Mask sculpting from an image

[system]

here is what i want to do exactly -

• i created a design in alchemy
• now i want to sculpt it on a sphere in blender - which is masking the sphere with the image and add or subtract sculpt the rest of the places, thus it is engraved on the sphere.

I will be using blender 2.65a+svn54186 in cycles.

I need a step by step clear method. Help please.

thank you.

[Richard_Marklew]

In the texture settings, select the brush icon to make a brush texture. Select your image you want to mask.
In sculpt mode select the Mask brush.
In the Sculpt texture panel select your texture
Set your stroke to Anchored or Drag Dot
Set your brush curve shape
Draw out your mask

If you don’t want to use a msk but sculpt with the texture directly repeat above but use another brush such as the draw brush

[system]

@Richard Marklew

In the texture settings, select the brush icon to make a brush texture. Select your image you want to mask.
In sculpt mode select the Mask brush.
In the Sculpt texture panel select your texture
Set your stroke to Anchored or Drag Dot
Set your brush curve shape
Draw out your mask

If you don’t want to use a msk but sculpt with the texture directly repeat above but use another brush such as the draw brush

I didnt understand well…I went to texture painting, selected F brush, and then how to select the image i want to mask? In UV image editor, open image - just that?
Coming back to sculpture mode, there I could find no Mask brush option.

[Richard_Marklew]

Coming back to sculpture mode, there I could find no Mask brush option.
Select from the Brush menu or press shortcut M

Attachments

[Stan_Pancakes (Stanislav Blinov)]

@EscapedNight

I didnt understand well…I went to texture painting, selected F brush, and then how to select the image i want to mask? In UV image editor, open image - just that?

No. It may seem not obvious (and, well, it is ). Any sculpting brush can be assigned a texture to it. This texture acts like a mask: lighter colors mean more brush effects come through. This works just like ‘alphas’ in ZBrush.

The setup is this (you don’t even need to leave sculpt mode):

1. Select Mask brush in brush panel.
2. In the ‘Texture’ tab of brush settings, click a ‘+’ to add new texture to the brush.
3. In the Properties panel, go to Textures tab (you may have to add a material to your object if it doesn’t have one. I know, I know, it’s strange, but that how it is). In this tab, set type of texture you want to display to be ‘Show Brush Textures’.
4. Select the texture you’ve just added in the drop-down list.
5. Set up texture as you would any other texture (i.e. if you want this to be a premade image, set type to ‘Image or Movie’ and in newly appeared setting load your texture).

That’s it, you can now sculpt using the texture. Because Mask brush is selected, your texture will define the shape of mask. That’s why you’d probably need ‘Anchored’ stroke: so you can precisely define which part of your sculpt you need to mask.

In my screenshot, you can notice how I masked an area on my polysphere with simple noise texture. This means that this area will no longer be affected by any other sculpting brush. So I can take, for example, Draw brush and start drawing ridges on my sphere, but that masked area will stay as it is.

You may also notice that on the left, the texture preview is black. I don’t know why that is, normally it should display proper texture preview, but for several revisions now it’s just black for me. Textures work fine though.

Also note that the texture you’ve selected only affects current brush.

Coming back to sculpture mode, there I could find no Mask brush option.

It is not an option (wow that sounds cool! ), it is an actual brush. It is located in the brush panel where you can select any other sculpting brush.