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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
"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.
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Seitenzahl: 257
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Table of Contents
Mudbox 2013 Cookbook
Mudbox 2013 Cookbook
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: September 2012
Production Reference: 1120912
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84969-156-7
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Jeremy Roland ( <[email protected]> )
Credits
Authors
Jeremy Roland
Sagar Patel
Reviewer
Sergey Danchenko
Acquisition Editor
Wilson D'souza
Lead Technical Editors
Wilson D'souza
Dayan Hyames
Technical Editors
Jalasha D'costa
Manmeet Singh Vasir
Copy Editors
Alfi da Paiva
Laxmi Subramanian
Project Coordinator
Sai Gamare
Proofreaders
Maria Gould
Aaron Nash
Indexer
Rekha Nair
Production Coordinator
Melwyn D'sa
Cover Work
Melwyn D'sa
About the Authors
Jeremy Roland is a 3D Environment Artist who has worked for over 10 years in industries such as architecture, film, television, game design, and education. While studying at Virginia Commonwealth University, in both Computer Science and Communication Arts and Design with a focus in Kinetic Imagery, he began his career through an internship at the local ABC television station. Once the internship was over he moved on to the local NBC television station where he worked as a Production Assistant, a Motion Graphics Artist, and an Art Director for two years.
Once he left NBC, he moved out to the Bay Area in California where he began working in Architecture as a 3D Consultant. While continuing his consulting work as well as doing some side work creating logos for websites, he became a Lab Technician at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Jeremy soon began teaching modeling, texturing, and lighting classes at the academy and is currently the Lab Supervisor as well as a Teacher for the Game Design Department at the academy.
During his time at the academy he took off a few semesters to travel the world for eight months, as well as work for Golden Era Productions where he worked on films and other projects as both a 3D Artist and a Compositor. This contract job lasted about six months. On another semester off, Jeremy worked as a Visual Effects Supervisor on a music video for James Perry. While writing this book Jeremy was also juggling a full time job at the Academy of Art, a contract position as an Environment Artist at Rocket Ninja game company, and working as the Lead Technical Artist at a start up game company called Press Start. Throughout his career he has taken on many side projects, including writing this book.
My thanks go to my ever loving parents who I could never thank enough for what they've done for me. I would also like to thank Stine for putting up with my long hours of working. To all my colleagues and friends who I have learned from and enjoyed working and playing with. I would also like to thank myself for not giving up on anything I commit to.
Sagar Patel is currently a 2D and 3D Artist in the games industry. After working on multiple mobile games with Tall Chair, Inc. and CG related art with Aatma Studio, he became an Art Lead at Whitemoon Dreams, Inc. in Los Angeles, CA. Sagar is currently responsible for managing art and working with teams to maintain the vision of various properties in production.
About the Reviewer
Sergey "Treidge" Danchenko is a Digital Artist with a strong passion for 3D graphics and game development. He has worked for a number of game development studios and as a freelance 3D Artist since 2007. With a strong understanding of the technical side behind used technologies and tools, Sergey used his skills to discover non-standard solutions for using tools and his work as an artist. His other activities include partnership with NeoAxis 3D Game Engine developers and requested reviewing of relevant software products and books. More information about his work and latest news, tips, and tricks in 3D graphics, and game development is available in Sergey's blog at http://3dg.me.
I would like to especially thank my mother for her invaluable support in all of my endeavors.
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Preface
Sculpting software has changed the face of the 3D industry. Whether you are creating a character for the next Avatar movie or adding details to a post apocalyptic city in The Last of Us, 3D sculpting has become an essential tool for creating a level of realism in digital art that was much harder to achieve in the past. A couple of things that make Mudbox a better choice than other sculpting software is its ease of use, its industry-leading 3D painting tools, and its solid integration with other Autodesk products, which includes industry-standard software for 3D modeling and animation. Mudbox is also the first software to integrate vector displacement map extraction. This technology takes texture mapping one more step forward, similar to the introduction of normal maps which sparked the era of "Next-Gen" games. All in all, Mudbox is a powerful art creation tool that is only going to get better and more integrated with the industry's leading software.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Ready? Set..., introduces you to everything you need to know to get up and running with Mudbox 2013. This chapter will cover techniques such as speeding up your workflow, downloading custom brushes and meshes from the Mudbox community, and getting a comfortable color scheme for your interface. This should be the first stop for beginners and veterans alike.
Chapter 2, Heads Up, will acquaint you with the Mudbox 2013 interface so you can easily customize and find the tools that you need. Some of the recipes will also help you set up the camera, lights, and brush properties so that you can familiarize yourself with the location of the attributes you may need to use in your future projects. This chapter is very helpful for showing you around, if you are new to Mudbox, but also has a few intermediate level techniques for those who are already familiar with Mudbox.
