Hmm, guys,
I’m relatively sure that with my descriped procedure you have quite the same smooth-brush than in 3.0.
I am currently running 3.0 and 3.1 side by side and also the 3.0 smooth-brush dents a little bit in the mesh.
Look for yourself:
You see the flat area on the 3.0-picture ?
So maybe there was already a significant change from ZB2 to 3.0 that nobody noticed so far ?
Start 3.1 , go to plugin menu->license
Deactivate
Start=>programs=>pixologic=>Zbrush=>uninstall
Reinstall 3.0 , reactivate with key you got in mail few months ago.
Naaah… we would have noticed that wouldn’t we…? 
Rasta, can you do two more things?
indeed, Plakkie, there’s a bit of flattening, but I was more concerned with
the ‘digging’ at the edges of the falloff area. The 3.0 smooth curve supplied
by Rastaman seems to eliminate the bulk of that, and with a lighter intensity
it’s workable for me. The screenshot I showed above with the p3dspheres
was with mouse only…not with a pressure sensitive pen, so that should
help as well.
Anyhow, thanks again, Rastaman, since the 3.1 had overwritten the 3.0
info I would have had to do that little uninstall/re-install dance, and you’ve
saved me that time. 
Cheers.
WailingMonkey
I have doubts that going back to 3.0 will be the solution.
I can also write lines with the smooth brush in 3.0 when you set him small enough and the z-intensity high enough.
Look here: (the more vertical lines in the hair are from the smooth-brush)
This is 3.0 smooth-brush.
But I agree that the programmers must have changed more than the settings between 3.0 and 3.1, because the bad effect is more viisible in 3.1.
But by using my tablet pen with lower pressure and the reloaded settings it worls good enough for me.
So it’s maybe a solution for all who don’t want to downgrade totally.
But I agree totally, 3.1 is mostly for the trash, too many drawbacks. too few improvements. 
I’ve noticed that if you switch brushes with the samples changed that with SMooth it is changed as well, so what i mean is maybe samples works with Smooth.
Also for me just changing the curve seemed to give me the old smooth brush back.
Well, I tried it all, but for me the bottomline is:
I can’t get a totally smooth surface with the smooth brush. No matter what I try, I always get a few ridges and lumps. This is because the brush is flattening the underlying geometry.
This said I must conclude that the smoothbrush is quite useless to me like that. As I’m not a good sculptor Smoothbrush is everything for me, a safetynet so to speak. Without it I’m lost.
I’m sorry, I thought a good night sleep would ease my frustration, but it didn’t. 'Nough said: I hope the people at Pixologic have spotted it and will fix it asap, or tell us it’s meant this way. (I surely hope not…)
Plakkie, I had that problem in 3.0. If you search the boards regarding “maintaining volume with smooth”, you will probably be able to find the old posts. I don’t remember having the volume issues in 2.0 but I definitely remember them in 3.0 and posted about the issue more than once.
The best I’ve been able to do with smoothing (to prevent causing unwanted dents and bumps), is to sculpt with a much higher intensity than what I smooth with and turn down the focul shift to -100. Even at -100, I still get an edge with the smooth but not nearly as defined.
When I opened my mesh in Maya Artisan and attempted the same smooth operation on my super high resolution mesh, I was also unable to get a perfectly smooth surface. There always seems to be a very tiny edge where the smoothness happens and where the original mesh is unaffected. It almost seems like the mechanics are such that the smooth bit depth on the smooth curve is too low to evently distribute the smoothing function across the center of the smooth and the outermost edge (just a guess). I wonder if there needs to be a higher precision brush. Seems like it’s rounding too much, which always seems to be the issue with ZB. When I say rounding in this context, I mean the vertex floats stored (x,y,z) in each.
Okay so my wife was asking me what the hoopla is all about so i gave her a demonstration.
First i showed her my modified curved smooth in 3.1 showing her what its supposed to look like, looked good, then i restored it back to default, very bad as you all know. then for fun i went into zbrush 2 and showed her, and guess what you still get some flattening and a little bit of an edge, so this is not new behaviour its just more obvious now with the default curve.
Heres how i’ve managed to store the curve on startup, i created a macro where i go into the curve and adjust it, simple as that.
Its weird, I never had any problems with the smooth brush in previous versions. This is the first time I’ve encountered this problem and its quite annoying because I am so used to the feel of it and now I’ve got to adapt to the new smooth brush all over again.
im resigned… i should begin to get used to this new smooth.
change settings helps… but still not the same.
I have a question: If i save (in brush/save) a modified smooth brush, whats the curve saved? the “smoothing fallof curve” or “edit falloff curve”?
sorry for my english, hope makes sense
One reminder or better warning for all who want now to downgrade from 3.1 back to 3.0.
All models you have once saved with 3.1 will not be able to be opened any more with 3.0 as original .ztl-file !
The only way then is to export them first out of 3.1 as .obj, downgrade and then import them as .obj, in 3.0.
But then all further informations that were stored within the original .ztl-files (subtools, subd<levels etc.) are lost until you upgrade again to 3.1 or higher.
Keep that in mind before you decide.
If you have a second hardware-machine, remember that Pixologic allows you to run 2 installations of ZB with one bought license.
And you can use one 3.0 and one 3.1 with this license.
Unfortunately a double OS-installation on the same hardware will not be able to run 3.0 and 3.1 on the different OS, regardless if you use separate partitions. In my case so far this didn’t work.:td:
I have a question: If i save (in brush/save) a modified smooth brush, whats the curve saved? the “smoothing fallof curve” or “edit falloff curve”?
Edit one. Smooth one isnt saved in any brush as far as i can tell…
I’m displeased with the smooth brush as well, in some cases the clay brush with reduced intensity almost seemed better.
I had to make a macro to load Rasta’s curve, which helps, but it’s not perfect… I’ve been using the average head and experimenting with the slash1 brush and then smoothing, it’s easy to tell something is off… The smaller the smooth brush, the worse the flattening effect is.
Can someone recreate the slash brush in ZB3 and test it with smoothing? At the moment I’m not ready to downgrade, I’m waiting to hear from Aurick or the new(?) “Support” Guy
I was just going to upgrade my zbrush to 3.1?
What you people suggest should I or not?
because smoothing is a must, without it detailing is worthless.
and what happened to aurick?
I dont find him here anymore ?
I can’t reproduce the smooth brush flattening effect. I’m finding it performs very well, better than before; as always, pressing Shift whilst in Standard brush mode will give you the smooth brush, but now if you press Alt as well you get a sharpening brush into the bargain! Brilliant workflow streamlining!
If you guys are seriously still having problems you should publish your system specs and that kind of useful stuff that helps programmers debug.
I hope you find a solution soon.
Cheers,
R
hey Rory
What is your system spec ?
That will give us a better idea.
something working ‘specs’ is better then dozens not working one.
Please try BrushMod of Smooth Brush.
Smooth Curve is a default curve of Z3.1.
BrushMod_0
Isn’t this good?
Sorry,I am not good at English… :o
I have no read all the replies so your Q might’ve been asnwered already…
the problem is probably caused by the default zintencity of the smooth brush of 100… switch to the smooth brush and lower the zintencity… then when you use shift while using another brush will be smoothing according to the new intencity
I think it works better now than it did before…it might just be me but it seems more natural whereas it seemed strange and different before.