Autodesk Mudbox 2012 Review
By Mike de la Flor
Reaping the benefits of a developmental fast track Mudbox 2012 bears the fruit of five years of successful development by Autodesk. As a result Mudbox 2012 ships with an even better 3D paint system, better posing, new sculpting options, interface improvements, and critical performance updates.
Photoshop-like 3D Painting
Though Mudbox 2011 introduced important new features to the 3D paint system Mudbox 2012 goes above and beyond with support for Per-face texturing (Ptex) and new layer masks and blending modes. Developed by Disney Studios, Ptex is a novel, open source, texturing/mapping method that does not use UVs. Unlike UV mapping Ptex assigns texture data to each face (polygon) on a model, thus no UV data is required. Further, different faces can have varying resolutions and Ptex files can hold different texture maps like ambient occlusion, displacement or normal maps.
To get started using Ptex in Mudbox simply run the PTEX Set Up command select the texture resolution and start painting. All painting tools and brushes and paint layers work the same as if working with UVs. The downside is that PTex files are not really editable in programs like Photoshop.The layers in Mudbox 2012 now have layer masks and 22 new blending modes. […]