Wax

Wax are unique objects that allow geometry to be added or subtracted using a brush tool. Unlike extrude or revolving geometry, wax geometry can be added from any angle or direction including turns and bends. I can be subtracted the same way. Hole can be made, edges and corners can be beveled or smoothed or completely taken out.

Wax Default Cube

Beveled edges, hole and extrusion

Wax can be used for simple task like drilling a hole, or hollowing out an object, or complex modeling like creating human body parts.

Hole Drilled in Wax

Ear Made From Wax

Skull converted to Wax and Hollowed Out

Wax tools can be keyframed, so effects like disintegration, erosion, growing, can be animated using wax.


Wax Tools

The wax tools consist off three brush type tools, which are used to add, subtract or smooth out the wax geometry. Wax workspace has it's own brush properties palette. There is also no brush preview with the wax tools, so setting the size is basically done by judgment, or trail and error.

Melt Wax Tool: subtracts wax geometry from the object, like it's melting it.

Add Wax Tool: Adds wax geometry to the object.

Smooth Wax Tool: Smoothes wax geometry in a melting like fashion, so it smoothes by sightly subtracting geometry.

Wax Tool Palette: has options for setting the brush's pressure, radius, and option for locking the depth.
Pressure: sets the force used by the brush, higher setting applies more force so the brush's function is faster. Wax will respond to higher setting quicker, but there is also less control over the action of the brush. So for more detailed work a lower setting is usually better.

Radius: Sets the size of the brush. As already stated there is no preview for the Wax Brush, so sometimes there is trail and error for setting the brush size when doing detail work.

Lock Depth: This option keep the brush for penetrating the geometry completely through, or adding geometry to the full extent with a single pass of the brush. This option is useful when needing to make various holes or extensions the same depth or distances. It is also useful for making even surfaces on an object. It can even be used when hollowing out object, to help from going completely through the object.

Even holes can be made.

whole side of object evenly subtracted

Extents can be made evenly.

There is a limitation to the extent wax can be grown or extended. As a wax object is created in the Composer environment there is a bounding box displayed, this is the limit wax can be extended when the add tool is used. After the object is created in Composer the bounding box is no longer displayed.


What is supported by Wax

Wax support all the material channels, but have limitations for mapping. Only the Planer, Cylindric, and Spheric mapping tools can be used for mapping materials. They also have paint limitations, they can only be bucket painted a solid color. None of the paint brushes or paint FX tools are supported by wax. They also do not support masking of any type or any distortion from Brush tools, FX tools, or HeightShop tools ( with the exception of Wax Brush Tools ). They can not be Morph, but they can be used as morph targets. Wax can be use in a hierarchy, but if the hierarchy is flattened they will be converted to mesh even if all the objects in the hierarchy are wax objects. When a boolean function is done using wax they are converted to mesh even if all the objects in the boolean function are wax. Wax can be converted to Mesh, or Tin objects.



This interface tutorial is written and provided by : Stephen Ray