Mudbox 2013 Cookbook

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.

Mudbox 2013 Cookbook

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Ready? Set...

Introduction

Installing Mudbox 2013 documentation

Setting up hotkeys

Increasing the resolution on your model

Bookmarking the camera view

Downloading and enabling stamps, stencils, and base meshes from the Internet

Adding and adjusting your image planes

Sculpting on different subdivision levels effectively

Recording a movie while you work in Mudbox

Setting up colors and other preferences

Setting up your Wacom tablet

Working in expert mode

Heads Up

Introduction

Revealing the wireframe for edge location

Setting up a basic three point lighting scheme

Organizing your tabs for smoother navigation

Locking down the camera for reference matching

Creating a stone tile by adjusting brush properties

Using the object list to manage multiple objects

Setting up layers for easily adjusting sculpt details

Setting up stamps, stencils, and image planes using image browser

Broad Strokes

Introduction

Creating a concrete damage brush

Customizing your brush and adding it to your tool tab

Creating your own Imprint brush for adding presculpted details

Using the Freeze brush to get hard edges and isolate your sculpting

Using the Fill brush for detailing corners and crevices

Matching a reference silhouette using the Grab tool

Fine Tooth Comb

Introduction

Creating a zipper using a custom stamp

Creating a custom stencil from a stone wall carving

Creating a rock wall that tiles seamlessly in all directions

Tricks for painting with stencils

Tricks for painting with stamps

Adding a stencil or stamp to your toolbox

Creating a custom rock stamp

Get In and Get Out

Introduction

Flattening to UV space

Deleting the highest level of resolution on your model

Blocking out a rough Mayan pyramid using a displacement map

Importing, exporting, and working with multiple objects within Mudbox 2013

Creating a terrain

Shine On

Introduction

Creating a Blinn material

Using a simple Blinn material

Using Lit Sphere to mimic other materials

Creating a gold bar

Creating a glass sculpture

Time to Paint

Introduction

Painting a rock texture using projections

Painting out seams on a rock using the Clone brush

Painting a rock Specular map

Painting a rock Bump map

Adding text to a cape using Flatten UV mode

Adding dirt to a cape using a layer as a mask

Ready for My Closeup

Introduction

Creating a light

Creating a three-point lighting preset

Lighting an indoor scene with a simple light setup

Enhancing your scene with viewport filters

Creating a rock normal map with a normal map filter

Creating a turntable

One Step Forward

Introduction

Posing a lamp cord by adding joints to your mesh

Posing multiple objects at the same time

Adjusting joint pivots and painting weights

Creating a human rig by importing joints

Get Baked

Introduction

Extracting sculpt information as a normal map

Extracting an ambient occlusion map

Adding grunge inside crevices using the Dry Brush

Extracting and using a vector displacement map for sculpting

Customer Reviews

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Posing a lamp cord by adding joints to your mesh

This recipe will go over the process of adding joints and posing a lamp cord using Mudbox's posing tools. In this recipe, we will be using the basic posing tools Create Joint and Pose. These tools will allow you to define an area of influence so you can rotate and/or move these areas of your mesh into your desired position.

Getting ready

To begin, you will need to import the Lamp.obj file from the code files of this book. If you would like to see the finished product you can open up the Lamp.mud file.

Once you've opened the Lamp.obj file, you will get a couple of dialog boxes that you can ignore. For example:

The first one will say that There are t-shapes in this mesh. When this pops up you can just hit OK.
Next, you will see a window saying there is a High-valence vertex and Non-manifold topology in the mesh. To ignore this message, just click on Keep this Mesh.

The reason we can ignore these messages is because we will not be subdividing this...

Mudbox 2013 Cookbook

Mudbox 2013 Cookbook

Overview of this book

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Mudbox 2013 Cookbook

Posing a lamp cord by adding joints to your mesh

Getting ready