect_paradigm polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks for sharing. $10 a month is very nice. I hope they do like Adobe and release frequent small updates for subscription plans.
  • Kraftwerk
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    Kraftwerk polycounter lvl 18
    Interesting but nope i am messing with the 3D Coat Trial right now and i am deeply pleased with how well this works, also way cheaper then Mudbox in the long term and clearly cheaper then ZBrush as well. Also i am not a fan of Autodesk buy everything ruin everything.
  • Mstankow
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    Mstankow polycounter lvl 11
    At this point Mudbox is so far behind that I wouldn't use it even if it were free.
  • RobeOmega
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    RobeOmega polycounter lvl 10
    Not going to lie I have never really liked Mudbox but its all I have until I can save up lots and buy a Z brush licence :)
  • perfect_paradigm
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    perfect_paradigm polycounter lvl 7
    @Kraftwerk

    Yeah I'm not a fan of Autodesk either. Instead of buying so many competitors and having redundant software that spreads R&D too thin, they should invest more in less products to keep up in the industry. They dropped Softimage for that purpose so maybe they're finally learning. Hopefully we see a higher rate of development for 2016 products. But really that may be too long for me to wait.
  • authentic
    @Mstankow : I have to refute this one. Nothing far behind about it. http://area.autodesk.com/th.gen/?6/7hfs0-c5q6q-7a7u9-bp4h2:982x982.jpg Nuff said.

    @perfect_paradigm : MayaLT is supposed to be following that method. More frequent smaller updates. If it proves popular who knows if they wont spread the philosophy. Looks to me like AD is making the changes people have been asking for. Not sure why so much hate for AD. I love their products. <3 3ds max <3 MayaLT <3 Mudbox and super excited about the bitSquid Acquisition.

    @Kraftwerk : Ive heard of that, glad to hear its a decent app. I may check that out... Anything it is especially good at?
  • Carlosan
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    Carlosan polycounter lvl 10
    tkx but nope

    I bought 3DC and upgrades are free

    Mudbox can be the next Softimage fiasco... sad.
  • Pancakes
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    Pancakes polycounter lvl 10
    For me it's another classic case of corporate philosophy, of which Zbrush is just so much farther ahead. You can't fake that as a company. Pixologic is a lot like Valve in that they just "get" what they are supposed to be. Autodesk torn by internal confusion about whether they are supposed to please their investors OR their customers.

    But that in itself is the wrong question to be debating in the first place.
  • Kraftwerk
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    Kraftwerk polycounter lvl 18
    perfect_paradigm As unlike as Easter and Christmas at the same time, they learned nothing see the game engine thread they just buy stuff to either ruin competition, try make half assed competition and fail it it because they put zero effort in it. As a Maya user i can tell since Alias got bought -_- it evolved not as much as could the modelling tools where left pretty much unchanged and the first time Autodesk bothered was with 2014 and that was bugged mostly until 2015 ohhhhhhh yeah... so no i stick with Maya but surely avoid Autodesk as much as i can.

    authentic Well i didn't dig to much into it yet because so far i never really seriously sculpted but if you need a good alternate to ZBrush i guess that would be it. The sculpting is a lot fun so far and the UI not as weird as ZBrush when i messed with the trial, also love the 3D painting way faster then with C4Ds Bodypaint. Retopology is also very easy to get into from what i tried so far. Just avoid "About 3D Coat" you will facepalm bigtime.
  • mzprox
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    mzprox polycounter lvl 5
    Speaking of Zbrush.. almost a year without any update.. I'm checking their website almost everyday for Zbrush 5 :). It's a very powerfull program, but has rooms for improvement.
  • praetus
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    praetus interpolator
    authentic wrote: »
    @Mstankow : I have to refute this one. Nothing far behind about it. http://area.autodesk.com/th.gen/?6/7hfs0-c5q6q-7a7u9-bp4h2:982x982.jpg Nuff said.

    Just because a program can make good art, doesn't mean that the features are not left behind in comparison to other programs. Mudbox has it's own features which are good and no one should be saying you can't make quality art, but in comparison to ZBrush's feature list it is very far behind. Not to mention Pixologic has a history of updating their product for free whereas Autodesk has a reputation for overcharging for every update and still leaving in major bugs.

