When should you use Mudbox in your pipeline??

hi dave... any new cool stuff to share..?

Good question. Most times what you will export from Mudbox are simple texture maps to be used as a bump, normal or displacement map. This is very easy and is done by using the Maps>Extract Texture Maps features in Mudbox. On occasion you will want to export a medium resolution version of your model and this is done by simply selecting the mesh and then exporting from Mudbox as an .obj file format which can be read by most 3d applications. The mud file itself does not need to be ported to other applications. In general texture maps created in Mudbox are re-applied to your original lower resolution model to re-create the illusion of the detail sculpted in Mudbox with much lower memory cost.

Can I export native Mudbox2009 "mud" files to Maya 2008 or earlier? if so, how is that accomplished easily?

Peace,
Tony

Hmmmnnn..........so Dave , was that a yes about the Maya blendshapes and cameras....hehe..........enjoying the Blog Dave ,thanks for all the great Information.

I understand what you are on about now, thanks. I simply had not heard of the term edge layout before.

I thought Dennis had a nice example of workflow "B"

area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/26440/

"What does B Mean"

With Mudbox you can work in a way that you do not need to develop a final surface topology, THEN move to texture painting and surface detailing as in the past. Build a super simple 10 min mesh in Maya, 3ds Max or XSI then import that simple almost "stick man" form and then fully design/sculpt your character. After, export a med res version of this mesh back to your MMorXsi then create a final topology based on your work with full understanding and design "buy off" on your creature, character or environment prop. This is a function follows form approach to digital character design. Remember polygons have nothing to do with the art of a character and the artist should not care of this while working. We developed Mudbox to suit this kind of workflow.

You can then use Mudbox texture baking tools to project all of the details you sculpted before in your design surface back to your final topology with new UVs and polygon layout.

Oh look some more stuff targeted at the film/Tv industry. What does B mean? I'm unsure what edge layout is, perhaps you mean UV layout?

Hahaaha thanks Dad. Install the demo of Mudbox and Maya give em a try :)

Nice Job!
Dad

It would perhaps be nice if you could export layers from mudbox out as Maya cache files, then you can import them and layer them in Maya to blend in and out along with your already cached animations. Or maybe when Maya finally adds a pose space deformation node it could perhaps reference in layers from the Mudbox file.

Really there are lots of different avenues that could be explored, though I think something simple such as making sure Mudbox and Maya support all the same features and have the same limitations for CgFX files.

Hmmmmm yes it would be very handy :)

thanks for the info dave...!
maybe we are able to import export blendshapes and cameras from mud to maya in the future...
would be handy...

Oglu asked about E and F.

E. Mudbox is a great tool for sculpting blend shape targets for facial animation or for muscle targets that get blended into place driven by joint rotations or a shader in a game or film. The mirror functions and the sculpt layers in Mudbox are very useful for this process.

F. In film after the Animators animate a character using an animation "puppet" a file is produced that transfers that performance to the final full res mesh that was sculpted by the Models department and set up with muscles and deformers by a Character TD or Rigging department. Those files are much to heavy for the Animators to directly work with. This causes a problem where the Animators can not see "strange" deformations, breakdowns or artifacts that can happen on the full res character. There are also areas where the deformers can't do enough to "sell" a particular interaction by the CG character. For example a style of muscle flex or a dinosaurs heavy toe sliding over a rock in a particular way. This is where the Models department has to come back in and work directly with the animation bake file ( just a mesh with all the animation baked into each vertex per frame) and re-sculpt the mesh at particular frames. The sculpts are then blended back into the animation file using a blend shape (or other methods). Mudbox is a great tool for this type of work because of the basic brush library and the perspective camera that can be made to match frames from the shot.