Mudbox 2012 Feature List

[hulahuga]

http://area.autodesk.com/mudbox2012

Check the vid in the link for further explanation

New features in Mudbox 2012 include:

• UV-Less Painting: Enjoy the freedom of not having to create UVs before you paint! Texture artists can now eliminate or reduce the time-consuming and often difficult task of creating UVs; even complex assets comprised of multiple meshes can simply be loaded, and painted right away. The resulting high-quality textures can be exported as Ptex files for an entirely UV-less process, or, for a pipeline requiring UVs, baked into UV space once UVs have been created, and exported as image files.
  
• Large Texture Datasets: Now it’s possible to paint and manage large texture datasets, in order to create the very detailed, high-quality assets. Thanks to a new texture and tile management system, you can display and paint hero assets with hundreds of texture maps consisting of billions of texels.
  
• Paint Layer Masks and Blend Modes: Combine and edit paint in powerful nondestructive ways, with new paintable layer masks for paint layers that enable you to selectively reveal or hide portions of layers. Furthermore, 22 new layer blend modes help extend artistic possibilities and offer significantly enhanced compatibility with Adobe® Photoshop® software.
  
• Editable Stencils: Easily make use of available images to rub or project detail onto models, with the new ability to deform stencils to align their texture data to underlying model features.
  
• Single-Step Suites Interoperability: Work more efficiently with other products in the Autodesk® Entertainment Creation Suites 2012, with the new ability to round-trip data with Autodesk® Maya® 2012, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2012, and Autodesk® Softimage® 2012 software.
  
• Performance Improvements: A number of performance improvements in Mudbox 2012 help you to paint and sculpt at higher resolutions more smoothly; save scenes with texture data in less time; create, select, and duplicate paint layers more interactively; and load dense OBJ meshes more quickly.
  
• New Brushes and Brush Options: Access a more robust painting and sculpting toolset: the new ability to apply a single brushstroke across multiple objects; new grab tool options that offer enhanced control over shaping a model’s silhouette; and lasso and rectangle marquee modes for selection, freeze, and weights tools.
  
• Multiple Joints: Create, manage, and weight multiple joints to quickly and easily deform and pose full-figure models. You can now create symmetrical pairs of joints, while joint hierarchies can be created automatically based on influenced vertices.
  
• Pose Presets: Work with multiple poses nondestructively, with the new ability to store joint transforms as presets. You can sculpt at different poses and have these sculptural changes carry across from one pose to the next, deforming correctly in the space of each pose—great for accessing difficult areas for painting or sculpting, or for testing designs in different positions.
  
• Linux Executable: Mudbox 2012 is now available as a 64-bit executable for the Linux operating system, enabling studios whose main content creation applications run on Linux to rationalize their pipelines.

EDIT: New info added...
Seems they've added some Zbrush functions plus those of the subscription advantage pack as well as some quite cool stuff regarding textures...

[Freespace-3DT]

Thanks for the find, posted to the frontpage.

[hulahuga]

Originally Posted by Freespace-3DT

Thanks for the find, posted to the frontpage.

Cheers!

[SgtHK]

UV-"less" painting? That's sick, man.

[hulahuga]

And did you see the part of the vid where they showcased it? That's some sick amount of detail!!

[Kage]

I love the idea of P-Tex

[hulahuga]

Yeah, I mean why should you even use UV maps anymore...??

[NinthJake]

P-tex is the most amazing (and most useful) thing I have ever seen in a 3D app (well maybe not but who cares?)

I just wonder how the texture resolution works. Like do you specify a resolution before converting it to Ptex or do you have "unlimited detail" in your textures?

I suppose it is the first option because I don't see how unlimited resolution would work well with your video RAM when rendering.

Also Ptex + Vector displacement maps = Win

[Crispy4004]

Ptex is all kinds of awesome, but I wonder if is easier to integrate with other apps now. I remember watching someone from Pixar demonstrate it using Ptex with Renderman for Maya at Siggraph and it looked like a big hassle. It's not like you could just plug in the ptex file in and be done with it. They did mention however the integration was still in development and a lot could be done.

[hulahuga]

Does anyone know of any release dates?


I think that if they could make a smooth integration for ptex then I do think a lot will happen on the texture field very soon...

[NinthJake]

I think a lot of developers are gonna work a lot on Ptex this year and the next year we will see a flawless integration for almost every app for sure. This is gonna be a golden time for texture artists

[hulahuga]

I'd say it will enable texture artists to specialize and push even further and for modelers and sculptors to get good textures a lot easier...


Also does anyone have any info on the file sizes for ptex and how they affect performance?

[paulius-st]

i realy like these new features. especialy painting tools .

[SgtHK]

Originally Posted by NinthJake

P-tex is the most amazing (and most useful) thing I have ever seen in a 3D app (well maybe not but who cares?)

I just wonder how the texture resolution works. Like do you specify a resolution before converting it to Ptex or do you have "unlimited detail" in your textures?

I suppose it is the first option because I don't see how unlimited resolution would work well with your video RAM when rendering.

Also Ptex + Vector displacement maps = Win

Vector Displacement had been a sculpting artist's dream. Now it's becoming reality since 3ds Max 2012 now supports them.

[hulahuga]

Originally Posted by SgtHK

Vector Displacement had been a sculpting artist's dream. Now it's becoming reality since 3ds Max 2012 now supports them.

Maya 2012 does too now actually

I do wonder if the viewport 2.0 will support it though...