    The subscription price will be fine for people who haven't used a sculpting program before or just can't afford the entry point of ZBrush. I can't fault AD for that, they're making good effort to get their product into more people's hands. If you're going to compare features however, ZBrush blows mudbox out of the water, hands down. It's not even a competition, in my opinion.
  • Bellsey
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    Bellsey polycounter lvl 8
    Zbrush (and others) are fine packages with many fine qualities. They do their thing and Mudbox does its thing.
    I'm not going to get into a feature war between Mudbox and Zbrush, because like for like comparisons often end up providing an unreflective and an unbalanced view. Mudbox may not have some of the exact and precise features listed that Zbrush and the like have, but it might have similar ones that deliver the same result. You don't have to go very far to fine some excellent work produced with Mudbox that easily matches and that of other packages, that proves that Mudbox is actually, more than capable.
    So, then it often comes down to how the package is used, and who uses it.
  • perfect_paradigm
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    perfect_paradigm polycounter lvl 7
    @authentic I love Maya and I think I'll love Mudbox when I try it. From modeler's perspective, I love Maya's context marking menus, decent customizability, scripting, and that it has more features in less tools, requiring less marking menu items and hotkeys.

    They made many improvements for Maya 2015, but still I'm disappointed that they missed so many obvious "small" things.

    I can list more specific issues later, but I really hate the new bright neon move, scale & rotate manipulators. It's very uncomfortable on my eyes so I can't use 2015. The yellow and green is so intense it has an aura, at least on my monitor. It's very distracting too. Is it only in LT version?
  • Mark Dygert
    authentic wrote: »
    @Mstankow : I have to refute this one. Nothing far behind about it. http://area.autodesk.com/th.gen/?6/7hfs0-c5q6q-7a7u9-bp4h2:982x982.jpg Nuff said.
    For me personally I like mudbox it works like I expect a 3D app to work, I still struggle with zbrush and wonder why the hell they do simple things so bass-aackwards. But here are some issues I have with Mudbox.

    1) Mudbox doesn't have a Dynamesh equivalent.
    At least not that I've found. If it's there they don't make it easy to find, which goes against their user friendly UI principles. It has "decent-ish" retopo tools, similar to remesh, but it doesn't have an easy way to stretch polys far off of a surface then quickly redistribute density. You can't loop that extrusion back to the surface and have it merge and redistribute.
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzCBQoD55y8&quot;]ZBrush 4R2 Tip # 1: DynaMesh / Remesh - YouTube[/ame]

    This is great for stuff like:

    Tattered cloth
    CosmicFig_WarHorse2.jpg

    Long hair with volume
    1837_tid_image_10_result.jpg

    Tendrils and tentacles
    p_i__3_by_marknewman-d56g51o.jpg

    2) So for example...
    ...if you're doing a venom type character with lots of crazy globby stringy bits floating off, in Zbrush you can pull out those shapes from the surface (using snakehook) and it makes big ugly unusable polys but only for a second, in Mudbox this is where you kind of stop and scratch your head. But in Zbrush you run dynamesh and now they are just as dense as the rest of your mesh and you keep going. You can then loop that shape back so it penetrates the original mesh or connects to another glob, then Dynamesh will connect them and even out the polygon distribution. You can keep doing that as wild and crazily as you want. Dynamesh can also combine a few different objects (sub-tools) into one which allows you to make some really cool and amazing shapes.

    I haven't really found a way to do that kind of stuff in Mudbox, it has auto-retop which is kind of on par with 3DCoat or Wrap-it but doesn't work across separate objects and can fudge up the edge flow unless you spend time painting guides? It just doesn't seem as free wheeling and creative.

    3) Mudbox seems to stick to the old workflow?
    Create a basemesh in another app, that is pretty much fleshed out(hopefully you don't plan to deviate from that original plan that much). Sub-divide and sculpt micro details. Send it back to the app it came from and bake? Maybe they've improved it since I last looked at it? But the baking tools where horrible.

    4) Then there is the price point problem...
    That I talked about earlier. Plus it's been all over the place since autodesk took it on. It's been a few hundred bucks all the way up to $3k and now they are trying something new. It makes me wonder is their software as wildly unstable as their price? Do they have a plan, if so what is it? Can I count on this software being around? IF so how many times am I going to have to rebuy it?

    Then they squashed the fledgling community...
    Like others have talked about they didn't really give them any kind of space to collaborate and encourage each-other. Those are the spaces where people push new ideas and new features. ZBC has been a HUGE part of driving Zbrush's success and getting people the knowlege they need to use it effectively. Pixologic understood artists and their deep need for constant approval and affirmation.

    Autodesk seems to do the programery BS they always pull...
    "BEEP-BOOP-BOP, AUTOCAD-IS-GREAT, BUY-OUR-OFTWARZ, WE-JUST-RELEASED-THE SAME-VERSION-AT-DOUBLE-THE-PRICE!"
    Don't get me wrong I like that Mudbox doesn't have wonky perspective, I like that I can work with standard navigation controls, I like that it's traditional 3D not some 2.5D voxel-ish weirdness. I like that it has P-Tex and doesn't need a really dense mesh in order to paint on it. I like that it has an amazing viewport but when it comes to sculpting it really isn't "like digital clay". Pixologic has worked hard over the years to make their app pretty much just that, digital sculpting.

    With all of the community and marketing douchbaggery, it's like Autodesk was trying their best to shake off as many users as possible?

    Zbrush hasn't done anything that ugly or boneheaded to their community. That kind of customer loyalty is hard to come by and Pixologic knows it and deeply appreacates it, its one of the core reasons why people forgive Zbrush's flaws.
  • Fomori
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    Fomori polycounter lvl 12
    Great write up Mark :thumbup:
  • authentic
    The yellow and green is so intense it has an aura, at least on my monitor. It's very distracting too. Is it only in LT version?

    For me on my monitor it is a nice bright green (y), red (x) and yellow (z), but not by any means neon. Maybe your monitor is set too bright or is not color corrected.

    None the less, in Maya and MayaLT you have 100% control over basically every UI element. Under Window > Preferences > General > Manipulators : you will find size adjustments for manipulators. Under Wondow > Preferences > Color > Inactive > Modeling you will find the manipulators color adjustment. Make em whatever size and color you like. Check out the below link for a screenshot.

    kindesigns.com/UI.PNG
  • MM
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    MM polycounter lvl 17
    authentic wrote: »
    @Mstankow : I have to refute this one. Nothing far behind about it. http://area.autodesk.com/th.gen/?6/7hfs0-c5q6q-7a7u9-bp4h2:982x982.jpg Nuff said.

    it is funny that you posted that image. it was created with 4 different tools combined:

    "Modeling in Silo and Maya. Sculpting and textures done in Mudbox and rendered in Octane Render."

    http://www.cgfeedback.com/cgfeedback/showthread.php?t=5279

    however, if i wanted to do the exact same thing in zbrush, i could do 100% of it inside zbrush without ever leaving the tool for once. everything in that image could be created inside zbrush, textured and rendered.

    so if we compare the tools purely from sculpitng feature capability, Mudbox is far far behind.

    it didnt have to be that far behind and had lot of potential but i dont really know what happened. may be it has something to do with Autodesk not keeping all the original Skymatter devs on board.

    2015 release is 99% same as the 2014 extension 1 release.
    2014 release is 98% same as the 2013 release.
    and so on.

    so far the only significant release in mudbox seems to be around 2011-2013.

    anyways, it is good to see a price reduction.
    now if only you guys actually added some new sculpting features then more people would be interested. just for a moment, forget about p-tex, posing, dynamesh, meshmixing, retopology and all the other bells and whistles.
    please just focus on pure sculpting capability.

    many years ago when i was in mudbox beta, i posted several ideas(with detailed mock up images) which were purely about sculpting. there are so many ways sculpting is restrictive inside mudbox.

    just think of simple stuff. something as simple as drawing a straight line or an arc with a defined radius from a point is not possible. something as simple as tiling your brush stroke is not possible. brush customization is so far behind (look at Mari or Photoshop). have more options for altering the brush alpha dynamically. make it possible to combine alphas in one brush. add some advanced brush stroke tiling options.

    for such basic sculpting feature improvement, Autodesk shouldnt really depend on our feedback or put features up for vote somewhere. just add them. that's what development and progress means.

    i could go on and on but no one cares so why bother! that's why i left the beta program, no such feedback was being implemented or even considered.

    that being said, i still use Mudbox for majority of my sculpting work mainly because of the ease of use and level of accuracy in the viewport display. i dont really need all the other tools inside zbrush but that is just me. however, i doubt how long i can stay away from zbrush. may be zbrush 5 will be it the time to switch if they finally make zbrush 64bit.

