11 min read

(For more resources on Web Graphics and Videos, see here.)

Introduction

This article will help you get your preferences set up so that you can work in a way that is most intuitive and efficient for you. Whether you are a veteran or a newbie, it is always a good idea to establish a good workflow. It will speed up your production time, allowing you to get ideas out of your head before you forget them. This will also greatly aid you in meeting deadlines and producing more iterations of your work.

Installing Mudbox 2013 documentation

In addition to the recipes in this book, you may find yourself wanting to look through the Mudbox 2013 documentation for additional help. By default, when you navigate to Help through Mudbox 2013’s interface, you will be sent to an online help page. If you have a slow Internet connection or lack a connection altogether, you may want to install a local copy of the documentation. After downloading and installing the local copy, it is a good idea to have Mudbox 2013 point you to the right location when you navigate to Helpfrom the menus. This will eliminate the need to navigate through your files in order to find the documentation. The following recipe will guide you through this process.

How to do it…

    1. First thing you will want to do is download the documentation from Autodesk’s website. You can find the documentation for this version as well as the previous versions from the following link: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=17765502.
    2. Once you’re on this page you can scroll down and click on 2013 for the language and operating system that you are using. The following screenshot is what you should see:

    1. Next you will navigate to the location that you downloaded the file to, and run it.
    2. Now follow the prompts by clicking Next until the installation is complete. This file will install the documentation into your AutodeskMudbox 2013 folder by default. You can change this location during the installation process if you like but I recommend leaving this as the default location.
    3. After the local version of the Help files are installed, we need to point Mudbox 2013’s Help menu to the local copy of the documentation. To do this, open the Mudbox 2013 folder, click on Windows in the top menu bar, and click on Preferences. The following screenshot shows how it should look:

  1. Next, click on the small arrow next to Help so that more options open up. You will notice that next to Help Location it says Autodesk Web Site. We are going to change that to Installed Local Help by clicking on the small arrow next to (or directly on the text) Autodesk Web Site and choose Installed Local Help from the drop-down menu. Then click on OK.

Take note that if you did install your documentation to a different directory, then you will need to choose Custom instead of Installed Local Help. Then you will need to copy and paste the directory location into the Help Path textbox.

Setting up hotkeys

The first thing you will want to do when you start using a new piece of software is, either set up your own hotkeys or familiarize yourself with the default hotkeys. This is very important for speeding up your workflow. If you do not use hotkeys, you will have to constantly go through menus and scroll through windows to find the tools that you need, which will undoubtedly slow you down.

How to do it…

  1. First you will need to go into the Windows menu item on the top menu bar.
  2. Next, you will click on Hotkeys to bring up the hotkey window as shown in the next screenshot.
  3. You will notice a drop-down menu that reads Use keyboard shortcuts from with a Restore Mudbox Defaults button next to it. Within this menu you can set your default hotkeys to resemble a 3D software that you are accustomed to using.

This will help you transition smoothly into using Mudbox. If you are new to all 3D software, or use a software package that is not on this list, then using Mudbox hotkeys should suffice. The following screenshot shows the options available in Mudbox 2013:

After choosing a default set of keys, you can now go in and change any hotkeys that you would like to customize. Let’s say, I would like Eyedropper to activate when I press the E key and the left mouse button together. What you will do is change the current letter that is in the box next to Eyedropper to E and you will make sure there is a check in the box next to LMB (Left Mouse Button). It should look like the following screenshot:

How it works…

Once all your hotkeys are set up as desired, you will be able to use quick keystrokes to access a large number of tools without ever taking your eyes off your project. The more you get comfortable with your hotkeys, the faster you will get at switching between tools.

There’s more…

When you first start using a particular software, you probably won’t know exactly which tools you will be using most often. With that in mind, you will want to revisit your hotkey customization after getting a feel for your workflow and which tools you use the most.

Another thing you want to think about, when setting up your hotkeys, is how easy it is to use the hotkey. For example, I tend to make hotkeys that relate to the tool in some way in order to make it easier to remember.

For example, the Create Curve tool has a good hotkey already set for it, Ctrl+ C, for the reasons mentioned as follows:

  • One reason it is a good hotkey is that the first letter of the tool is also the letter of the key being used for the hotkey. I can relate Cto curve.
  • Another reason this could be a good hotkey is because if creating curves is something that I find myself doing often, then all I have to do is use my pinky finger on the Ctrl key and my pointer finger on the C key. You may think “Yeah? So what?” but if I were to set the hotkey to Ctrl+ Alt+ U it’s a bit more of a stretch on my fingers and I would not want to do that frequently.

The point is, key location and frequency of use are things you want to think about to speed up your workflow and stay comfortable while using your hotkeys.

Increasing the resolution on your model

Before you can get any fine details, or details that you would see while viewing from close up, into the surface of your model you will need to subdivide your mesh to increase its resolution. In the same way that a computer monitor displays more pixels when its resolution is increased, a model will have more points on its surface when the resolution is increased.

