Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
System requirements for Autodesk Mudbox 2023:
| Software | |
|---|---|
| Operating System | Microsoft® Windows® 11, 10Apple® macOS® 12.x, 11.x, 10.15.x, 10.14.xLinux® Red Hat® Enterprise 8.5, 7.6-7.9 WSLinux CentOS® 8.5, 7.6-7.9Rocky Linux 8.5See Autodesk’s Product Support Lifecycle for support information. |
| Browser | Autodesk recommends the latest version of the following web browsers for access to online supplemental content:Apple Safari web browserGoogle® Chrome web browserMicrosoft Edge web browserMozilla® Firefox® web browser |
| Hardware | |
|---|---|
| CPU | 64-bit Intel® or AMD® multi-core processor |
| Graphics Hardware | Refer to the Maya Certified Hardware page for a detailed list of recommended systems and graphics cards |
| RAM | 4 GB of RAM (8 GB or more recommended) |
| Disk Space | 2 GB of free disk space for install |
| Pointing Device | Three-button mouse |
Learning resources
Mudbox Learning Path
If you’ve never used Mudbox before, you can find many useful resources for learning Mudbox here:
http://www.autodesk.com/mudbox-learningpath
Some of these learning resources are described below.
1-Minute Startup movies
Begin learning Mudbox by watching the one minute movies that appear on the Welcome window when you first launch Mudbox. These movies contain essential skills for using Mudbox. The movies can also be launched from the Help menu (Help > 1-Minute Startup Movies).
Note:
If the movies do not launch automatically when selected, check that you have an appropriate media player installed.
QuickStart tutorial
To begin learning the main areas of Mudbox, continue with the QuickStart tutorial.
You’ll learn how to load a model, navigate the 3D View, and the basic sculpting and painting techniques.
Mudbox Help
If you cannot perform a function, find a feature, or just want more information on using Mudbox, consult the Mudbox Help as follows:
- User Guides – Task-based information about Mudbox features, tools, and workflows.
- Best practices and troubleshooting – Many sections include best practices and troubleshooting tips for common problems. These include useful descriptions of warning and error messages.
- Reference – Definitions of commands, options, tools, properties, keyboard shortcuts, and other items within Mudbox.
Learning videos
Beyond the Essential Skills movies you can view short movies that demonstrate Mudbox features and workflows in more depth here:
Mudbox user forums
Communicate with other users of Mudbox, post questions, and exchange ideas at The AREA’s Mudbox Discussion Forum:
http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-mudbox
What is Mudbox?
Autodesk® Mudbox™ is the first advanced, high resolution, brush-based 3D sculpting and painting application built from the ground up to address the needs of the digital sculptors and texture artists. Designed by production artists for production artists working on demanding projects, Mudbox introduces new workflow paradigms and combines familiar concepts in a new and exciting way to offer a unique solution for high-end commercial modeling and painting.
Mudbox is quick to learn, easy to use and integrates well with existing production pipelines.
Who uses Mudbox?
Mudbox users include:
- Digital modelers working on demanding assets requiring flexibility, speed, and the highest level of detail and sculptural quality.
- Texture painters needing to create high quality displacement, normal, diffuse, specular, reflection, gloss or other kinds of texture maps for any 3D object.
- Traditional sculptors and engravers wishing to take advantage of the many benefits of working digitally without having to spend weeks learning a software application.
- Concept designers wanting to visualize ideas in 3D.
What can you do with Mudbox?
Mudbox is designed for manipulating digital surfaces in an organic manner. Models can be either imported from existing files or generated using one of the basic sculpt templates provided with Mudbox. Completed models can be exported from Mudbox to be lit and rendered in other 3D applications.
Otherwise, displacement and normal maps are generated from the high resolution Mudbox model and applied as a texture map on the original low resolution mesh in another 3D application.
Mudbox is great for:
Designing
- Start with a basic model template and explore dozens of different design directions.
