Mudbox makes “digital sculpting” a reality, fulfilling many 3D artists’ dreams. © Yonghyun Kim (left) and Ken Finlayson © 2006; design based on a concept by Aaron St. Goddard.

For some, “digital sculpting” still sounds like some far off dream. However, a few lucky souls know that dream is no longer the stuff of fantasy. Mudbox, a soon to be released 3D app developed by New Zealand-based Skymatter Ltd., is the fulfillment of many 3D artists yearnings. While the release date and final pricing are yet to be determined, the software has been in the hands of beta testers for a while now. I took some time to speak to the three masterminds behind Mudbox, as well as some of the folks involved with the Mudbox beta. Read on for some feedback that is likely to whet your appetite for this amazing new tool.

Andrew Camenisch, Dave Cardwell and Tibor Madjar are the founders of Skymatter. They aren’t too picky about what you call them, as long as they are treated as equals. This all for one approach is reflected in the Mudbox community, as beta testers provide feedback that has a genuine effect on the software. When talking about creating a useful tool Camenisch says: “Production software should be only a means to an end, and Mudbox exists only to serve the artist. That is, all feature design and development priorities are set by the production artist's purpose. The problem often with development that isn't designed and driven by the end-user is that the software can become an end in itself — a ‘personal expression’ of its designers, or the personal ‘research project’ of its developers or a mish-mash of features that offer few actual solutions in depth.

Mudbox’s release date and final pricing aren’t set yet. The software is currently in beta testing as its creators firmly believe that end-user feedback will improve the product.

“In contrast, Mudbox is ‘purpose built,’ in that it exists only for the simple purpose of enabling you and me to make more, better and faster. Mudbox is focused. Everything in Mudbox is there because it was proven useful to the digital sculptor. Two critical aspects of any production tool are ease of use and pipeline compatibility, and so making software that is easy to learn, fun to use and respectful of established conventions is very important to us.”

Camenisch has a fine arts background, with experience in drawing and printmaking prior to his digital art education. In grad school, he started modeling in 3D, and built a website called The Human Head as part of his thesis on portraiture and 3D CG. “The right people at Weta must have seen it, and several months after graduating I was in New Zealand building creatures for The Lord of the Rings. After serving as a lead modeler on Return of the King, I had the responsibility of leading the facial modeling and setup task for King Kong. Then I served as models lead at Weta until finally deciding recently to take a break and move on to other things.”

Skymatter’s Andrew Camenisch describes Mudbox as “purpose built,” in that it exists only for the simple purpose of enabling artists to make more, better and faster.

Cardwell has an impressive résumé including design work for Ford, Mercedes, Weta Digital, Electronic Arts, as well as software development with Alias|Wavefront. It’s this background that helps me understand the tools and techniques artists and designers require. I feel very much inspired by many of the successes and pitfalls I've encountered throughout my career in the creative process, whether in design, gaming or film.”

When asked about the thinking behind Mudbox, Cardwell adds, “In general, my experience with CG over the past 11 years has shown me that we are still in the very early stages of this medium. I’m still wishing I could create the types of characters and rich environments I created using an airbrush in art school years ago. With the current state of CG tech, artists are left with primitive “tool boxes” full of digital bits of metal springs, buttons and other bolts, bits and bytes, and you need to have a degree in rocket science to have a character with hair splash around in a kiddy pool?

“Today’s and tomorrow’s content requires creation of crowds, cities, ancient jungle villages, oceans and anything else you can imagine. Creators can’t focus on content iteration and refinement when the tools they use are as complicated and cumbersome as they are today. Tool technology, like the fingers of the hand, needs to be unobtrusive enough for any user to work at the speed of thought. That should be the goal. We very much feel that part of the future of digital art creation lies within ‘brush to build’ paradigms. Traditional 3D pointillism is for teapots, bald low poly characters and arthritis. I believe one of the biggest challenges of the industry is to be able to take risks and think a bit outside of the box, scrap some of the traditional CG religions and beliefs and build new innovative user interfaces that help everyone unlock their potential. Through proper interfaces and tools the speed and quality of digital art creation will improve along with the depth in sophistication of our entertainment experiences. And that should make us all happy campers.”