    @ Authentic - are you affiliated with Autodesk in any way ? just wondering.
  • authentic
    @Mark Dygert
    Well, obviously the ending of Softimage has people frazzled and for good cause. It probably feels like a slap in the face to have a tool you have used for years to come to an end. That said however the same people complaining that AD killed Softimage are the same people complaining that AD has too fragmented a product line and that updates dont happen often or substantial enough. I feel people cant have everything both ways. I really likes SI but honestly, if Maya and Max get better and more frequent updates, I think in time we will be happier for it. Also, AD seems to be responding to Public Opinion and are doing the things that people asked for. Mudbox is now super affordable at 10$ a month, Maya LT just had a drastic price reduction as well. I personally approve of their efforts as it directly benefits me and those using their software by a great deal. They also have put MayaLT on steam. I think that proves their willingness to change their ways for the better.

    As for the feature failings of mudbox, I think you may want to check out 2015 features and updates. Maybe not all, but a bunch of the problems you mentioned have been fixed. There are now some good retopo tools built in though they are for the most part automated and offer only a few adjustments so it either works for you or does not. I am not a Pro Sculptor as I am really just an indy game artist and make mostly Low poly assets. I use modbox to add patinas, minor sculpting (scratches, dents, dings etc) and it has become my goto app for texturing everything I make. The paint tools are just great for me as are the sculpting tools.

    The old fashioned workflow still works great for me... Model in max, unwrap in MayaLT and Baking / texturing in mudbox. (I personally love the baking tools... easy fast and efficient).

    My biggest issue with Mudbox is simply that it is very difficult to have one mesh with both hard and soft edges. I hate having to add ring loops and the crease tool (though a step in the right direction) does not work as well as I expected and is rather cumbersome a process. I wish it just respected smoothing groups. Maybe in a future update.

    @MM Yes, I am loosely affiliated with them. I am friendly with a few of the devs and have done projects for them before including tutorials and the like. I'm not being paid to have this conversation though if that is what you mean. Just happen to be a big fan of Autodesk. Ive used Inventor for years (engineering software), Max is my lifeblood, MayaLT is my goto unwrapping program and backup modeling tool. Ive used and like their products from day one. I used to be a Lightwave guy and once I switched, my workload (so many more jobs) and work quality (the tools are just faster and easier to use) increased exponentially.
  • MM
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    MM polycounter lvl 17
    authentic wrote: »
    I am not a Pro Sculptor as I am really just an indy game artist and make mostly Low poly assets. I use modbox to add patinas, minor sculpting (scratches, dents, dings etc) and it has become my goto app for texturing everything I make. The paint tools are just great for me as are the sculpting tools.


    well then you are not really in a position to judge how far behind Mudbox really is if you are not doing any heavy duty sculpting all the time.

    if all you do is the basic sculpting and painting, then most of the time mudbox is not even needed. you can get away with crazybump, ndo, knald, or just photoshop.
  • Mark Dygert
    authentic wrote: »
    @Mark Dygert
    That said however the same people complaining that AD killed Softimage are the same people complaining that AD has too fragmented a product line and that updates dont happen often or substantial enough. I feel people cant have everything both ways.
    Autodesk did it to themselves, customers didn't ask them to run around gobbling up everything and then spread themselves way too thin. They did that, it was their business model, we didn't ask for that, it just happened to the software we use and to the communities we "had".

    It's like they bought up their competition to put them out of business but don't have the heart to immediately kill them off. It's like they are trying to be compassionate corporate raiders, that torture their products until they give up on life?
    AD: Hey you can't blame that on me, it was natural causes.
    Starvation isn't a natural cause.
    AD: No wounds, no crime!
    What about the bed soars, how long as it been on life support?
    AD: Hey I got a new toy who wants to play with it!

