A Look at Mudbox 2009

The first release since Autodesk bought Mudbox maker Skymatter at the end of 2007, Mudbox 2009 is effectively Mudbox 2 with extra Autodesk polish, but much of the code has been rewritten too. “The only things that are the same are some of the staff images and the file open and save system,” Cardwell reveals.

Other than this, the main focuses have been performance, texture painting and something Cardwell calls rendering and presentation. “We had some limitations in Mudbox 1. We had a point shading mode, but now you’re able to rotate your scenes with proper shadows and HDR lighting,” he says.

This part of the release sees an improved user interface and a camera set-up which is more ‘Maya-like’ than before. There’s also a push to squash the gap between an asset’s appearance in-tool and in-game. This has been improved by opening up the shader options so developers can use their own shaders.

The biggest additions, however, are the texture painting tools. “There’s a whole slew of things that come along with painting tools. There’s also a lot of things that people haven’t done before in terms of memory management and being able to paint across multiple UV titles,” Cardwell explains.

A Look at Maya 2009

Ten years since the original art package called Maya was released, Maya 2009 isn’t a huge release feature-wise but there are some interesting new additions. One is the nParticle system, which slots into the Maya Nucleus framework. This means anything created using nParticles should also work seamlessly with the original nCloth module, making it possible to combine fluids within containers to create interactive pressurized objects, for example.

Another new component is the animation layering system, which has been modified from realtime animation package MotionBuilder. It allows you to create nondestructive animation work in a similar way to working with layers in Photoshop. These layers, which can be brought in from existing animation libraries or mocap sessions, can be blended, merged, grouped and reordered, as well as added to preceding layers. Maya 2009 also adds official support to the MEL scripts released in the previous set of free bonus tools, which enable the preservation of UVs, and a new unwrapping tool has been added to the UV texture editor.

A Look at MotionBuilder 2009

In recent years, MotionBuilder hasn’t had the same sort of high profile as modelling packages such as 3DS Max and Maya, but the 2009 release sits well within the new Autodesk family. Indeed, as a realtime animation tool, MotionBuilder can also be licensed by game companies in the shape of its animation engine HumanIK, something that Ubisoft used in Assassin’s Creed and EA has used for many of its sports titles.

In terms of new features, however, the focus is on improving the quality of character animation, script-based customisation and better visualisation. The former saw the introduction of a rigid body system, which enables animators to set up physically modelled scenes within MotionBuilder between characters and objects using a full collision system. This is combined with a new ragdoll solver, which can be applied to the control rig to enable realistic motions to be created more quickly than would be possible using keyframes or motion capture. Further control is provided in terms of a Python script editor, which offers syntax checking and command highlighting, as well as flexible interface options. Finally, support is extended for 64bit Windows Vista, also enabling use of up to128GB of RAM when using Windows XP 64, making it easier to handle larger and more complex scenes and improving all-round performance.