30-day Mudbox 2009 Trial

[Amr-3DT]

We are excited to release Mudbox 2009. There are hundreds of new and improved areas. This version has a focus on Improved sculpting, 3d Texture painting and interactive real-time rendering.
Trial: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/mform?siteID=123112&id=10707843

[Bigley]

Haven't really had a chance to mess with it but it sure does look pretty :D

[Crispy4004]

I've been messing around with it. If you preferred Mudbox to Zbrush 3 you'll definitely be happy with this. I'm trying to decide myself if I'll make the switch or not.

So far, what I'm happy with:
- The performance.
- The texturing. Fantastic spray options. Airbrush works well too.
- The real time ambient occlusion.
- The reflections from hdri images.
- Lighting and shadows look great.

What I'd like to see added/fixed:

- A transpose feature. I can always pose in Zbrush afterworlds, but I find it pretty useful with fixing proportions.
- A rebuild level feature.
- Better implementation of CGFX shades. I was really excited to test this out before the release. Unfortunately every CGFX shader I've tried likes to crash when you make any changes. Seems like they need to be tailor built for Mudbox.
- DOF doesn't auto focus even when you have the check mark ticked. This makes it way too annoying to sculpt with.
- Can't paint and sculpt at the same time.
- Dodge/Burn and Clone texturing brushes.

Right now I'd say it's prettier and more optimized than Zbrush, but lacks a couple convenient features that I've grown accustomed to having around. Then again, not having to deal with HD Geometry is easily the biggest draw to Mudbox 2.

I'm also look forward to testing out Zbrush 3.12 as well which is suppose to fix the annoying scaling slowdown among other things.