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Created by Skymatter, Mudbox made its debut in 2006 and became an instant favorite with digital sculptors because of its shallow learning curve, intuitive interface, and powerful 3D sculpting tools. However, it wasn't long before Autodesk took notice and in 2007 acquired Mudbox to fill a gaping hole in its software lineup. Now after over a year in development with Autodesk and many promises of enhanced performance, better sculpting tools, and professional 3D painting, Autodesk has released Mudbox 2009 to much fanfare and some criticism.
Interface and Workflow
Autodesk wisely kept the intuitive feel of the original release and has added important workflow improvements. For example, Mudbox 2009 can now easily manage tens of millions of polygons in real-time while sculpting, and the new painting system squeezes every bit of power from the latest GPUs to display complex textures in real time during painting. Also several operations like texture extraction have been multi-threaded to take advantage of multiple processors.
At first glance the interface in Mudbox 2009 appears similar to the old Mudbox, however there are changes that accommodate the new tools and features. Next to the 3D View is a new UV View that displays the model's UV maps, but unfortunately does not do much else. The Layers tab has been overhauled to make room for the new 3D Paint system and next to it are the new Viewport Filters. The tool trays have been reorganized to make room for a slew of new sculpting brushes and paint brushes, and there are new tabs for material and camera presets. Thankfully this release keeps the standard, artist-friendly interface with a few tweaks for the new tools, and the workflow and performance enhancements bring Mudbox up to par for professional pipelines.
Advanced Digital Sculpting with Real Polys
The intuitive sculpting brushes that made the initial release of Mudbox a favorite have been considerably expanded in capability and number in Mudbox 2009. In fact, there are so many new brushes that sometimes it is difficult to keep track of which one does...