Autodesk Mudbox Changelog

What's new in Autodesk Mudbox 2019

Apr 17, 2019

What's New in Autodesk Mudbox 2019:
Preserve Volume option:
A new option, Preserve Volume, has been added to the Advanced properties from the Smooth tool so you can stop it from degrading the mesh excessively. This option is useful when working with dynamic tessellation if you want prevent the Smooth tool from reducing the triangulated mesh volume too quickly.
This new behavior is off by default so you can use the Smooth tool to reduce and shrink the mesh volume. If you want the new behavior, where the mesh volume is maintained and cannot be degraded, activate this setting in the Sculpting tool properties (under the Advanced heading).
Note: The effects of Preserve Volume is less effective on low-polygon meshes.
Dynamic Tessellation fixes:
Dynamic Tessellation now supports UVs, Selection Sets, Joint Weights, and Falloff Type.
Previously, if any of these elements existed, they were ignored when Dynamic Tessellation created the new triangulated mesh copy. Now, Dynamic Tessellation includes these elements when the triangulated copy is created.
Selection Sets
Now, when you sculpt on a surface with the sculpting tools “Tessellate” option enabled, Selection Sets are maintained. This means that new topology on the triangulated mesh copy is a part of a Selection Set if the surrounding faces on the original were also part of a set.
Existing Selection Sets are copied from the original mesh to the generated tessellation mesh and appear identical, except that they are triangulated.
Joint Weights
Likewise, if a tessellated mesh is created from a mesh that originally had joint weights, these weight values are now copied to the new mesh as well. And this weighting is retained when sculpting on it using any tessellation-enabled sculpting tool. Any new faces created take the weighting from surrounding faces (or use none if there was no weighting).
PTEX
Dynamic tessellation is not supported on meshes with PTEX. If you use dynamic tessellation either through the Mesh menu, or by using tessellation-enabled sculpting tools, on a PTEX mesh, a triangulated copy of the mesh is created, but it has no UVs.
UVs
Now, UVs on the original model are retained, and duplicates of the UVs are added to the new triangulated mesh, and when you sculpt on a surface with a tessellation-enabled sculpting tool, UVs are generated (or removed), the same way as new faces are generated (or removed) on the original mesh surface while sculpting with tessellation-enabled sculpting tools.
Note: If you experience problems when collapsing edges on a tessellated mesh, delete UVs from your model before working with the Reduce, Refine, or Remesh tools.
Falloff Type
Dynamic Tessellation now uses the current Sculpting Tool Falloff Type, so that you can set the way Tessellation affects the mesh surface. This way, it works together with the selected sculpting tool so that faces within the Falloff range are tessellated and faces outside are not.
There are three choices of how the brush determines the range of the Tessellation effect:
Surface
Brush distance measured from the center point outward, searching for vertices until it reaches the end of the surface or the edge of the brush radius, whichever comes first.
Volume
Brush distance measured by drawing a line from the center of the brush to each vertex within the brush radius, to determine where to tessellate. Volume falloff affects one mesh with separated parts, if they are within the brush radius.
Volume/Surface
Brush distance measured by the brush moving along the surface, searching for vertices until it reaches the end of the surface or the edge of its radius, whichever comes first.
Combine Meshes:
A Combine Meshes option in the Mesh menu lets you merge multiple meshes into a single object that contains all of the faces.
Separate Selection:
A new feature, Separate Selection, has been added to the Mesh menu so you can separate compound objects into multiple objects within Mudbox.
Stamp Offset:
A new property, Stamp Offset, has been added to all relevant sculpting tool properties to let you fine-tune the depth of a stamp imprint on a model's surface.
Delete UVs:
Now, you can cut down the number of UVs on your geometry while still in Mudbox, where previously you had to go to Maya or 3ds Max. The new Delete UVs feature gives you a way to remove UVs from your mesh from the UVs & Maps menu.
Smooth Curve hotkey:
The Shift key now works to smooth curves while using any of the curve tools, the same way you use it to smooth vertices.
Additional Patch tool behavior:
An updated Patch tool now lets you remove parts of a mesh without needing a hole or border faces in the tessellated mesh. Now you can use the Patch tool to remove parts of a mesh without leaving a hole. So now, depending on what you select, the Patch tool reacts to the kind of selection.
If you select:
A fully enclosed loop of border edges or faces: the hole in the loop is closed. (The same behavior as earlier versions)
Interior faces with no border edges: the selected faces are deleted and patched with triangle faces. (The new behavior)
Border edges or faces that do not form a fully-closed loop: nothing is done. (The same behavior as earlier versions)
Multiple distinct groups of interior faces (for example, the four legs of a cow): Mudbox moves through each selection, deleting the selected faces and filling the holes with patches of triangle faces. (The same behavior as earlier versions).
Updated hotkey list:
The Mudbox keyboard shortcut list has been expanded to include functionality that previously existed but have not been assigned keys. This way, you can use the Hotkey editor to give these functions a key designation, for example choosing 6 to be the keyboard shortcut for the Blur tool.
Additional and improved tooltips:
In an ongoing effort to simplify the Mudbox interface, a number of new tooltips have been added to the user interface. Further, the information on many of the existing tooltips has been clarified.
Gamma Correct Blending:
The Gamma Correct Blending in the Advanced section of the Paint Tools Properties is now on by default. This feature, introduced in Mudbox 2018 update 2, blends colors before doing gamma correction when texture painting. This type of blending eliminates the dark edges that used to appear where colors intersected, for example, when you painted green over red.
Disabling this option will make the edges between overlapping paint areas dark.
Better support for 4k monitors:
Mudbox has improved the experience for people using high-resolution monitors by providing support for Interface Scaling. Interface Scaling lets you use a different scaling method for 4K or Retina monitors, which previously would display fuzzy, aliased, text and icons. Interface Scaling appears in the Mudbox Setup window the first time you launch Mudbox so you can set the resolution that works best for you setup. You can always switch this setting in the User Interface Preferences. (The default setting is 100%.)
Mudbox 2019 Fixed Issues:
Cameras
White plane obscures viewport when disabling/enabling Perspective camera MDBX-7370
Curves
Stroke on Curve fails to complete the stamp travel over the curve path MDBX-7078
Documentation
Mudbox 2018 Help documentation is unavailable when selected from the Help menu MDBX-7204
Some Mudbox functions found in Hotkeys window are not documented MDBX-6885
Foundation
Mudbox on macOS crashes after quitting MDBX-6677
Hardware, Paint Tools
Paint artifacts appear on meshes when using Intel graphics-based devices MDBX-6669
Installation/Licensing
App Manager cannot be disabled when creating deployments MDBX-6002
Paint Layers
Painting along texture seams when UV space is shared causes artifacts MDBX-6458
Paint Tools
Color Chooser doesn't work well MDBX-6992
Rendering
Creating turntable movies crashes Mudbox MDBX-7184
Sculpt Tools
Sculpt direction is wrong with non-uniformly-scaled meshes MDBX-7294
Link to Autodesk Area Forums is broken in Help > Communities menu MDBX-7366
Mudbox generates unnecessary multiple UV tiles MDBX-7309
Mudbox scene file is unusable in 3D view if scene is saved while in UV View MDBX-7264
Windows/UI
Entering a value manually in the Face Uniformity edit field (in the Retopologize window) never works the first time MDBX-7168
Qt: UI Scaling makes overlay mesh appear darker MDBX-6650
Qt: Unable to drag and drop layers with layers menu detached MDBX-6211
Customer Error Reporting does not work on Mac MDBX-5895
Qt: Cannot drag layers in/out of groups in Layers Dialog. MDBX-4853