    That's the crappy thing with the way they do business, a successful stand alone product could keep its team going and keep the innovation flowing but it's not enough for Autodesk so they shut it down or just stall out hoping that people just keep up their subscription or keep buying it year after year.

    I honestly don't care about SoftImage. I feel for that community (wherever it is at). I only briefly used it to try out FaceRobot, it wasn't cool enough to keep me interested in the entire package.

    As for Mudbox2015, I'll have to grab the trial and check it out, but I don't see that many improvements that would raise it up to the level it needs to be.

    If you watch the video in my post, he paints mesh tubes onto the cape then adjusts them and merges them into the cape and runs dynamesh to clean up the topolgy. He is working, like a sculptor would by adding clay to the surface and then smoothing it out, its incredibly quick, simple and effective.

    Mudbox whatca got? An inflate brush? <<crickets>> I see.

    Looking over the 2015 features...

    Better interop with Maya
    Sweet I use max. So do a lot of people. Why is Maya interop important? what is mudbox missing that it needs its BFF to do?

    Layers as groups
    Great window dressing. They cloned a 5yr old feature from photoshop, congrats... /partyhorn

    Caliper tool
    Neat! Now we can measure stuff, what else does it do?
    This doesn't even seem like feature filler. This fruit is hanging so low its on the ground.

    Symmetrical Retopo
    Really? Shouldn't it already do that? Seems more like a bugfix than a cool new feature.

    Mudbox as a design tool falls apart.
    Mudbox as a detailing tool works pretty well.

    Zbrush as a design tool works great.
    Zbrush as a detailing tool works pretty well.
    (Even with the wonky UI, perspective and oddly reinvented wheels)
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    First of all, Mudbox didn't "drop to $10 a month". It would be a drop if, for instance, it had been $100/month before. But nope - for a user who used to pay the full price for Mudbox point releases, now is the time to pay even more ! $120 a year, even !

    Quoting myself from the other thread about the new subscription model :
    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=134612
    No matter how they try to spin it, they still lost customer trust (or at least, they sure lost my own ...) after charging $745 for mud2009, $375 for the 2010 upgrade and $375 for the 2012 upgrade again = $1495 total, and yet it *still* resulted in a bug-ridden and unstable piece of software. No magical 2015 subscription plan is going to alleviate that - I am not going to put any more money into Mudbox, even tho I still love it for sculpting.

    So nope, not going to pay for it anymore - I'll stick to my shitty buggy 2012 (as in, consistently crashing when saving a scene with texture information in it, and unable to display mirrored UVs properly) that I paid way too much hard-earned cash for. Had they introduced a solid mesh creation system in 2015, I miiiiight have gone for it, but it still sounds to me that are just offering a mere automatic remeshing option, which doesn't come close to dynamesh in terms of usability.

    Of course, Mudbox is great for sculpting on top of a established/imported base meshes, no doubt about it. I would actually argue that it is even much better than Zbrush at that, for the simple reason that its viewport feedback is much more accurate than Zbrush's. So, in a lot of production scenarios, it is still a valid option. However it really falls short at everything else, and as a very early adopter that truly saddens me.

    For instance, when a sculpting program released in 2014 is not letting the user split out parts of a model into separate sculptable chunks, it's simply a sign of the devs are just not trying hard enough or not having their priorities straight. I would be happy with a rudimentary duplicate/delete unwanted parts/cap holes/autoremesh workflow, but as far as I know it is still not possible :/

