Mud, Mud, MudBox...

[Anonymous]

I appreciate all responses. Some agree with me, some don't.

- I suppose all agree with me, the mouse commands ar kind of childish, mainly for users familiar with the insuperable MAX mouse handling.

- Using the "Add" command to expand the stencil and stamp collections does work... But after closing the program and starting over, the additions are lost unless I move them manually using Windows copy-move features. I understand this can be done with the "Browser". Please explain how.

- If "out of bounds" UVWs can produce the generation of bad or incorrect Normal Bump Maps, should not the program warn the user about deffective UVW coordinates? What it does now is generate a weird result.

- I thought duplication of mesh was needed to generate Bump maps because the manual says user must compare between a Low and a High Res. mesh items. I could not understand how can I do this with a single mesh. Please explain.

- Stencils are nice. I don't say they aren't. But: Part of my work consists in transferring actual photos of clothing garments into texture maps for Avatars. I do this easily using Photoshop, pasting the photo "into" a selected area on a UVW template image, then working with the "free transform" warp features, which allow me to correctly "embed" the photo into the mapped areas. If MudBox would have such feature, where you load a photo, then by means of an image "warp" tool, similar to the Photoshop one, we could apply the photo to the mesh while watching the 3D result, then, THIS WOULD BE A TREMENDOUS TOOL!!!!!!!!

I tried to do this with the "stencil" feature and I almost ended up bald as an apple!!!!... So back to Photoshop....

- Painting through the mesh onto the backfaces is a must for the same reason. Usually UVW mapping is not linear enough as to work on an UVW extraction and obtain perfect match. What I do now is use R.H. DeepPaint to "paint" guidelines on the mesh texture. This way I outline where sleeves end, where collar holes go, where details should be painted, etc. Then when doing Photoshop work I use the DeepPaint Texture map as a guide to correctly cut and place the clothing details.

- My conclusion is: My method is good and works fine. The strong point on wanting MudBox is to be able to "sculpt" on the mesh the required fine detail relief, then generate the Normal Bump Maps and apply those to the LowRes mesh item. 3D painting, "a la MudBox style" is good for Fantasy, organic, animal fiction, or special effects jobs, but for realistic texture creation such as clothing, I find my "old fashin" process preferable!

Here I attach a Zip file containing a sample mesh in OBJ format, which generates a strange Normal Bump Map. Please check it and try it!

Thanks for all the great input.

Mike

innertpl.zip

[Christoph_Schaedl]

interesting... cant complain your problems...
maybe your uvs or your geometyry is not "mud" clean...



...
-Allow duplication of imported mesh.
agreed would be great, but there is no need for two objects to bake normalmpas...

-Smooth bug free importing mesh from MAX.
its working fine here

-Allow texture maps to be applied to materials.
texture maps are applied to materials, but to create one you need an object...

-Allow saving preset stamps and stencils from INSIDE the program.
you can save stencils and stamps inside mud
im using the mudbox image browser so setup my stencils and stamps...
there are icons for in the image browser...

-Allow CloneStamp from an image to texture, as Stencil is not exactly the best way to do it!
i disagree here for me its the best way... i can clearly see were to go...
can you explain what would be better with image sampling.?

-Allow painting on the back faces without having to go around. (remember Deep Paint?)
could be cool yes,

[musashidan]

I have to concur on Mud2Max interoperability. I have had manys a painful experience importing from Max(i know you're on Maya oglu so Maya2Mud must be alot better)

and no matter how much AD tout .fbx as a simple "one click operation" it just isn't. no problem leaving Mud........but coming from Max,a whole other kettle of fish. There is no excuse for import/export issues between two supposed "sister apps"(see my post in the community help forum)

Yes,some sort of duplication tool would be nice.alongside more robust transformation tools.

Regarding map extraction.I've no complaints here and find Mud excellent in this area.

Crashes??? Mud runs smooth as a baby's arse for me.Never had trouble with crashes.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

you are right im on maya but sometimes i had to deal with max...
never had problems like discribed above...

the cooperation between mud and maya is much better cause the devs are working in the same room/building.. 😄
but this should be no excuse i think...

[andrew.c]

No matter how much I tried, I could not work on a simple 2200 polygon mesh created in MAX 2008. I exported it in both OBJ and FBX 2010 formats.

Mike, if you would post this mesh or a similarly problematic mesh to this thread, I'd love to take a look at it. Mudbox supports all standard geometries.

My first problem was I could not duplicate the mesh, being a basic need to create or extract a normal bump map, as TWO identical mesh items are needed. ...Should it not be logical to have a cloning option?

I agree a duplicate command would be useful in certain cases, but I don't understand why your workflow *requires* it. When selecting a low res mesh for the extraction's Target, most users either 1) use the modified level 0 mesh, 2) reimport the original unmodified level 0 mesh, or 3) import a new mesh with new UVs/topology. I'd be interested to hear more about your workflow.

-Allow texture maps to be applied to materials.

Create or import a paint layer for the desired material channel using the Layers menu.

-Allow saving preset stamps and stencils from INSIDE the program.

Use the Add Stamp or Add Stencil command in the corresponding tray's menu. Multiple files can be selected in the file browser -- so you can bring in a bunch of images very easily.

-Allow CloneStamp from an image to texture, as Stencil is not exactly the best way to do it!

Using stencils is a terrific way of applying images to textures. With stencils you can rotate, scale, tile, and precisely place the source pixels! But if you prefer, you can also clone from an image: just import the image as an image Plane .

[andrew.c]

Attached is a normal map extracted from Mudbox using the mesh you posted. The whole process worked fine, so I was unable to reproduce any of the issues you mentioned. If you can provide more information about the issues you've encountered and the steps to achieve them, we can have another look.

workflow ... photoshop

Yes, there are a number of useful tools in Photoshop; this is why we've provided a bridge to Photoshop (both through Screen export and paint layer export to psd) to enable Mudbox users to leverage these tools when needed. That's not to say you probably won't see some of these tools integrated directly into Mudbox in future releases -- in fact, I suspect you will ...

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the effort Andrew!

OK! I agree I am the dummy! What am I doing wrong? Could you (I know I am abusing this time) outline step-by-step, briefly if you can, how did you do this? Maybe my problem arises from the fact I load the mesh two times to make one into a triple level to do the wrinkles and the other to do the Normal Mal generation. At some point I am doing something stupid!
Would you help me? By the way; the wrinkle normal map you made me is EXCELENT! Do you mind if I use it?
Thanks again Andrew!
Mike
P.S. Yes! My original post disappeared! I just wrote a second topic and the first died! ?????