Book Image

Mudbox 2013 Cookbook

Book Image

Mudbox 2013 Cookbook

Overview of this book

"Mudbox 2013 Cookbook" covers a variety of techniques that can be used to bring your imagination to life. You will be able to create detailed characters and environments like the ones found in games, movies, and on television. Each recipe is one more building block towards digitally sculpting your ideas into reality. "Mudbox 2013 Cookbook" is written in recipes so that you can refer back to it whenever you seek help. The advanced techniques described in this book cover the whole spectrum of Mudbox's capabilities. With this book you will learn the foundational techniques in using Mudbox as well as more advanced ones "Mudbox 2013 Cookbook" will guide the reader step by step through the process of creating brushes, sculpting, 3d painting, lighting assets, extracting normal maps, and many other techniques. If a recipe is too advanced for you then you can visit the suggested recipes listed at the end of the recipe to learn supporting techniques. Supporting images are used for readers who understand things more visually. Each recipe is rated for difficulty so that you can find techniques that line up with your skill level. Once you complete the beginner and intermediate recipes you will be able to move on to the more advanced recipes.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Mudbox 2013 Cookbook
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Bookmarking the camera view


This recipe will teach you how to add bookmarks for your camera positions. This is great for setting up different angles that you would like to come back to.

Let's say you are working on sculpting a head and you have a photo reference of the head you are trying to portray but the pictures are from different angles. One technique you could use is to set up bookmarks of your camera in different positions around your model that match the angle of the real world cameras from the photos. This way you can switch back and forth between the different views and try to match the sculpt to the reference as best as you can.

Getting ready

Before you set the bookmark, you will want to adjust the camera position until you have the desired angle. You can do this by using whichever hotkeys you have set up for navigating through your workspace. The Mudbox default hotkeys for this are shown as follows:

  • Rotate Around: Alt + left mouse button

  • Pan: Alt + middle mouse button

  • Zoom: Alt + left mouse button + middle mouse button or Alt + right mouse button

How to do it...

  1. 1. You can find the Camera Bookmarks tool panel on the lower right-hand side corner of your screen, as long as you haven't moved it. It is docked inside the same panel as Stamps, Stencils, Falloff, Material Presets, and Lighting Presets.

  2. 2. Once your angle is set, you will go into this panel and click on the little arrow at the upper left-hand side corner of the panel. This will open up a drop-down menu with the menu item Add Camera Bookmark. The following screenshot will help you find what you are looking for.

  3. 3. Once you have done this you will be asked to name the bookmark. One cool feature about the Mudbox Camera Bookmarks is that the thumbnail it produces is an exact match to your viewport to help you with remembering which angle the camera was at.

  4. 4. Now, all you have to do is click on the bookmark thumbnail and the camera will snap into place.

  5. 5. You can also hover your mouse over the thumbnail for a larger thumbnail image with the name to appear.

How it works...

What this does is, it takes the position and rotation of the virtual camera and stores that information into a button. It also takes a screenshot of the viewport and resizes it into a thumbnail to help you remember the angle of the bookmark.

There's more...

If you would like to rename or delete a bookmark, all you have to do is go into the same menu where Add Camera Bookmark is located and choose your desired menu item. Keep in mind you must select the bookmark that you would like to affect before going into the menu.

See also

  • The Setting up hotkeys recipe