My frustrating "will it run or won't it" investigation into Autodesk's Mudbox has hit another stumbling block.
In the broadest sense of the word, the 2015 version of the software will run and sculpting tools seem to work well.
Unfortunately, one of the most important capabilities of Mudbox is texture painting and there appears to be a crippling bug in the paint brush that makes it useless for this purpose.
Reader and ArtDock collaborator Alex Cheparev first alerted me to the issue which he spotted on his Surface Pro 2 and Wacom Cintiq Companion (see his video below). I've confirmed the issue on both generations of the Suface Pro and the Thinkpad Yoga.
According to Cheparev, he reported the bug to Autodesk who responded that "it's a known bug with the new Intel HD Drivers and they are working with Intel on fixing it in a future release of the drivers. Problem is, they recommended using driver version 9.18.10.3257, but it is nowhere to be found. Intel has removed it from their servers and I can't find it anywhere else...The oldest driver I found on Intel's website also exhibits the same behavior with the paintbrush."
Another bug that Alex didn't illustrate in his video relates to painting in mirror mode. The mirrored side receives 100% of the color applied, but the original side appears to be stuck in Lighten mode.
Although the paint is applied on the right side of the head, it only displays properly on the left side. This issue is repeated regardless of the mirror axis.
So despite the allure of multi-touch gestures, I'll be putting further testing with Mudbox on hold (at least until the next display driver update from Intel).