- Import polygonal models from other 3D applications using the OBJ format or Autodesk’s FBX®file format.
- Import cameras and image planes from other 3D application using Autodesk’s FBX® file format.
- Use the posing tools to position and deform the components of your model or character.
- Use Mudbox’s powerful 3D Layers to version your design ideas or to non-destructively combine different designs.
- Use Subdivision Levels to preserve superficial detailing while making broad changes to the gross forms underneath.
- Evaluate the design properly by working in true perspective. View the design through different lenses by adjusting the camera’s field of view.
- Create multiple cameras or camera bookmarks to quickly jump to common viewpoints or areas of the model.
- Import models from other 3D applications such as Autodesk® Maya, Autodesk® 3ds Max, and Pixologic™ ZBrush® for sculpting in Mudbox using the .obj or .fbx file formats.
- Output a model that can be input to another application and rapid prototyped for client evaluation or passed directly downstream to other digital departments for rigging, shading, and testing.
Detailing
- Use layers to separate surface details (pores, veins, scars, etc.) for easy and non-destructive editing or to supply different map sets for different channels in the material.
- Use the Knife tool to slice through dense meshes creating crisp, clean lines.
- Sculpt all detail directly in 3D, avoiding 2D projection, using Mudbox’s Stamps and Stencils for 3D sculpting.
- Use Mudbox’s unique tangent based symmetry sculpting to detail both sides of a model posed in a natural (asymmetric) or client-approved character pose.
- Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
General sculpting
- Build up forms with control using Mudbox’s falloff curve to accurately shape the tip of sculpt tool. Cut sharp wrinkles into the mesh with a single stroke.
- Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
- Import and create multiple objects within Mudbox. Manage them through a conventional Object List, selecting, hiding and locking whichever you please.
- Maximize your work space and keep your cursor over the model while working, by using Mudbox’s conventional 3D camera controls and its useful selection feature.
- Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
Painting and texturing
- Apply paint directly to your 3D models in Mudbox. Mudbox produces a bitmap image behind the scenes that you can use as a file texture or image map when rendering in other 3D applications.
- Images can be projected onto a model using the Projection brush to apply its properties (graphics, decals, and so on) to the model using either a brush stamp or stencil.
- Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
- Models can be painted in a variety of resolutions and color bit depths depending on your requirements.
- Paint can be applied to produce a textured appearance using a bump map.
- Paint layers can be reordered above or below each other.
- Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
- Paint layers can be duplicated and dragged to other paint channels. For example, a diffuse paint layer can be dragged into the bump paint channel to create a perfectly registered bump map from your paint map.
- High resolution images can be painted on models with UVs in tile spaces outside the 0 to 1 range. This lets you spread the UVs for a model across multiple high resolution image maps.
- Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
- View your 2D painted bitmap images in relation to the UV texture coordinates for the model using the UV View.
- Create or edit textures using Adobe® Photoshop® and move your paint layers and paint channels between Mudbox and Photoshop in a seamless workflow.
- Export your paint layers with your model for use within Autodesk® Maya® using the Autodesk®FBX® format.
Presentation
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
- Work interactively with real-time shadows, lighting, and shading effects displayed in the 3D environment (HDRI-lighting supported).
- Apply and edit material properties such as color, reflectivity, gloss and bump, and use images as texture maps similar to other 3D applications (CgFX materials specification supported on qualified graphics cards).
- Apply real-time viewport effects such as ambient occlusion, depth of field, and non-photorealistic effects that remain displayed even while the model is being edited, or dollied, tracked, and tumbled within the 3D View.
- Produce normal maps directly from objects placed in the 3D View for use as simple texture maps without having to extract them.
- Produce depth maps based on the sculpted items within the 3D View that can be used as stamps, stencils, or displacement maps within Mudbox.
- Produce vector displacement maps from your sculpted detail that can be applied as brush stamps and stencils to create 3D details.
