This version of Mudbox marks the first new release completely under the Autodesk banner.

Mudbox 2009 is the second release of Autodesk's 3D sculpting and painting software. The package uses a brush and tablet driven interface to create and modify high poly 3D objects for later import into Maya, 3ds Max or other 3D applications. Mudbox got its start in New Zealand, where it was created at Weta digital for use in The Lord of the Rings movies. The software went commercial and was later purchased by Autodesk. This version marks the first new release completely under the Autodesk banner. Mudbox offers artists a way to get dirty and create highly realistic objects in 3D. The new version adds more robust texture painting tools as well as lighting improvements and more accurate viewport display.

The interface to Mudbox is best driven by a Wacom tablet, and it is fairly simple and straightforward, only containing the tools needed to sculpt and paint. There is very little learning curve on this program, and using it is quite fun. The interface contains one large viewport for sculpting and painting as well as two other tabs that allow you to view a model's UV texture coordinates or browse images. Along the top is a menu bar, a pallet of brushes and scultping tools runs along the bottom, and an options panel sits on the right side of the screen. Navigation is similar to the three button mouse model used in Maya, while the brush interface is similar to Maya's Artisan interface, so anyone familiar with that package will feel right at home. Mudbox offers a number of primitive objects, such as humans, creatures, reptiles and basic primitives to get you started. You can also load in your own polygonal models as .OBJ files. Once a model is loaded, you can pick any number of sculpting tools to sculpt or paint the model.

The sculpting tools in Mudbox allow you to work and shape the model much like a real world clay model, offering options to sculpt, smooth, grab and otherwise move the mesh of the object around as you please. The tablet- based interface uses pressure sensitivity to affect the behavior of the tools, making the interface very responsive. One of the nicer features of Mudbox is a symmetrical modeling tool that sculpts both sides of the model equally, which is terrific for objects like characters. Another handy tool is called Steady stroke, which can let you preview a stroke before is drawn, which helps produce a smoother stroke. Sculpting is further refined using user-defined brushes. These can be anything from simple round brushes with a used defined falloff, to stamp-like brushes defined by a bitmap. The stamps can be used to add actual roughness to a polygonal surface and add all sorts of fine detail. To get additional detail, Mudbox can easily add resolution to a model on the fly, making it simple to res-up a model as needed.