general.html
but Sculpt Mode uses a very different workflow: instead of dealing with individual elements (vertices, edges, and faces), an area of the model is primarily changed using brushes.
On the one hand it is very different but on the other hand you can initially make people feel more comfortable by relating it to taking Proportional Editing from edit mode and making a whole mode out of it.
In my early years I’d have liked a video showing moving 1 point in edit mode, another moving 1 point with proportional editing, and another with sculpt mode that has the firs stroke looking like proportional editing and then several more strokes demonstrating that the mesh now reacts like clay.
Note
It’s very important to have predictable brush behavior, to apply the scale of your mesh.
“… by applying the scale of your mesh.”
The importance of apply scale needs to be made very clear. Needs it’s own page. Needs 5 second video demonstrations of: how it affects sculpting, how it affects bevel modifier, etc.
brush.html
I would like a page or a video that does an almost unnecessarily deep dive into exactly what the heck “normal radius” is, with diagrams and visual aids.
Common Brushes
There are many brushes to choose from but these are the most common brushes to be sued during
typo: “used during” … “more information”
The common brushes icons should be individual images positioned exactly next to the corresponding paragraph to avoid confusion.
A little video of each of the common brushes doing one stroke would be pleasant here.
visibility_masking_face_sets.html
Hiding geometry als improves
typo: also
Hiding is shared between all modes, except Object Mode (i.e. hiding/showing of faces in one mode will hide the same faces in other modes too).
As a non sculptor this confuses me greatly. I’ve been using edit mode hiding for many years and the keyboard shortcuts being so different is a bit annoying.
I couldn’t really experiment with this new information because I do not know how to make face sets yet.
Perhaps this visibility info can come later. I don’t thing beginners really need hiding until after they have reached the level of making very complex objects in terms of poly count or overlapping areas where hiding becomes helpful. Masking and face sets I think should come before hiding.
Hiding is shared between all modes, except Object Mode (i.e. hiding/showing of faces in one mode will hide the same faces in other modes too).
Unlike Selection Masking in other painting modes, Sculpt Mode primarily uses Masks and Face Sets to easily control the mesh visibility and which faces can currently be edited. The exception is the Clipping Region, which can be used in any mode.
Hiding is one of the super useful and powerful things in Blender and could benefit from its own in-depth chapter somewhere else in the docs outside of sculpting.
The most common shortcuts are H to isolate the face set under the cursor (or show everything) and Shift-H to hide the face set under the cursor.
Yeah I don’t know how to make face sets yet.
The mask can for example be created/edited via the Mask Brush, Box Mask, Lasso Mask, Line Mask and Mask by Color tools.
I can tell you from experience that total beginners, especially people who don’t really sculpt or draw, but have some photoshop experience, primarily are looking for a way to use a detailed image as a mask to isolate a part of the mesh and displace a little decal on it. Myself and others would go down the rabbit hole of these links and then google searches and come up empty and confused and frustrated.
off-topic: How a pencil-challenged / stylus-challenged / anatomy challenged “digital artist” typically wants to use sculpting:
Creating masks follows a slightly different mental model than selecting in other modes. For example Shift-LMB is used for smoothing instead of adding to a mask.
Does this activate some kind of mask smoothing brush like the sculpting Smooth Brush or is it some magical shortcut with no UI equivalent, no tool equivalent, no settings? I thought maybe it triggered the Smear tool but that tool seems to do nothing to masks,… does nothing to anything. Moving on…
Instead a mask is typically always added to the current mask with LMB and subtracted with Ctrl-LMB. So if you wish to edit the masked surfaces, you’ll need to use the Invert operator,
Should mention that the invert operation is ctrl+i.
Both these operators can be quickly accessed in the A pie menu.
Where in the UI does one discover these pie menu keyboard shortcuts without consulting the documentation or a youtube video?
possible bug?
Paint with the mask tool ( should I be saying mask tool or mask brush), then A pie menu - smooth mask. The mask will be smoothed. The Adjust Last Operation box for Mask Filter will be visible. Paint with the mask tool again. The Mask Filter operation box is still visible. Change a value in the operator box. Your most recent mask strokes disappear.
Otherwise Face Sets can be created/edited with the Draw Face Sets brush, Box Face Set and Lasso Face Set. They can also be edited with the Edit Face Set tool.
This should probably be the first paragraph of this section.
The A and W pie tools should be followed by pointing out that all of those commands, and more, are in the Main Menu under Masks and Face sets. I love keyboard shortcuts more than the average person but I hate when shortcuts and gestures don’t have a corresponding entry in the UI.
off-topic: The main properties panel has all kinds of stuff that needs to also exist in the main menus so I can properly set keyboard shortcuts on them or add them to my quick favorites
off-topic: The smooth face set boundary feature would be so useful in edit mode. In addition to the loop tools addon’s circle command, I’d probably often make use of this face set smoothing tool in edit mode.
filters.html
all good
transforming.html
Needs visual aids. If not for the recent discussion around sculpt mode pivot I’d have no idea what’s being said here.
multiple_objects.html
This page has the first mention of “initialize face sets”. That probably should have been mentioned in one of the earlier places mentioning face sets.
In the case that Face Sets were already used, joining objects or creating new geometry in Edit Mode will automatically assign new Face Sets. This makes it immediately possible to target each new geometry, for example via auto-masking.
I won’t actually understand what this means until I setup a test case and experiment.
off-topic: I’d like a page that clearly explains the difference between face sets and face maps and vertex groups.
adaptive.html
This technique is especially useful to block out the initial shape of an object. It also has the advantage of removing any overlapping geometry and creating a manifold volume as a result.
off-topic: Would be nice if a team of volunteers went through all of the documentation and linked as many words as possible to the Glossary page entries, like “manifold”.
Any currently used mask, face sets and color attributes will be re-projected on the remeshed result.
This did not happen in my experiment.
… but I’m using 3.4 - will test 3.5. - failed in 3.5 also
To more easily access this feature, use the shortcuts R to define the resolution, and Ctrl-R to execute the remeshing.
R actual triggers Rotation. Should be shift+r
off-topic: Does this really need to use shift+r and does it really need to be 2 separate steps? Many people wish for a “repeat last stroke” command and the most blenderrific key for that would be shift+r. Couldn’t ctrl+r show the resolution grid ui and then left-clicking applied the remesh command and right-click cancelled (while remembering the new resolution value that was set)?
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… to be continued …
