I’m finding the new behavior for the wax brush in 2010 absolutely useless, you can no longer use it with the solid alpha to emulate “clay tubes” brush from zbrush. I had started to use this a lot for blocking out all of my shapes whilst sculpting and find it almost impossible to build up any real depth to my forms in 2010.
If I can’t revert this behavior in the settings then I’ll have to switch back to 2009 for the time being.

Anyone from Autodesk here who wants to reply?

are you kidding. the new brush acts more like the zbrush claytool then ever.
ive been using alphas with my brush no problem.
your saying your alphas dont work with the brush?

also you can adjust the fallof to ge the claytubes effect

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Not true, you cant build up volume with the new wax brush (esp. at larger brush sizes and lower strengths) it acts more like a cross between flatten and smudge which is useless to me. It feels like stucco’ing a ceiling where your strokes are just effecting the surface pattern rather than the form.
I’m not against having this brush in mudbox but it should be renamed clay surface brush or something like that as it is definitely not a replacement for the wax brush as a pure sculpting tool.

	Video

Although I really like the new wax brush the problem you have highlighted also bugs me a bit.

It would be cool if mudbox had some kind of intelligent scale multiplier for all tools so the strength is consistent when you adjust brush size.

the previous clip I showed didn’t highlight well enough the thing that bothers me most about it though so let me show you this and hopefully it will convey the real showstopping issue that is making 2010’s wax brush unusable for me in production.
I really hope someone from Autodesk actually looks at this forum because I’ve found it extremely difficult to get any support for mudbox since it moved from Skymatter to Autodesk.

	Video

Yeah there is also the flattening inherent with the new wax brush which I haven’t really found to be a problem the way I work, but still I do wonder why they couldnt have left the old wax brush in addition to the new one.

Ive ran into this problem as well.
I have found that its not lowering the strength that helps but rather lower the brush size.
it seems to be based off of brush size and the forms around it. ho much it encompasses.

but yes it could be annoying sometimes.

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Anyone from Autodesk here who wants to reply?

I’ll take a stab at it.  :)

The old (2009) wax brush’s behavior was actually quite similar to that of the sculpt brush.  After slightly adjusting the falloff, strength, and buildup of the sculpt brush, I can’t discern a meaningful (to me) difference between the two brushes (I’ve attached an image that shows the two side by side).  If there is some special behavior in the old wax brush (not available in the sculpt brush) that I’m missing, please do show me.  I haven’t found it yet.

The new wax brush can take some getting use to.  In the second video, if the strength had been increased instead of decreased, the brush would have actually begun raising the surface instead of mashing it in.  However, the wax brush will never preserve the shape of the cube’s corner; in fact, the point of the wax brush is to ignore underlying form and detail and deliver a clean strip of material over even blobby or noisy surfaces.  If you want the corner preserved, I recommend using the sculpt brush.

The trick with the new wax brush is to be aware of its size and strength relative to the surface you are working on.  If you’re tackling the skinny legs of the bull mesh, you’ll need a smaller brush with a decent amount of strength.  Basically, if you’re seeing too much flattening, try decreasing the size and increasing the strength.

Personally, I love the new wax brush—particularly for blocking up forms. That isn’t to say there isn’t room for improvement! Ianucci’s suggestion to tie the strength to the brush size is something we’ve been considering as well.

	Attachment

ianucci 30 October 2009 11:29 AM

It would be cool if mudbox had some kind of intelligent scale multiplier for all tools so the strength is consistent when you adjust brush size.

amen brother, although I use some custom tools when it gets to be a pain

To replicate old wax brush use the sculpt brush and a flattish curve and turn down the strength a bit. I use the new wax a liot but there are still some jobs that the limited ceiling effect of the old wax brush is better.

Wayne…

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Andrew and Wayne, thanks for the assistance.
After playing around with the sculpt brush settings as recommended I’m getting pretty close to what I’m after, so thanks.
There are certainly things about the new wax brush that I like and I can now see why it is the way it is, but if you could just add an option to the wax brush so that when you stroke over a transition between planes the brush only ever adds to the surface rather than subtracting (unless of course alt is held) that would be a really helpful addition to it’s functionality.