The following describes known limitations as well as workarounds in Autodesk® Mudbox™ 2009 at the time of release.
Opening Mudbox 1.0.7 (or earlier) files
In Mudbox 2009 the .mud file format was updated to substantially improve interactive performance using models with much larger polygon counts than ever before. As a result, .mud files from Mudbox version 1.0.7 (or earlier) are not compatible with Mudbox 2009.
Workaround: It is possible to transfer sculpted models between Mudbox 1.0.7 ( and earlier versions) and Mudbox 2009 using the .obj file format.
For more information, see Import Mudbox files from earlier versions.
Ambient Occlusion effect incorrectly positioned on model’s surface
The shading effect associated with the Ambient Occlusion filter can appear shifted or offset along the model’s surface. The issue occurs on small scale objects.
Workaround: Increase the scale of the model using the Scale tool.
Brush display delayed on Windows XP (64 bit) and Vista (64 bit)
The brush tool ring (that indicates the position and size of the sculpt/paint tool) updates with a noticeable lag time behind the cursor position when using Mudbox with a tablet on Windows XP (64 bit) or Windows Vista (64 bit). In most situations, it has been due to a hardware setting for the tablet stylus.
Workaround: You can adjust the stylus preferences to reduce the delay on these operating systems as follows:
Snap to curves not working when Stamp Spacing is on
The Snap to Curves property that existed in Mudbox 1.0.7 is now incorporated into the sculpt and paint tools by default. A tool snaps to a curve guide whenever its close enough to an active curve over the model. Sculpt or paint tools do not snap to an active curve whenever their Stamp Spacing property is turned on.
Workaround: Turn off the Stamp Spacing property for the sculpt or paint tool.
Difficulty painting models with hard edges
Paint is not applied properly on sharp-edged objects. For example, the edges of cubes.
Workaround: Subdividing the model may help in these situations, or also try enlarging the brush size.
Viewport filter settings not saved
Viewport filter settings (Ambient Occlusion, Tonemapper, Depth of Field) are not currently saved with a Mudbox scene file (.mud).
Workaround: Viewport filter settings can be saved as a material preset. A material preset saves the active object's material and any current viewport filter settings as a preset on the Material Presets tray. Material presets are saved between Mudbox sessions. Clicking the preset applies its contents to models in the current scene.
Randomize Stamp Rotation doesn’t work after stamp image is rotated
Once a tool stamp has been rotated, the Randomize Stamp Rotation property no longer works.
Extracting texture maps when a vertex on the model has a valence greater than 10 (That is, more than 10 edges converge at a single vertex on the model) may produce unpredictable results in that location in the resulting texture map.
Workaround: Construct polygonal models in such a way as to avoid vertices with a valence greater than 10 before importing as an .obj to Mudbox. For further information, see Troubleshoot texture extraction.
Grab tool misses vertices on triangle-based models
Using the Grab tool on models that have triangle-based polygons may cause some vertices to be left untouched (despite their appearance within the brush ring).
Workaround: Subdivide a triangle-based mesh once to convert it to a quad-based (four-sided polygons) mesh. The Grab tool works better on quad-based models.
Paint strokes do not appear on model
Paint strokes do not appear on the model as they are being applied immediately after duplicating a curve guide.
Workaround: Save the scene, then re-open it and begin painting again.
EXR files not appearing in file browsers
EXR format images are supported by Mudbox for importing a paint layer or specifying a reflection map as a material property. However, files with the .exr extension type do not appear when using those file browsers by default.
Workaround: You must type in the filename (with extension) of the EXR image that you want Mudbox to load.
EXR images (32 bit) for reflection maps
When choosing images for reflection maps, keep in mind that the amount of GPU memory required to display them can be quite large. For example, a 4K x 2K 16 bit/channel map requires Mudbox to produce six 4k x 4k 16 bit/channel textures to load on to the GPU (1 for each surface of a cube). This amounts to 768 megabytes of textures for the environment map alone. This drastically affect the performance of any computer system and graphics card.
Workaround: The Mudbox team recommends that users limit their reflection maps to 2k x 1k as the maximum resolution. Most users will not even notice a degradation in quality when using 1k x 512 reflection maps. These resolutions would require 192 Mb and 48 Mb respectively.
Camera clipping plane affects display of brush ring
The clipping plane settings for the active camera can affect the display of the brush ring on the model and the ability to sculpt when working close-up on a model. This mostly occurs whenever the camera has been dollied (zoomed) in at a distance closer than the near clipping plane distance.
Workaround: Adjust the near clipping plane distance for the current camera to a smaller distance. For example, from 1.0 to 0.1
Mirror symmetry not working with Imprint tool
The Mirror symmetry property does not work with the Imprint tool.
Workaround: Use the Tangent symmetry property when using Imprint. For more information, see Sculpt using symmetry.
Eye and Lock buttons in Object List don’t work as expected
The lock and eye buttons in the Object List do not consistently indicate the lock/visibility state of curves, lights, image planes and stencils.
Workaround: The visibility of curves and lights can be controlled by the right button menu or from the Display menu. The visibility of image planes and stencils can be controlled in their respective property windows.
Cannot select file type when using Export Selected for paint layers
The Exported Selected feature in the paint layers window does not allow the selection of other file types.
Workaround: Type the file extension you want after the file name that relates to the file type (filename.png, filename.tiff, and so on) to export using other file formats.
Smooth Source Models option produces faceted results
The Smooth Source Models option in the Maps > Extract Texture Maps window may not work as expected and produce faceted results in the extracted normal map.
Workaround: Additional subdivision of the model prior to texture extraction may improve the resulting normal map (provided you have available memory). Facets in the normal map may still be apparent in some situations.
Selecting empty displacement node in Object List exits application
Selecting the Delete This Operation button in the Extract Texture Maps window produces an empty displacement node in the Object List (visible when you display all nodes). Clicking this empty node causes Mudbox to exit prematurely without saving the file.
Export Selected ignores selection when using .mud format
The File > Export Selection feature ignores the current selection and exports all items in the scene when the .mud file format is used.
Workaround: Export a selection using the .obj format. If the .mud format is required, save your scene with all objects. Open the scene again and delete all objects except for the one you want saved, then save the file.
Saving file when unpainted UV tiles exist outside of camera view causes those tiles to be unpaintable
Painting and subsequently saving a scene file containing multiple UV tiles, and some unpainted UV tiles exist outside of the camera’s current view when the file is saved, causes those tiles to appear black and unpaintable when the file is subsequently re-opened. That is, texture files for the unpainted UV tiles are not saved with the scene.
Workaround: Ensure when painting a file with multiple UV tiles that the file is saved early on with all objects visible to the camera’s view with some tiles initially painted.
Workaround: When a scene has not been saved as previously described, and the texture maps for some UV tiles are missing, re-create the texture maps as follows:
