Community
Mudbox Forum
Welcome to Autodesk’s Mudbox Forums. Share your knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular Mudbox topics.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

New to Mudbox. Any tips?

5 REPLIES 5
Reply
Message 1 of 6
AceAlmighty13
1602 Views, 5 Replies

New to Mudbox. Any tips?

I'm Going to give Mudbox a shot and try to learn to use it while I have time this winter. Anyway, I have modeled a gun in 3dmax and it's ready for either texturing or smaller details. In which order would I go to complete this? What would you do in my place? I want to learn to use the software. The gun is low poly, don't know if thats important. If you need any more details, please ask because I don't know what you need answered to help me out.
5 REPLIES 5
Message 2 of 6
A.Baroody
in reply to: AceAlmighty13

mudbox is very good at paining low poly objects.

Basically, once you have all of your gun parts modeled in 3dsmax with UV coordinates assigned, you're going to simply use the "send to mudbox" command on the file menu.

This will transfer your selected objects right into mudbox and you can begin painting their textures. It is pretty straight forward. Be sure that every object in mudbox has its own material if you want each peice to have a different texture map. If you want to paint the textures into one texture map such as a game object, make sure you have laid out your uvs in 3dsmax properly and then in mudbox, use 1 material for all the objects and 1 texture.

Read the manual, it will answer most of your software questions, but as you know mudbox is more than just a texturing program, it is also a sculpting program. If you choose to really get into sculpting, knowing what tool does what isnt enough to make you a great sculptor. Truly being good at mudbox, means you've probably spent a hell of a lot of time, studying anatomy and traditional figure drawing. Those are the skills really required to make the most out of mudbox.
Message 3 of 6

This is good to know. I'm currently going to school for Game design and working on a game n the side with a small group. I have a Glock modeled but the smaller details that are too small to do with polys are not on the model. I want to give it a try anyway. I need to learn but until I graduate(may 2012) this will be my only time to mess with it. Any tutorials that would help me out?
Message 4 of 6

I'm currently unwrapping my model in 3Ds Max and want to know what needs to be imported into Mudbox for everything to run smoothly. Will the unwrapped UVs play a role in the program? I know you can also paint with Mudbox as well so is Photoshop necessary? I can and will use it if I need to but thought I'd ask. If there is a tutorial that covers this and more that would be great. I've looked and have had trouble. Thanks for the help thus far
Message 5 of 6
A.Baroody
in reply to: AceAlmighty13

UVs definitely play a roll in mudbox. They are required for texture mapping. You can layout your uv in 3dsmax by hand which is generally better, or you can let mudbox automatically generate the uvs for you. There is a difference between manually unwrapped uvs and automatically generated uvs. Auto UVs break up ever quad polygon into its own uv island and projects them and arranges them into each uv tile. This makes it hard to edit in photoshop if you need to do any fine detialing.

Photoshop is always good to have and use when texturing, but Mudbox 2012 is a very good texture painting program. You can import images and project and paint them directly on to your model in layers, and evne use laayer masks just like in photoshop.

You can even export your layers as psd and paint them in photoshop, and reimport them back into mudbox seemlessly, without losing your layers in mudbox or photoshop. This can be quite useful.

Anyways, UVs are required, because mudbox's greatest strengths is that it can paint multiple uv tiles interactively, but of course your model needs uv coordinate to be able to paint it. UV tiles if you're not aware, are regions within the uv cordinate system. If you notice there is a 2d grid in your uv editor. U represending X, and V, Y on the grid, you can break up those grids into tiles. This is good for memory management. Mudbox is designed to paint images on different uv tiles, so that it can maximize memory effeciently and use as much pixel data as possible per tile.
Message 6 of 6

Thank you for your reply. This answers my question and more. At least I now have a basic understanding of what is going on. Do I import the obj file after I map out the coordinates? Or do I import the UV map from the save file I made of the coordinates? What I'm getting at is what imports into Mudbox after I'm finished mapping out in 3Ds Max? I'm at work so I can't fiddle with it.

Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Post to forums  

Autodesk Design & Make Report