Mudbox blows chunks?

Hitez

Hey guys, I'm finding myself very frustrated with mudbox.. I thought it was what i needed with its easy interface and basic functions. and I don't have the time to wade through extensive features of zbrush to get simple things done.
but I am finding problems that are killing it for me.
1. I slide the brushes to as low strength as they possible can, yet they shoot polygons off the screen... annoying.
2. Masks are lacking an 'invert' function.
3. The Freeze tool has absolutely no effect whatsoever. (and isn't freeze going for the same exact usage as masks anyways?)
4. When I click 'Create New Folder' in windows explorer my computer lags up hard for about 5 seconds before doing it. ... ... . .. . . . .. . . .
5. Using stamps has another "random strength" effect on my brush strokes.


Other annoying finds since i posted this (less than 10 minutes ago)
6. Selecting faces is useless, I can't translate them?
7. One face in my model is colored a solid ugly pinkish color, for no reason. randomly.
...ugh. I might just switch back to Zbrush..

Hitez

On a side note, previous attempts at this tree has yielded this result in Blender3D:

Its only a concept, there are other layers of detail, and the materials will change, also vines will be colored green with moss separate from the bark itself. Which is what I'm attempting to do here now...

pior

Yeah mud can be picky. A few things :

- Try to work with .obj meshes showing up at roughly the same size as the included mudbox primitives. Don't scale up your object inside mud if it's too small. Simply re-export it at a more appropriate scale from your main 3D app.

- freeze (the blue stuff) is a masking tool. Whatever is blue, is not affected by brushstrokes. If it's not working that way, somethings very wrong. Also if frozen parts are not showing up in blue but in some kind of messy pixelated yellow, it means you need a new videocard.

I'd say, upload your .obj and .mud for us to see what's up!

Hitez

thanks for your quick feedback! Your right about the scaling, thank you!
I probably should have realized this myself, gosh. But you know what frustration does to you...only makes you more frustrated.
definitely need a new video card.. as i'm trying to work with UDK on 1 core, 2.2ghz, 1 gig ram, geforce8400.
Don't do too bad for myself i guess, just takes patience when using more than one program at once. really limited in high poly though. just over 1 mil and i lag!

mudbox still needs a few more features to be perfect, such as the transformations panel in zbrush combined with masks is perfect for precision small detail edits and such!

pior

well yeah and, it's still got some crazy bugs, just as much nonsense as Zbrush to be honest :P

Hitez

yeh, such as when I try to anti-alias my normal maps when i bake them out it will make the mouse stick to the hour glass image as if it were thinking, but i can continue to work. or randomly failing to load a .mud.
but its still fun stuff, im learning lots.

hawken

the first image looks like you're using a mouse, not a pressure sensitive input device

Hitez

indeed I am using a mouse.
another notch in the "Mudbox Blows Chunks" scoreboard... if your zoomed in rotated a bit and you press A to see the whole model you will often get lost in 3D space.. just a nuisance

Muzzoid

Sculpting with a mouse is your number one problem, before you go further you will want to invest in a tablet. You will not regret it, you may resent it at first but in time you will get to know it and love it and call it sally and begin sleeping with it under your pillow. And if you ever have top leave it alone you will cry because of being apart...

Vonklaus

Yea, mudbox has its pains. It is kinda like a crying child. Sometimes you absolutely love it to death and then others have you ripping your face apart. But in the end I love you mudbox baby, because you got all those cute "real" 3d cameras and your so much fun to texture with..... I am sorry, kinda got carried away there.

One last revisit to my weird analogy. Just like a baby someday it will grow up, we just only hope it doesn't become some cocaine/crack addict.

I leave you in confusion

eld

If, and I'm guessing you made your basemesh in blender, scale it up with a factor of 100 (or 10, cant remember exactly) and it should be in the correct scale, and the strength should have a proper scale.

Hitez

yep blender is annoying with its export sizes. they turn out even smaller in UDk, I at first thought nothing was happening because my models would go in as little specs on the screen. But that is an easily avoidable problem.
I re-do the hotkeys in all my applications to work as close to blender as possible haha!
new problem just now. I can't open the 'Mesh' options at the top to re-create UV's like normal. arg!

otherwise yeah, I still like mudbox this is just my I hate mudbox thread. for personal venting. Vonklaus, I relate to exactly what you're saying.

Jay Evans

Honestly without a tablet, a properly scaled object, and a decent amount of ram and processor, Mudbox is going to be an exercise in frustration. Personally I like it a lot, but you have to be set up for it. It's great for "sculpting". Sub-Ding a mesh a bunch of times and trying to mask out areas is not its strength.

Hayden Zammit

I love MudBox. Once you get the hang of it its great. With your settings, do you have the build up really high? If you do try lowering that.

Rhinokey

my lamborghini sucks it handles terrible! (oh i happen to be driving it on an backwood mountain road and instead of air i've filled the tires up with rocks)

sometimes things need proper user suport to work properly, a painter cant blame the canvis when he's trying to paint with a hamhock instead of a brush.

i rember when i started in game art i did textures with a mouse. cause i could not afford a tablet, then eventualy i realized that there was only so much i (some ppl can do masterpieces with an etch a sketch, so i'm sure theres awesome mouse users out there) could acheive with a mouse without going insane . so i went an did odd jobs an saved, and sold some video games i had and bought my selfl a crappy tablet off ebay. then for a week i swore at the tablet cause it was so different. but eventualy i got used to it.

there is no morale to my tale, and christmas is coming close (unless you dont do christmas) but if you want to do game art you probably will eventualy NEED a tablet. they are cheap nowdays.