Mudbox?

Anyone using this?

I think you'll find more people use ZBrush than Mudbox.. I remember a long while ago seeing a Mudbox thread, but can't recall many (if any) people saying they used it.

ZBrush is the cheaper of the two, and seems to be powerful enough for insanely detailed 3d meshes, and so on, so I think it's a bit more popular.

This coming from not just SL sculpties standpoint, but those using Blender and a few other programs, as well. I just can't recall seeing a Mudbox mention anywhere but here, quite a while ago.

I could be wrong, though, maybe it's insanely popular!

Anywho, good luck, with whatever your endeavors are

Zbrush & Mudbox, good for high resolution models

bad for sculpts.

Not quite true.

I admit, the higher resolution model doesn't cause a higher resolution sculpt...BUT:

You can opt to sculpt with low-poly meshes, in both programs (Unless I'm mistaken), which is just as useful as any other program's sculpting feature. I know that I personally use Blender's sculpt mode for quite a few things for SL sculpties. It enables symmetrical editing with ease, some people are just plain more comfy 'drawing' their changes, and so on.

Beyond that, you can up the poly count of your model and add tons of details, then use that higher-poly, more detailed model to bake textures, increasing the aesthetic quality of the end product. Faking contours and whatnot with textures by hand is one thing; actually baking real details into a texture then using that on a lower poly object is very different, and very useful for things like SL sculpties. (You've seen the cubes textured like garbage dumpsters, that look relatively nice? It's like that!)

Every texture that I bake uses a higher poly model than the one I export for sculpties, because I have more pixels, and detail, that I can use. Higher poly meshes don't just allow for more detailed textures, but also for smoother ones! If you set an object to use smooth shading, rather than 'individual face' shading, a lower poly model will still have inaccuracies and oddities that a higher poly model can more easily avoid.


I know that ZBrush offers some absolutely awesome texturing abilities, and I assume Mudbox's are somewhere near the same quality.

I don't personally know about Mudbox's primitive capabilities, but ZBrush has some nice options, that allow you to create a basic mesh without too much hassle, and work from there.

Don't knock the high poly sculpting programs, they have their wonderful uses, even in a low-poly world!

/me blinks

Zbrush is a lovely program for making and texturing organic sculpts. Of course, as far as SL goes, you can't use its full capabilities, but that's fair much the case for any 3D modeling program when it comes to SL sculpties.

This horse was modeled and textured exclusively in Zbrush, including the baked shading:


I understand Mudbox has much of the same capability, but I don't know if there is an exporter out there for SL. I suppose you could create, texture then export to Maya or some other program.

There're always ways to get around a lack of a built in or plugin exporter. There's a .obj converter, you could import into Blender (Or any other, I only say Blender because it's free, and easy to setup, import, and then export a sculpt map), and then export, and so on.

ETA:: That is to say, after a bit of searching around, I found no support for SL sculpty baking or exporting, and so assume there is none implemented, whether by design or plugin.