This website is filled with information concerning 3D sculpting, traditional sculpting, 3D printing, CNC Milling and more. It is also the home page for two books,
3D Technology in Fine Art And Craft: Exploring 3D Printing, Scanning Sculpting and Milling ( Focal Press publisher- release date May 2015)
Digital Sculpting with Mudbox: Essential tools and Techniques for Artists. ( Focal Press publisher)
The […]
The tutorials section is being updated. Please come back soon.
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. […]
By Mike de la Flor
Maya 2012 will be a favorite update for serious animators because many of the key upgrades are in the animation, character rigging, and dynamics workflows. However, other parts of Maya also received important improvements such as the Edit Mesh workflow and support for vector displacement as well as Per-face texturing, among many other importance improvements.
Awesome Animation
Maya is without a doubt the best animation suite available, and this release keeps Maya on top with key animation enhancements. Having made that assertion, the first item reviewed here is Editable Motion Trails, a type of tool that has been part of many other animation suites for years, but lacking in Maya – until now.
By projecting a visual representation of an animated object’s trajectory in the scene Editable Motion Trails allow animators to interactively adjust the shape of an object’s path in real time. Editable Motion Trails can also display keyframes so that timing and weighting (without the graph editor) can be accomplished with immediate feedback. […]
By Mike de la Flor
For several releases 3ds Max users have been teased with what the Excalibur (XBR) project has in store for the future of 3ds Max. However, the full impact of XBR is clear in 3ds Max 2012 with a completely new viewport system and a new dynamics infrastructure that may rival Maya’s Nucleus.
The best new feature in 3ds Max 2012 is the Nitrous Accelerated Graphics Core which delivers blazing fast performance with massive datasets, real-time rendering effects in the viewports, and Non-photorealistic options. (Click to enlarge)Nitrous Power
The most important update in 3ds Max 2012 is the new Nitrous Accelerated Graphics Core – a new viewport system that improves performance and display quality. As part of the XBR push to streamline and update 3ds Max 2012 Nitrous is not simply tweaks to a bloated viewport system but a complete re-engineering. Nitrous harnesses the computing power of multiple core workstations and high-end GPUs to manage and display massive datasets in the viewports faster. With Nitrous, the data in each viewport is crunched separately from all other computing processes, thus providing users with fast working environment. […]
By Ara Kermanikian
Autodesk”s Mudbox was used to create photorealistic creatures for The Dark Knight, The Mist, and others films. Now you can join the crowd interested in learning this exciting new digital modeling and sculpting tool with this complete guide. Get up to speed on all of Mudbox’s features and functions, learn how sculpt and […]
Digital Sculpting with Mudbox: Essential Tools and Techniques for Artists by Bridgette Mongeon and Mike de la Flor is a tutorial based book geared towards beginning digital scultpors.
Digital sculpting is the use of tools to push, pull, smooth, grab, pinch or otherwise manipulate a digital object as if it were made of a real-life substance […]