    Sometimes I get kind of nostalgic of the 1.07 release :) Good times !
  • authentic
    @MM Yea, i use them too (NDo, Crazybump, and photoshop). But mudbox makes it much easier and has a great viewport. As far as position to judge, im not sure what you mean. How many people here are in the top 1% of quality sculptors? I know for a fact that the brush criticism (too few/obsolete) is nonsense as the brushes are made to be customized and not preset. You can make just about any brush you could dream of with just a moment of work and if you are willing to try to understand vector displacement brushes, you can do things other apps cant (undercut brushes etc). I saw a video once where the guy used mudbox to create a mountain then transfeered that to a vector displacement map, then creates a stamp brush with some random variations and created completely believable and awesome landscape of mountains in moments. Just because I don't consider myself in the top 1% (ie: a pro) of sculptors does not mean I am not able to speak on Mudboxes credits. I use it every day and consider it odd that you picked out that point to find fault with my arguments. If I were speaking falsely, ok. But to say I havent the right to speak on the tools is rediculous. Ive used mudbox from day one and have sculpted a shit tonne. Im just not stupid enough to think Im a pro sculptor. Ive seen what pros can do and my artistic talents are not aligned with sculpting, I am much more hard surface oriented. That said, ive done dozens of characters, hundreds of rocks, meteors, mountains and trees with the software. Does it make me unqualified because I am humble?
  • MM
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    MM polycounter lvl 17
    @ Authentic - honestly, if you think mudbox brush system is very advanced and you can make any brush you can think of, then the problem is in your thinking being too limited.

    i been also using mudbox from the beginning as well (early skymatter beta versions), so has been few of the other people who posted here in this thread.

    just trust me when i say mudbox brush system is NOT advanced and NOT enough customization options are available.

    i could write up a 5000 word essay and give you all the possibilities of the brush system, compared to other tools like Mari and Photoshop, both of which have more advanced brush system than mudbox.

    for example, one simple thing you cant do in mudbox brush setting is free rotate the brush alhpa.

    pevIHJs.jpg

    this has been suggested by many people and have been suggested long long ago.
    this should be a common sense feature, it should not require online votes, myfeedback polls or any of those bullshit. if the devs cannot understand the importance of this feature then all of it is pointless.

    anyways, i can list many many such common sense features that are missing from mudbox brush system. but, i dont have time to type more since no one cares.
  • Neox
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    Neox veteran polycounter
  • authentic
    Well, though you cant orient it that way. you can have it follow the brush movement.
    I also care.
  • MM
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    MM polycounter lvl 17
    authentic wrote: »
    Well, though you cant orient it that way. you can have it follow the brush movement.
    I also care.

    following the brush movement is the absolute bare minimum of a feature. one shouldn't even bother mentioning it as a feature.

    photoshop had this feature 20 years ago i believe. 20 years...
  • perfect_paradigm
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    perfect_paradigm polycounter lvl 7
    @authentic Thanks for trying to help. I took another look at Maya and it's actually not new to 2015, but only occurs in Viewport 2.0.

    So my problem is the feature where the manipulators change to super bright when manipulator handles are occluded by selected geometry. Anyone know a way to disable it?

    Oh btw a few other small things on my Maya wishlist:

    1. Give Target Weld ability to merge to center so it can fully replace inferior Merge Vert & Edge tools.

    2. Display layer renaming should work the same as renaming animation and render layers.

    3. Tab drag select feature would allow faster selection if our eyes only had to track a small bright icon rather than small tip of big brush icon.

    I think I have a list of over 30 more small things of equal to greater importance than those 3, but I resolved most with scripting. I may make a video demonstration of all them later.
  • neilberard
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    neilberard polycounter lvl 17
    I used Mudbox back in 2009/10 but stopped to pick up Zbrush 3.5 since it had introduced hard surface tools then. I downloaded Mudbox 2014 a few months ago and it looked exactly the same as the 09 version. Has Autodesk done anything with Mudbox in the last 5 years?
  • myclay
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    myclay polycounter lvl 10
    Dynamesh/Sculptris alike sculpting is implemented in Blender since a few years now, which means that such sculpting methods should be too declared as a bare minimum for commercial Sculpting tools.


    Granted Blenders Dyntopo isn´t that much optimized and caps now at similar polycounts like Sculptris but Mudbox is lacking in the sculpting area and should be with its current functions abandoned.- no matter how affordable Autodesk prices Mudbox.


    3dcoat and Zbrush both have everything between the hobbyist to big studios market - no wonder because those tools are amazing!

    Blender got and gets more seats in the hobbyists, freelancers and small studios
    because it is from its available functionality the swissarmy knife of 3D programs


    which means that Mudbox has to find its own niche to survive the foreseeable EOL XSIing death.

    maybe Mudbox can find its niche with trying to piss on the high priced and as it seems awesome Mari.

    But to be good and a serious competition, you have to be trusted form the customers and you have to be reliable and Autodesk is prone to miss those important things regularly.
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