Mudbox, custom shaders ?

[jimpaw]

Hi Everyone,

I Recently made a vampire face in mudbox and was looking forward to start texturing it in mudbox. The strange thing is that when i paint a texture in mudbox the lightning hardly lets any colors throught. I would like to see the colors more like you do when you pick the "flat light" option and just normally shaded. Like in 3dstudio max for example. Am i doing something wrong ?

Is it possible to import shaders that represents a model in a game enviroment in day light ?

I mean the shadows and highlight are way to extreme.

Also i would like to know if anyone has links to tutorials that covers the hole pipeline from modeling -> texturing -> Mudbox -> Normalmap -> exporting it to game ?

If feel like i am missing something i need alot of help and advice.

thanks // Jimmy

[SpeCter]

I´m not sure if that´s what you need, but you could take a look at:
http://vimeo.com/7916648

Pior shows how to make Litspheres there.

[jimpaw]

I´m not sure if that´s what you need, but you could take a look at:
http://vimeo.com/7916648

Pior shows how to make Litspheres there.

Thanks for the tips but what i mean is that the lightning somehow covers the colors of the texture,

lets say that you make a character that looks like this : http://browse.deviantart.com/gameart/3dgame/monsters/?qh=&section=&q=#/d28gbto

when you import that model and use that texture i can garantee you that it wont look like that in mudbox, i am not talking about that i need a perfect ligtning scene, just enought to fairly represent the colors of the uv.

[pior]

Yeah the default mud shader can be harsh, and the alternatives (litshperes, Blinn) dont support textures. I am on the same page, I really wonder why theres not more custom shaders available especially since Mud is supposed to support them since mud2009

Only thing I can see helping you out is to play with the Tone Mapper screen effect. Hard to predict, but it should brighten your scene quite a bit.

If you are okay woth completely flatlit textures and no shading at all, then theres a mode for that in the menus too.

Good luck

[SpeCter]

Did you use a completely white material as base?If not do so.
You can move the lights around , add new ones , change their values and so on.
I never had problems with textures not looking right to be honest.

Edit: After reading what pior said, i think i got it, so nevermind what i said before ;)

[jimpaw]

I have tryed the flat light option it works okay but as you probably realize its a bit blind to work like that. An incredible anoying fact about mudbox is the brush tool. You can actually paint an object and suddenly when you pick a certain color and paint it wont be seen as much as it should be. Can you imagine how good mudbox would be if the brushes where more sensetive ,didnt create this strange bleeding all the time and worked like photoshop ? , Are there any other really god programs for this ?

[jimpaw]

Did you use a completely white material as base?If not do so.
You can move the lights around , add new ones , change their values and so on.
I never had problems with textures not looking right to be honest.

Edit: After reading what pior said, i think i got it, so nevermind what i said before ;)

I have tryed that but i will give it another go. thanks.

[oglu]

more sensitive and strange bleeding..?
could you explain this a bit further...?

[jimpaw]

more sensitive and strange bleeding..?
could you explain this a bit further...?

Well for example if i paint a texture in photoshop i can have a 5 % opacity and slowly paint on my texture and it creates this smooth look. skintones for example that really needs to be painted slow and have a smooth tone. things like this is impossible in mudbox, lets say that i have an yellow skin and want 5 % darker skin around the nose, then sometimes when i paint Mudbox will not paint the color at all, you can actually have to bring upp the opacity fto 20 % before it even reacts. this happens all the time and are really disturbing..

What i mean with the bleeding is that if i paint a dark gray fpr example 5% over a light gray Mudbox will sometimes change color to some red in it or green. have you ever seen that?

[oglu]

try to paint 16bit textures in mud to lower those "bleeding" stuff...
the brush strength in mud is not a opacity its more like flow in PS... i agree this should be improved...

report all your ideas to the mud team... they are traking all incoming stuff...
in the mud help menue... help --> suggest a feature or report a problem...

[pior]

Something to keep in mind is that when Mud brushes start to fail and not give you the result you'd like ... it means its time to use the export to flat PSD feature. Then you can paint on that screenshot in Photoshop any way you want, and reimport in mud. Its often the most flexible way to paint - and surprisingly enough, its also often more accurate than painting in "real 3d".

[jimpaw]

I actually tryed to export as flat and still dont get it. I mean if i work on a light grey texture in photoshop and spray that on the uv it automaticly becomes much darker when i import it to mudbox again. You can just feel that mudbox shaders is acting really strange, i saw a tutorial yesterday that really amazed me, a girl from Russia painted this character with the help of uv paint 3d, it looked way more easier, much more smoother, the strange thing is that i actually think i have tryed that program many years ago and got exactly the same feeling there. Mayby photoshop cs5 3dpaint will do the job? , i just doubt it can handle 1.1 million polygons ;)

[oglu]

my workflow is to bake an ao map for the mesh and set the viewport to flat lighting...
or using an IBL light with a gessoLight or a white map...

[jimpaw]

my workflow is to bake an ao map for the mesh and set the viewport to flat lighting...
or using an IBL light with a gessoLight or a white map...

IBL light with a gessoLight or a white map, what are all these?

[oglu]

an image based light...
create --> light --> image based
go to the properties and klick on image based light file...
navigate to ..myDocuments\Mudbox\2011\data\Textures\Lightprobe s\...
and set the image to gessolight.tga or white.tga
bring the intensity a bit down...