Below is the Properties tab, where users can change the properties of the currently selected tool. The first tab contains the Layers palette backed by the Object List tab. On the right side of the screen the app displays three distinct areas, each with a variety of tabs. Directly below this 3D View window is the toolbar, which contains an array of brushes, as well as the three mainstay tools of any 3D app: translate, rotate and scale. Just below there are two tabs: one labeled "3D View" and the other "Image Browser." The 3D View tab is the main work window, where users sculpt and otherwise create. The app uses standard windows color schemes and drop down lists certainly not a "back of the box" feature but a good sign that the developers are focusing their efforts on things of more importance at this early stage in the life of the software. When users first launch the Mudbox app, they find a clean, uncluttered UI layout. In addition, the tool also makes smart use of layers, all while allowing artists to easily create effective normal and displacement maps. Mudbox changes all that with its brush-based, full 3D approach. Either option was capable of producing impressive results but usually meant late nights or extended schedules for the most detailed work. In simple terms, this release translates to digital sculptors as "freedom to choose." Up until now, these artists had to suffer through the minutiae of learning vertex and polygons-based modeling methods or learn an all-new modeling paradigm with ZBrush. Nevertheless, Skymatter hopes to offer the final release to the general public sometime this winter. Inevitably, this feedback will contain as much positive goodwill as it does bug fixing for the developers. This is an interesting strategic move, as it gets the program out there and in use on real projects, while still allowing the development team to further refine features before a wide release opens the floodgates of feedback. Rather than offer a wide release to any interested artist with cash in hand, Skymatter has instead chosen to offer a sort of pre-release to the folks who have been beta testing Mudbox over the past months. Fast forward to November, and Skymatter is ready to share their creation with the masses, almost. Expectations were that Mudbox would be released in time for the show, but Skymatter, the software developer behind Mudbox, elected to continue to polish the feature set rather than release a piece of software they were not fully confident in. Absent from the proceedings was the then still embryonic, 3D brush-based, high resolution modeling app, Mudbox. This past summer, the computer graphics industry continued the annual tradition of parading the latest and greatest software at SIGGRAPH. Each layer can be used to experiment or add variants to previously approved models. One of the most useful features in Mudbox is how it handles layers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |