Yeah this seems unnecessary to me, the detail that you can't model or sculpt in, can usually be done using certain photoshop fixes, in the normalmap or the diffuse to bring out more detail.
I maybe just suck at mudbox in a couple of ways. I just found that I got way better results using paths in photoshop for the stitching. I could stroke the same path with a custom brush for the diffuse and the bump, making it very quick, efficient and delivering consistent results. I tried the same in mudbox with curves and…