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Mudbox 2016...nearly EOL?


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They would be smart just to toss it on steam for a flat rate of $50-100 and leave it be. I'd probably buy it just for the giggles, but yeah I highly doubt they plan to keep it going (development wise) much longer. Then again, who knows. Autodesk is an odd ball.

Edited by RabenWulf
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Pretty tough competing against the likes of ZBrush. All you have to do is look at the ZBrush forums and the massive amount of cool art work being made with that software. There is more and more cool art work showing up on the 3D Coat forum lately too.

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Autodesk is integrating some "Mudbox" tools in Maya... MB future could be -----> to death. Agree.

I didn't see that in the New Features presentation. Just some additional sculpting tools. Maya has had a sculpting module for a long time. The presenter even said that these new additions were not intended to be a replacement for a sculpting app. Just some added capability to what was already there. It looked like it was geared toward sculpting Blendshapes.

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Pretty tough competing against the likes of ZBrush. All you have to do is look at the ZBrush forums and the massive amount of cool art work being made with that software. There is more and more cool art work showing up on the 3D Coat forum lately too.

There are a LOT of major studios using 3D Coat, but you wouldn't know it, because they don't show their work, here...and rarely mention 3D Coat in the "making of" segments. Been trying to get Pilgway to contact these studios and ask for content. I also think the biggest hindrance to many sculpters adopting 3D Coat as an alternative is that it doesn't have a critical component of the sculpting pipeline, and that is SCULPT LAYERS. Both ZBrush and Mudbox have had this for a LONG time, and it's a common to sculpting as working with layers in Photoshop. You got to have them.

 

3D Coat does have this capability....in the Paint Room, but that is not where a sculpter wants to use it. It forces an artist to break up his sculpting workflow, by putting off the high-frequency detail once they are in the paint room. It can work, but it's too restrictive and clunky to do it that way. It's the No.1 reason more ZBrush and Mudbox artists don't use 3D Coat for sculpting.

 

I hope after 4.5 is released and Andrew adds SSS to the PBR toolset, that he visits Sculpt Layers in the Sculpt Room. That would make 3D Coat a much more viable production-level sculpting app.

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... The world of Maya modelling has also gone through a revolutionary change: the Autodesk team have not just focused on refining and modernising subdivision modelling, but have also now actually integrated Mudbox tools and capabilities straight into Maya with a brand new sculpting toolset. This will include brushes that feature volume and surface falloff, stamp images, sculpting UVs, and support for vector displacement maps.

Of course, this is just a partial sculpting toolset integration (for now!) ... etcetc

 

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The new features for Mudbox 2016 are embarrassing, I dont use the word hate much but I'll make an exception for Autodesk.. I hate companies that buys and kills products..

Mudbox had so much potential when the people at Weta\Skymatter owned it, I'm convinced it would be a force to be reckoned with if it was still the case.

 

Right now, MB is on life support at best.. Very sad...

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This is interesting, on the Modo forums someone posted an official Autodesk video detailing the changes to Maya. On the bullet point list in the video, they literally entered "Mudbox in Maya". Again this is from Autodesk.



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... The world of Maya modelling has also gone through a revolutionary change: the Autodesk team have not just focused on refining and modernising subdivision modelling, but have also now actually integrated Mudbox tools and capabilities straight into Maya with a brand new sculpting toolset. This will include brushes that feature volume and surface falloff, stamp images, sculpting UVs, and support for vector displacement maps.

Of course, this is just a partial sculpting toolset integration (for now!) ... etcetc

 

Source

Pretty much what I said before; some new capabilities but the presenter mentioned up front that it wasn't a replacement for a dedicated sculpting app. It's nice to have those there for sculpting morph targets/blendshapes, but for now, it's still pretty basic

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+1

Modo 901 will have sculpt layers.

When Andrew finally adds this, I think there will be no more legit reason to discount 3D Coat as a production-level sculpting app. I hope the roadmap after 4.5 is released is

 

1) SSS in PBR

2) Sculpt Layers

3) Revamped Pose Tool

4) New Retopo tools, including AutoRetopo (Raul's Quad-Remeshing tool?)

