Blender School - CGCookies Core: Sculpting 2 (Brush settings)

 

Digital Sculpting with Kent Trammell 
Lesson 2 & 3: Brush settings

Colour coding

Blue-tint icons are for the "additive" brushes. This is no longer applicable as Blender 4.3 made big changes to sculpting.

Blob: Create balls of clay on the surface.
Clay: Flatten and smoothen the surface.
Clap Strips: The main way to apply strips of clay (C).
Clay Thumb: Simulates the movement of a thumb over the clay.
Crease/Polish: Brush with a pinching effect
Crease Sharp: Much sharper and stronger than the crease brush.

Draw: No used much (by Kent).

Draw Sharp: Like Draw but with a sharper falloff.
Inflate/Deflate: = bulge or revert clay (I).

Layer: Create a layer of clay with a fixed depth on the surface.

Note: Invert brush:  Hold Ctrl.

Subtractive brushes

Fill/Deepen: Pushes surface to a flat plane

Flatten/Contrast: Pushes verts to an average height to create flat areas

Plateau: Locked orientation and depth to create a raised effect.
Scrape/Multiplate: Scrape the edge with two angled planes to create an effect,

Scrape/Fill: Common for filling or flattening. Great for rocky surfaces!

Smooth: Common for smoothing surfaces

Trim: Cut sections away

Blender School - CGCookies Core: Sculpting

 Digital Sculpting with Kent Trammell

The first Core course begins! 

C01L01_sculpt-mode-overview

How to enter sculpt mode. Note that it's context-sensitive, so the object you actively select must be sculptable, so it won't be available if you select a camera or a light.

In Sculpting, you need to have a lot of vertices for the magic to happen. Consider using a subdivision surface modifier to create a suitable starting object. 

Tip: Apply a selected modifier by hovering in the  N-panel and using Ctrl+A 

Brushes can be selected from the Tool menu (T) on the left or the N-Panel (N) on the right. Having them on both sides at once is redundant.

Using a pen and tablet is advantageous. You get a more intuitive feel for sculpting and better support for pen pressure.

C01L02_sculpt-mode-settings

A Rundown of the main Sculpting tools/brush controls.

In Drawing mode you use the sculpting brush:

Radius (F) sets the size of the brush

Strength (Shift+F) sets how strongly you apply the brush

Weight/rotate brush (Ctrl+F) reorientates the brush/changes its weight

The middle-mouse is to rotate the view. I need to know what the stylus equivalent is.

+/-  Apply the brush (+) / Invert the brush (-)

Brush Settings

Automasking Topology - for meshes that have islands, this ensures that only the select island's vertices are moved. Example: Suzanne has separate eyeballs. When this option is selected the eyes don't get distorted when you sculpt the head mesh.

Front Faces Only - Key setting because a brush will deform hidden vertices. It's not good behaviour by default. Select this to ensure that the brush only moves the vertices on the side of the object facing you.

Other brush settings will be covered later (apparently).

Stroke

Another important setting is the option to stabilize stroke. This can take the shakes and involuntary movements for your inputs -- also helping the UI become less responsive?

Falloff  Sets how the effect of a brush is reduced over distance.

Auto-symmetry is a useful tool for applying changes on multiple mesh sides.

In the symmetry menu is an option to Symmetrize. This lets you retrospectively apply changes across the three axes. Very useful. Somewhat hidden!

Dynotopo is an important tool for making areas of a mesh or less dense for applying different levels of detail. It will be covered in a later lesson.

First bash! Clay material from Sanctus