• Price: 150 . 330

  • Company: Skymatter

  • Pros: Straightforward, pared down sculpting workflow. Fast, symmetrical sculpting; normal and displacement map creation; layer support; stencil and stamp texture tools; high level of customization.

  • Cons: Documentation only online; limited file import support; limited creation tools; basic material editor.

  • Our Rating: We rate this 8 out of 10 We rate this 8 out of 10

Coming from a team of film studio modellers whose most recent work graced both The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, the highly anticipated Mudbox has the feel of a custom tool. In this case, though, that’s not a drawback. Designed to manipulate digital surfaces organically, it succeeds admirably.

You need to be working with a high-resolution polygon mesh, so it’s likely that you’ll be importing models from a high-end 3D application, or first adding detail to imported low-poly meshes.

There are some mesh-creation tools – to produce spheres, cubes, and planes – but it’s clear that Skymatter expects models imported into Mudbox to be part of a pipeline.

border=0 /><BR></div> </p> <p> Far from being just an intermediate tool however, Mudbox gives you plenty of opportunity to get your hands dirty. </p> <p> Working in Mudbox is fairly straightforward – you select a brush and proceed to sculpt the mesh by applying strokes to the surface. The default deformation of the mesh is achieved by pulling the mesh around, but you can reverse this and push or indent the mesh by holding down the control key. Pressing W reveals the wireframe mesh itself. </p> <p> You can select a preset from the Falloff tab to set the brush tip shape. Brush size and strength can be controlled by the properties sliders, or by clicking B or M respectively, while dragging the mouse in the viewport. Not that you need to use a mouse – Mudbox has been designed with a tablet-&-pen setup in mind. It provides an alternative to ClayTools from SensAble which ships with a force feedback modelling interface. </p> <p> <div class=floatedimage><img src= Print

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