How to do it…

The hotkey for subdividing your surface is Shift + D or you can alternatively go into the menus as shown in the following screenshot:

How it works…

What this does is it adds more polygons which can be manipulated to add more detail. You will not want to subdivide your model too many times, otherwise, your computer will begin to slow down. The extent to which your computer will slow down is exponential. For example, if you have a six-sided cube and you subdivide it once, it will become 24-sided. If you subdivide it one more time, it will become 96-sided and so on. The following screenshot from Maya shows you what the wireframe looks like from one level to the next:

The reason this image was created in Maya is because Mudbox will only show the proper wireframe when your model reaches 1000 polygons or more.

The more powerful your computer, the more smoothly Mudbox 2013 will run. More specifically, it’s the RAM and the video memory that are important. The following are some explanations on how RAM and video memory will affect your machines performance.

  • RAM is the most important of all. The more RAM you have, the more polygons Mudbox will be able to handle, without taking a performance hit.
  • The video memory increases the performance of your video card and allows high resolution, high speed, and color graphics. Basically, it allows the Graphical User Interface (GUI) to have better performance.

So, now that you know RAM is important, how do you decide how much will be needed to run Mudbox 2013 smoothly? Well, one thing to consider is your operating system and the version of Mudbox 2013 you are running. If you have a 32-bit operating system and you are running the 32-bit Mudbox 2013, then the maximum RAM you can get is 4 GB. But, in reality you are only getting about 3 GB of RAM as the operating system needs to use around 1 GB of that memory.

On the other hand, if you are using a 64-bit operating system and the 64-bit Mudbox 2013 version then you are capped at about 8 TB (yes, I said TB not GB). You will not need anywhere near that amount of RAM to run Mudbox 2013 smoothly. My recommendation is to have a minimum of 8 GB of RAM and 1 GB of video memory. With this amount of RAM and video memory you should be able to work with around 10 million triangles on the top level of your sculpt .

There’s more…

Notice the little white box next to Add New Subdivision Level in the following screenshot:

By clicking on this box, you will be given a few options for how Mudbox will handle the subdivision, as shown in the following screenshot:

The options shown in the previous screenshot are explained as follows:

    • Smooth Positions: This option will smooth out the edges by averaging out the vertices that are added. The following screenshot shows the progression from Level 0 to Level 2 on a cube:

    • Subdivide UVs: If this option is unchecked when you create a new subdivision level, then you will lose your UVs on the object. To get your UVs back you will need to recreate the UVs for that level. If the Subdivide UVs option is turned on then it will just add subdivisions to your existing UVs.
    • Smooth UVs: If this option is turned on, the UVs will be smoothed within the UV Borders as shown in the next screenshot:

If you want your borders to smooth along with the interior parts of the shell, as shown in the next screenshot, then you will need to take a few extra steps to allow this:

This is the method Mudbox used in the 2009 and earlier versions. In Mudbox 2010, they switched the way they handle this operation so that the borders do not smooth. Here is an excerpt from the Service Pack notes from 2010:

“A new environment variable now exists to alter how the Smooth UVs property works when subdividing a model: MUDBOX2009_SUBDIVIDE_SMOOTH_UV. When this environment variable is set, the Smooth UVs property works as it did in Mudbox 2009. That is, the entire UV shell, including its UV borders, are smoothed when subdividing a model whenever the Smooth UVs property is turned on. If this environment variable is not set, the default Mudbox 2010 UV smoothing behavior occurs. That is, smoothing only occurs for the interior UVs in a UV shell, leaving the UV shell border edges unsmoothed. Which UV smoothing method you choose to use is entirely dependent on your individual rendering pipeline requirements and render application used.”

This has not changed since Mudbox 2010. So, basically what you need to do on a PC is add an environment variable MUDBOX2009_SUBDIVIDE_SMOOTH_UV that has a value of 1. To do this you will need to right-click on My Computer and click on Properties. Then, choose Advanced system settings and under the Advanced tab click on Environment Variables…. Under System Variables click on New…. In the blank where it says Variable Name enter MUDBOX2009_SUBDIVIDE_SMOOTH_UV and under Variable Value input a 1. Hit OK and it’s all ready to go.

Moving up and down subdivision levels

Once you create subdivision levels using Shift + D, or through the menus, you can move up and down the levels you have created by using the Page Up key to move up in levels, or the Page Down key to move down in levels. But keep in mind, you will not be able to go any higher than the highest level you created using Add New Subdivision Level and you will never be able to go below Level 0.

Another thing to take into account is which model you are subdividing. If you have multiple objects in your scene, you need to make sure the correct mesh is active when subdividing. The following are a couple of ways to make sure you are subdividing the correct mesh:

  • One way is to select the object in the Object List before hitting Shift + D.
  • Another way is to hover your mouse cursor over the mesh that you want to subdivide and then hit Shift + D. This will subdivide the mesh that is directly underneath your cursor.

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