New in Autodesk Mudbox 2016 Extension 1 (Oct 13, 2015)

New in Autodesk Mudbox 2016 (Oct 13, 2015)

New in Autodesk Mudbox 2015 Service Pack 1 (Oct 15, 2014)

New in Autodesk Mudbox 2014 (May 16, 2013)

Remeshing:
Extract production-ready, uniform quad meshes from your highly detailed, intricately sculpted mesh without leaving Mudbox. New remeshing tools let you put artwork before structure, no matter what your downstream requirements.
The remeshing toolset provides a combination of automated and manual processes that let you take as much or as little control over the topology definition as you want - ranging from an entirely manual process that produces only the edges that you explicitly delineate (Manual remeshing), to a more automated process that generates a mesh based on features of the surface and a set of parameters (Retopology). Even within the assisted retopology operation, you can again decide how much or how little control you want to have over the operation.
Mesh reduction:
The new menu item Mesh > Reduce Mesh lets you decimate a high-resolution mesh and produce a low resolution copy that preserves the volume and shape of the original mesh. This can be useful if you need to reduce detail and data size as you send assets downstream in a production pipeline.
Use settings in new the Reduce Mesh window to define the target size of your reduced mesh.
New Curve Tools: Loop, Border, and Erase:
To compliment the new remeshing toolset, the Curve Tools tray now includes Curve Loop , Border Curve, and Erase Curve brushes.
Highlight and fix problem areas on a mesh:
The new Display > Mesh Errors option helps to take the mystery out of troubleshooting mesh errors. Off by default, this toggle switches on automatically if Mudbox detects problems when you import a file, complete a retopology operation, delete faces, or validate meshes. When on, a temporary red highlight displays to indicate where Mudbox finds issues with the mesh.
Once detected, you can fix minor mesh issues in Mudbox with new mesh cleanup tools Patch, Tighten Selection, and Fair Selection. In many cases, these tools let you complete the basic repairs necessary to retopologize or subdivide a mesh, without needing to export to Maya.
Multi-Touch support:
You can now paint and sculpt in Mudbox using gestural input with supported multi-touch devices. Mudbox currently supports the Wacom Intuos 5 and Cintiq 24HD Touch, as well as the Apple Magic Trackpad, Magic Mouse, and multi-touch trackpad in newer model MacBooks. Refer to Multi-Touch input gestures for a full list of recognized input.
A new Enable Multi-Touch Gestures preference (in the User Interface preferences) enables and disables gestural input. With this preference on, Mudbox recognizes gestures like 2-finger pinch and swipe, letting you perform operations like zoom, pan, undo and redo with a simple tap or gesture.
New features are highlighted in the interface:
Discover new tools and options just by exploring the Mudbox interface with What's New highlighting.
When enabled, visual cues including green text and bracketed menu items help you differentiate between new and existing features. Highlighting is on by default, but you can turn it off in the Preferences window or the What's New Display Settings window that appears when you start Mudbox.
Duplicate selected faces as a new mesh:
Select the new menu item Mesh > Duplicate Selected Faces to extract a new mesh from an existing mesh. Mudbox keeps the original mesh separate and unaffected, and generates a new base mesh from the selected faces. The new mesh shares a material with the original, so any paint on the original also displays on the new mesh.
Create 8k texture maps:
Paint even greater levels of detail using new 8k texture maps in Mudbox. On systems with sufficient resources, the Create New Paint Layer window includes an additional 8192 option in the Size drop-down list.
Paint layer improvements:
Clear and fill paint layers
New options in the Paint Layers window and Paint Tool properties make it easier to flood an entire paint layer with color, or to remove all paint but keep the layer and any options you have specified.
Export merged layers for each channel
Easily merge and export all of the layers within a channel, either one channel at a time or when exporting all layers, using new options in the Paint Layers window menu and the Export All Paint Layers window.
While you export a single image file per channel, your paint layers in Mudbox remain intact, and you can continue painting on the separate layers. This lets you save or export 'snapshots' of the resulting texture as you work, and continue to iterate on the texture design as necessary.
Merge without deleting source layers
Similar to the new layer export options described above, a new Duplicate Merge Visible command in the Paint Layers window menu () lets you quickly create a merged copy of all visible layers in a channel, but keep the original layers so you can continue to tweak them as necessary.
Easily move layers to different channels
The new Move Selected To command, also found in the Paint Layers window menu, lets you move a selected paint layer to a new channel, adding the new channel with no extra clicks if it doesn't already exist.
Improved Isolate display option:
Use the improved Isolate toggle (Display > Isolate) when you want to temporarily focus on a selection of faces or a specific object, and quickly limit what displays in the scene.
Previously available only in a marking menu, the command is now also accessible from the Display menu. The Isolate command works independently of other show/hide options in the Display menu, so that any previously hidden objects or faces remain hidden when you toggle in and out of Isolate display.
Save scenes incrementally:
The new File > Increment & Save option (hotkey: Ctrl+Alt+S) lets you easily save multiple versions of a file as you iterate on a project, making it easy to store as many versions of the file as you need to keep, or revert back to an earlier version. Select this command any time you want to save the scene with the same file name, but appended with a new, incremental value.
What else:
Double-click with the Face Select tool to select a polygon island.
A Preserve UV Borders option added to the Subdivision Options (Mesh > Add New Subdivsion Level Options) lets you control whether Mudbox preserves the borders of UV areas during subdivision.
The Brush Ring Color preference lets you customize the color of the tool cursor.
You can now drag and drop images from the Image Browser, making it easier to copy image files to your system file browser or Sample color from an image.