Up to this point all my original plans have changed. Some of the reasons for that were my own doing and some were instigated by actions of a third party.
I started with Lightwave, and my trial is still active. As a modeling tool for less organic shapes I see it’s value and reasons for using it in concert with other tools. For organic shapes or sculpting, not so much. Overall, it’s easy to pick up some of the basics and given opportunity or need I suspect some of the more advance features will be equally as accessible.
Since the Zbrush trial is no longer available (I called to make sure I didn’t hallucinate this trial) I chose to give Mudbox a try since by most accounts it seems to be the closest competitor and it is described as a 3D sculpting program that comes from Autodesk.
I have found Mudbox surprisingly easy to use. I think, initially my biggest challenge was learning to navigate within the space. Moving around the object was fairly easy but the zoom in and out and pan took a little more work. I’ve been able to model a few things so far, some items easier than others, and at least one still in the ‘work in progress’ phase.
My ‘work in progress’ piece sent me off to explore the creation of stamps for texture. This has had it’s moments of being kind of cool and kind of frustrating. The help for Mudbox is great for the steps as far as how to setup the document in Photoshop and how to save it so it will work. So I decided to give it a try. My first one I liked, and was able to load it, but nothing showed up when I tried to use it.
A few more tries and I was able to get something to work and I began to understand some of the tricks to be used. I had run out of patience at that point so decided to move on to something else. Of course the minute you do something like that you figure out what you were probably doing wrong.
A side benefit of that little exercise was that I also figured out how to create a custom preset in Photoshop. Not that it is particularly hard. I had not had occasion to need one up to now.
There are some things I still find a bit frustrating in Mudbox. Possibly because i haven’t figured out how to do them yet. As a result, I’m still not satisfied.
So I called Pixologic to ask about the situation with regards to the trial. What I found out was that it had existed and was pulled. However they do have a 30 day return policy.
I have learned a lot so far. I still don’t have an answer as to which software to start with, though, I am getting closer. Mostly, I have learned that the right tool really can make all the difference.