When the model's form, texture and color are solid and ready to go, Mudbox provides several ways to export all or part of the various units that make up your work. After selecting your mesh either from the Object list, or by using the Object Tool in the Select/Move Tool tray, you can export as either an .fbx, .obj, or the native .mud Mudbox file. And if you also have Autodesk Maya open, you can send your mesh directly into the program choosing to send UV/texture information, collapse layers, or have each layer be represented as blendshapes. But let's say that you have Photoshop as well and would like to work on just the texture information associated with the UV layout. You have the choice of picking a single layer or exporting a specific channel that opens in Photoshop for you to edit. Any time you save in Photoshop, Mudbox is made aware of the change and is ready to re-import the files to display on your model. Mudbox leaves it open to you to know how best to manage your projects inside and out of their environment.
The materials property window allows users to change the characteristics of the applied material.
Depth of Options
Autodesk Mudbox offers a lean interface at first, but if you delve a little deeper, this software offers a lot more. Looking first at the Layers window, you can layer your deformations on top of each other by separating your sculpted areas. Layers can be locked or made invisible so that you can focus on other areas. Sometimes when sculpting, you may want a certain region to be hidden or unaffected as you sculpt around it. The sculpt tools Mask and Freeze help you to control that. Either working on the base mesh or creating a new layer, you can paint a mask or freeze area so that the surrounding vertices are left alone based on how opacity of the applied red (mask) or blue (freeze) coloring. The difference between the two methods is that Freeze locks vertices so that they don't move where Mask hides sculpted geometry that has been added on a separate layer other than the base mesh. Also, the mask color visibility can be toggled off and on from the Layers window. Both workflows can be used in tandem to offer more control on how you sculpt your digital clay.
Autodesk Maya 2011 is able to pull in your Mudbox mesh with the color and texture intact.
Two other windows tucked in next to the Layers window are the Object List and Viewport Filters. The Object List is a quick view of all the components present in the scene and the sub-components that make it up. When the geometry is selected, the base mesh as well as each subdivided level of detail is revealed. The orthographic views of the cameras give you access to plug an image into the stencil and/or imagePlane settings. Clicking on the material lets you change its properties such as diffuse, specular, bump map, reflection, and shadow settings. Then finally, the last tab is the Viewport Filters palette that allows you to switch on visual post-processing effects. This is useful for previewing an effect that will be used in a different program. Settings like the normal map view can be saved out and exported. All effects have properties that can be adjusted as needed.