Chapter 3, Broad Strokes, teaches you how to work with various brushes and even create your own brushes to be saved for later use. The recipes within this chapter focus on getting familiar with the brush's properties and how to use the various brush settings to get the effects that you want. This chapter is for anyone trying to learn more about the brushes so that they can customize their tool set rather than rely solely on the default set of brushes.
Chapter 4, Fine Tooth Comb, goes deeper into the brush's customization by focusing on stamps and stencils. The techniques you will learn in this chapter will allow you to add the fine details that will bring your digital sculpts to life! This chapter will be useful for all levels but those who already use Mudbox regularly may learn a new trick or two in this chapter.
Chapter 5, Get In and Get Out, focuses on importing and exporting assets that can be used inside and outside Mudbox. You will learn things such as adding detail to your mesh with a displacement map, working with multiple objects in your Mudbox scene, and creating a terrain using an outside image.
Chapter 6, Shine On, dives into using Mudbox materials to define the look and feel of your objects. Materials include properties that define how shiny your object is and how transparent your object is, among other things. These attributes are important in defining what your object would be made of in the real world. What you learn in this chapter will enable you to make your object look as though you could touch it.
Chapter 7, Time to Paint, covers the biggest strength of Mudbox, texture painting. You will learn how to paint with projections, get rid of seams with the Clone brush, and paint various maps using Mudbox's layer system. The techniques learned here will be useful for all users from beginner to advanced.
Chapter 8, Ready for My Closeup, walks you through lighting, viewport filters, and other ways of making your work presentable. The features covered in this chapter can produce visually stunning results right within your viewport, which can then be rendered out into a turntable for your portfolio, using the final recipe of this chapter. Not only that but you will learn how to produce normal maps directly from your viewport which allows you to easily create a texture version of your sculpts that retains surface direction for lighting.
Chapter 9, One Step Forward, is all about posing your characters and models within Mudbox 2013. This chapter will enable you to bring your characters to life by giving them dynamic poses and interesting silhouettes.
Chapter 10, Get Baked, explores how you would go about extracting your sculpt's details into various types of texture maps. The maps that you get from these processes are essential for creating low polygon game assets using the information that you extract from the high polygon sculpts.
What you need for this book
For this book you will need a copy of Autodesk Mudbox and 2D image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html) or Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/). I recommend using the latest version of Mudbox (2013) to follow along with this book. This is the version the book was made for, so there may be a few recipes that don't apply to the older versions of Mudbox.
The recommended system requirements for Autodesk Mudbox 2013 are listed as follows.
If you have any of the 32-bit operating systems listed below, then you will want to install the 32-bit version of Autodesk Mudbox 2013:
If you have any of the following operating systems, then you can install the 64-bit version of Autodesk Mudbox 2013:
You will also need one of the following pieces of supplemental software for the 32-bit and 64-bit version of Mudbox 2013:
The following is a list of hardware requirements for the 32-bit version of Mudbox 2013:
Here are the requirements for the 64-bit version of Mudbox 2013:
Also, you must have Internet access to view or download the Mudbox documentation online. Apple Quicktime 7.0 is also recommended for viewing the Mudbox Learning Movies to get started.
For earlier versions of Mudbox as well more broken down set of requirements, you can visit this link: (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=14960418&linkID=11937426). Note that if you are a student with an academic e-mail address assigned to you, then you can can get a free copy of the educational versions of all Autodesk software, including Mudbox 2013! So, if you are a student that has always wanted to learn how to sculpt, but can't afford the software or you just want to give it a try then check out Autodesk's education download section found here (http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=download_center).
Who this book is for
This book is for 3D artists, anywhere from beginner to advanced levels. Mudbox 2013 has advanced tools for texturing and sculpting and has a very easy to understand interface. If you have ever used any of the Autodesk 3D packages, you should be able to adapt in no time. Even if this is your first time opening a sculpting program, with this book you will learn all you need to know to put your imagination into a 3D model that you can move, rotate, and scale. The sculpts that you create can become anything from a movie character to a game asset, or even a 3D print that you can place on your desk. This book can be useful for anyone, whether it's your first time using the software or you are working professionally as a 3D artist.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: " This file will install the documentation into your Autodesk\Mudbox 2013 folder by default. Next to a .obj, I would say, the .fbx is the next most widely used file type for bringing assets from one package to another."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: " Now, click on Import under the File tab in Mudbox to import your FBX model.".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Ready? Set...
In this chapter we will cover:
Introduction
This chapter 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 Help from 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...
Note
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...
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 (LeftMouseButton). 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.