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When Andrew finally adds this, I think there will be no more legit reason to discount 3D Coat as a production-level sculpting app. I hope the roadmap after 4.5 is released is

 

1) SSS in PBR

2) Sculpt Layers

3) Revamped Pose Tool

4) New Retopo tools, including AutoRetopo (Raul's Quad-Remeshing tool?)

 

Layer Masks should be somewhere in there too.

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Yep thats a big one. Masking should at least be up at zbrush level for sculpting and or mari for painting. Its getting up there though.

You already have Layer Masks (Paint Room), and if you think about it, the way it works in 3D Coat is only slight different than the way it works in Photoshop. How so? Because Layer Masks in PS are simply DISPLAYED as if they are part of the layer it's linked to, but notice the little chain icon next to the thumbnail. You can unlink it and move either the mask or the layer independently.

 

In 3D Coat, you don't have the thumbnail, but you do have an alpha (that 3D Coat creates internally based on color values and converts to greyscale) linked to whichever layer you choose to...and the best part is you can paint one mask and link it to multiple layers (without having to use layer grouping to do it). Layer masking in 3D Coat is pretty darn powerful as it stands, but it could be more elegantly implemented (thumbnails on the layers).

 

Getting back to your comparison to masking in sculpting. 3D Coat FREEZES...and in some sense, it does mask. But it's different than clip-masking, where clip-masking HIDES. Andrew will have to enable true SCULPT LAYERS in order for that to work in the same way in 3D Coat. Truthfully, both Sculpting Layers and Masking (not simply freezing) exist in 3D Coat...just in the Paint Room. But that forces the user to leave that part of their sculpting workflow, until the texture painting phase. It makes it somewhat disjointed and awkward, breaking up the same task into two different stages of the pipeline.

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AbnRanger: Both viewpoints regarding masks have been argued to death on these boards atp. We don't need to go over it again in this thread. Besides, we know Andrew has slowly been working on a new PS compatible layer masks implementation for a while, and despite different viewpoint on the issue they'll be getting added sooner or later.

Edited by PolyHertz
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AbnRanger: Both viewpoints regarding masks have been argued to death on these boards atp. We don't need to go over it again in this thread. Besides, we know Andrew has slowly been working on a new PS compatible layer masks implementation for a while, and despite different viewpoint on the issue they'll be getting added sooner or later.

Not saying PS style isn't ideal, just that it seems to some of us that it is more of a luxury than a need....because layer masks work quite well in 3D Coat as is. There are MANY, MANY, MANY more substantive requests that have been waiting in line for a LOT longer period of time. True AO is one of them. Been requested by just about every user since the Ice Age.

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I think your exaggerating the number of substantial requests that people have been waiting on for a long time. Most of the features people want are very minor, but there's just so many of them that the vast majority will never be implemented. Most of the ones you mentioned are either forever ongoing requests (continuous improvement to autoretopo) or rather new (SSS in PBR, new pose tool).

 

Also, calling Masks a 'luxury' is weird, as 3DC as an entire application is a luxury; it doesn't do anything that others apps can't in some form, but it sure can make getting the desired results a lot easier. The more 3DC can make tasks like painting hassle free the better.

Edited by PolyHertz
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re: mudbox: last year 3dsmax also had very few new features, but look at it this year. very nice stuff.

My personal theory is that most (not all) of the new Max features are just stuff originally developed for Maya that was ported to work within Max. I think that Autodesk wants to eventually EOL Max, but there are still too many people using it, so they are first gonna try to get people to move to other products first. Once they see the subscriptions for Max drop low enough, they will EOL it.

They want to get rid of Max because they see it as redundant. Maya pretty much does everything that Max does, so why pay developers to work on both apps, when they could save money and just work on one?

Why do I have this theory? First of all, Autodesk already has a history of getting rid of apps they see as redundant. Also it looks to me like Maya development in the last few years has been much more intense than Max. Also they created Maya LT to try and grab all the customers who use Max for game art. They also stopped working on the "Design" version of Max. They want customers who use Max for architecture to instead switch to the new BIM apps like Revit (which is designed to be specifically used for architecture). Additionally they are also putting a big development effort into Fusion 360, which seems to be the new and improved all-inclusive CAD app that they want to eventually replace all their other apps which are used for design.

