Mudbox UVs and 3ds Max
polycounter lvl 10
Is it possible to make changes to my UVs in 3ds Max and apply them to that same model in Mudbox after I've already made alterations to it on the original set? I've realized I have messed up and it's an easy fix but I don't know how to handle the situation. I'm still learning how to use Mudbox. Any help, if it's possible would be great.
Replies
I'd like to think that would be an option to do so. The more I think about it, the logical part of my brain tells me it would be possible. It sounds like a waste of time if I fucked something up like that, just due to human error that I'd have to start over.
What I want...
What I don't want...
Every time i try to learn new software, I run into issues. Grrrrr. I appreciate any help given thus far and hope to return the favor in the future somehow.
if you are new to 3d in general then i recommend you read up on the basics of 3d modeling and texturing and what UVs are used for. for example, UVs on a model is ONLY needed when you are applying a 2D texture to it in some manner.
UVs are essentially the two dimensional map of the same 3d mesh so that a 2d texture can either be painted on it or applied in some manner like a displacement map and or plain displacement.
in mudbox, you only need UVs on your mesh if you either paint texture on it or use the "sculpt using displacement map" feature or if you are baking texture from another mesh. for regular sculpting your UVs do not matter.
Update: I was able to go to level 7 and get 6 million polygons and it's what I need to get the detail I want. Had to shut down some background programs that were not necessary at the time.
I'd appreciate any tips to improve performance to keep this from happening in the future.
if upgrading your hardware is not an option for you at the moment then you will have to plan your base model topology very carefully. you need to break up the base mesh into different parts according to your needs.
for example, you can separate the part of the mesh that needs lot of sculpting details into a new object and put more edge loops in there. this way you dont have to subdivide everything. you only subdivide areas that you want to sculpt more detail into and you can also hide parts in mudbox while sculpting to increase performance.
btw, you could try sculpting in zbrush since zbrush does not really use your GPU and all it needs is 4gb ram. alhough it is CPU dependent you could still get a lot higher polygons initially with zbrush.
ideally you want to use a dedicated small hard disk just for virtual ram and could easily use 32-64 gb of hard drive space purely for virtual memory.
also what is your graphics card ? that also plays a good role is Mudbox performance.