- Save a high resolution image of your working view for use with other applications and presentations.
- Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
Mudbox Setup window
The first time you launch Mudbox, the Mudbox Setup window displays to let you set language and other application options.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
Language
Lets you select which language to use for Mudbox, and which language to use for the online Help.
Interaction Mode
Select whether to use the default Mudbox hotkeys, or adopt the hotkey settings from another Autodesk application for use with Mudbox. See also Keyboard shortcuts.
If you installed Mudbox as part of a suite and are running the product using a suite license, an additional menu displays that lets you set this preference for the entire suite. For Mudbox in a suite, you can also set this preference using the Interaction Mode preferences.
Note: If you have already set this preference in another product in your suite, the interaction options will not display in the Mudbox Setup window.
Working Files
Lets you specify the location where you want temporary Mudbox files stored.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
Interface overview
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
The main areas of the Mudbox interface are summarized in the following sections:
- Main Menu
- Views
- ViewCube
- Viewport Filter window
- Object List
- Layers window
- Properties window
- Trays
- Status bar
Customize the interface
The image above displays Mudbox with the default layout of tools and windows. You can unlock the default layout and rearrange the Mudbox interface to suit your workflow. (See Create a custom layout.) Select Windows > Reset Layout to restore this default layout at any time.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
Main Menu
The main menu bar organizes Mudbox commands by task. See Menus for information on the contents of each menu.
Views
Views provide a location for viewing and editing specific items. Views include the 3D View, UV View, Image Browser, and the Mudbox Community.
The 3D View is the window where you view and work with your 3D models. By default, the 3D View displays through the viewpoint of a perspective camera. You can look through a camera by first selecting it and then right-clicking it in the Object List.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
The UV View displays the UV texture coordinates for the active mesh in the 3D view as a 2D view. The UV View is useful for seeing how images that you paint on the 3D mesh appear as a 2D image in relation to the UV texture coordinates on the active polygonal mesh.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
The Image Browser lets you view and select 2D images and textures from your local drive or network. Use the Image Browser to:
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
- View reference images
- Choose an image for a stencil. Select an image thumbnail and then click the Set Stencil icon on the Image Browser bar.
- Choose an image for a brush stamp. Select an image thumbnail and then click the Set Stamp icon on the Image Browser bar.
- View and evaluate 32 bit high dynamic range images (HDRI). The Image Browser lets you view the full range of values in these image types.
- View and evaluate the images you extract as normal or displacement maps.
For more information, see Image Browser window.
The Mudbox Community is an on-line resource integrated directly into Mudbox where users can find and share stamps, stencils, base models, tutorials, works-in-progress and final renders. Users can also vote on peer community member’s work, as well as obtain feedback on their own.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
For more information, see Mudbox Community.
ViewCube
The ViewCube
is an on-screen 3D navigation tool that provides feedback about the current camera view in relation to the 3D scene. Clicking and dragging the ViewCube, you can quickly and easily switch between perspective and orthographic views of your model.
By default, the ViewCube appears in the upper-right corner of the scene view. See ViewCube overview.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
Trays
Trays store collections of items. Items can be added, removed or renamed using the Tray’s window menu (
). Items on a tray can be reordered by dragging an item using the middle button.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
Properties window
Properties windows display properties of objects and tools (for example, sculpt tools, paint brushes, stencils, stamps and so on). By default, the Properties window automatically updates to display the properties of an object or tool whenever it is selected.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
Status Bar
The Status Bar provides feedback to the user and offers information about the status of the scene, file load errors, and so on.
Heads-up Display
The Heads-Up Display (HUD) feature appears automatically in the 3D View and provides useful tool tips (hotkeys and feature usage, and so on) as well as status information (current subdivision level, number of polygons, and so on).
The HUD appears momentarily whenever particular actions are performed. You can control the display of the HUD from the Windows > Preferences menu.
Autodesk Mudbox 2023 Free Download