It looks to me like Autodesk is trying to streamline their huge portfolio of apps. In some ways this is sad because in the end they will EOL a bunch of stuff, but on the other hand it is great because they are building some very awesome super apps to replace all the other redundant stuff! Maya 2016 is looking really great with big improvements and a big feature set, and Fusion 360 is turning out to be awesome too.

Of course these are just my personal theories, Autodesk strategies may still change a lot in the future, but it's fun to share my speculations with other people who are also as interested in this stuff as I am!

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My personal theory is that most (not all) of the new Max features are just stuff originally developed for Maya that was ported to work within Max. I think that Autodesk wants to eventually EOL Max, but there are still too many people using it, so they are first gonna try to get people to move to other products first. Once they see the subscriptions for Max drop low enough, they will EOL it.

They want to get rid of Max because they see it as redundant. Maya pretty much does everything that Max does, so why pay developers to work on both apps, when they could save money and just work on one?

Why do I have this theory? First of all, Autodesk already has a history of getting rid of apps they see as redundant. Also it looks to me like Maya development in the last few years has been much more intense than Max. Also they created Maya LT to try and grab all the customers who use Max for game art. They also stopped working on the "Design" version of Max. They want customers who use Max for architecture to instead switch to the new BIM apps like Revit (which is designed to be specifically used for architecture). Additionally they are also putting a big development effort into Fusion 360, which seems to be the new and improved all-inclusive CAD app that they want to eventually replace all their other apps which are used for design.

It looks to me like Autodesk is trying to streamline their huge portfolio of apps. In some ways this is sad because in the end they will EOL a bunch of stuff, but on the other hand it is great because they are building some very awesome super apps to replace all the other redundant stuff! Maya 2016 is looking really great with big improvements and a big feature set, and Fusion 360 is turning out to be awesome too.

Of course these are just my personal theories, Autodesk strategies may still change a lot in the future, but it's fun to share my speculations with other people who are also as interested in this stuff as I am!

I agree that they seem to be trying to steer the right users toward the right app, even if individuals and studios have been using apps like Max for over a decade, and have a lot of plugin/custom tool $$$ tied up in that app. After seeing nothing special for me, personally, in Max 2016, and what all AD has done for Maya, it does make a lot of sense, that they are killing off some of their portfolio...including Max, slowly. But, to keep from ruffling feathers, they are being rather deceptive about it. They knew well before last year that they were going to kill off XSI. Probably were already in the process of doing the same for Max...but had such a backlash from the thousands of Max users (their largest userbase, and best-selling 3D App), that they put on this facade that they had major development plans for Max.

 

Major is the right word...as in giving it the slow painful death of Combustion, Toxik, XSI and Mudbox. It starts with diminished features, each year. If you look at the features in Max, they stopped buying plugins to add as features. The Graphite modeling toolset and CAT were the last two that I remember. Everything since has been them doing small additions, in-house. That is the same case in Max 2016. They are doing just enough in-house development to keep the wolves at bay, and within a few years they are going to give the Max community the XSI treatment.

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My problem with AD is, this move only takes their bottom line into acct and does consider the grief and loss of investment it's going to cause THOUSANDS of people who are suddenly going to find themselves FORCED to use/learn another 3D app...destroying all trust and goodwill in the process. I'm tempted to move over to Maya, after seeing all that's been done to it, lately...but what happens when AD decides that their Media and Entertainment division is just too much dead weight to carry around any longer. Maya was in the same market position it is in today, when it was bought by AD. what if they decide to sell it and Maxon takes it off their hands and gives it the royal XSI, buried alive treatment...just to get rid of a competitor? I also don't want to reward AD for upsetting the applecart the way they have. They brought all of this on buy their desire to dominate the market. They should have just stayed with Max and try to pile all of their development $$$ into it.

 

It might be a good time to start learning Houdini. I've been so tempted by Blender, but almost no studio uses it in the US.

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I also don't want to reward AD for upsetting the applecart the way they have.

 

Then get Modo :p

 

Max 2016s creation graphs are a neat new feature that got my attention; The ability to quickly create custom tools and modifiers without messing with maxscript or the sdk sounds great.

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