The big Blender Sculpt Mode thread (Part 1)

General Forums Blender Development Discussion
9469

Another topic , the “move” or “grab” brush

On Blender after using “Grab” brush you must use Remesh

On 3D Coat “move” brush automatically increase polygons as you use it.
When releasing brush it applies another sort of remesh (to global space) to the resulting mesh.

1280×430 116 KB

Blender could automatically apply Dynotopo as you move polygons using the “grab” brush, similar to using “Draw” brush in Dynotopo mode.
And it could also do a Remesh when “Grab” brush is released.

3D coat shows it’s possible to do it automatically, so another idea to improve Blender “Grab” brush.

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9470

actually you can move with snake hook where you can get same behavior as grab but with dyntopo enabled.

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9471

Yes, it works, i’ll do some more testing.
While it is like having a little less control while move seems more straight.

If there are is “grab” brush there is a reason, and if it’s possible on another brush, the “grab” brush should benefit same Dynotopo, or perhaps “grab” is intended to move geometry while keeping polygons as they are.

For example trees on a surface, “grab” could move a little trees and surface while not changing geometry.

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9472

Just remember to turn rake off. Ive never liked default snake brush. For me its bad. I see it all over the youtube where people make “tests” with those crazy tentacles.

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9473

Multires heal brush
rBae349eb2d505 (blender.org)

Essentially, the brush will fix errors that can appear on a multires mesh when sculpting (like the infamous spikes). Yes, this is in master.

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9474

I really would have hoped for multires to be fixed instead of workarounds like this. Working with multiple subdivisions is nowhere near as unpredictable in other softwares as it is in Blender. Part of the reason I stopped using it for sculpting.

Great to see Joe getting the grant though. Looking forward to see what’s to come.

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9475

This is a better than nothing improvement. I am glad Joe found a way to implement it.

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9476

I dont get it. This bug was introduced with 2.6 or 2.7 something around that time. And in 2.82? They removed multiress and made from scratch. Why this bug is still there?

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9477

It would be better as Mesh filter maybe…

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9478

@Ratchet and @riceart , Grab and Snake Hook brushes are several years older than Dyntopo.
Grab brush was one of 6 brushes present in introduction of Sculpt mode in 2.43 ( Draw, Smooth,Pinch, Inflate, Layer) .
Flatten was added in 2.44.Clay was added in 2.5.
Snake Hook was added in 2.53 with Inflate, Blob, Crease, Scrape, Fill, Thumb, Nudge, Rotate.
Clay Strips brush in 2.63.
Mask brush was added in 2.64.
Dynamic Topology was introduced in 2.66 with Simplify brush and 6 brushes unable to work with (Grab, Rotate, Thumb. Layer, Smooth and Mask)

After that, new brushes were created by Pablo.
Draw Sharp, Elastic Deform, Pose in 2.81. Relax/Slide, Multiplane Scrape in 2.82.
Draw Face Sets, Clay Thumb, Cloth in 2.83. Boundary, Multires Eraser in 2.91. Multires Smear in 2.92.

Experimental SVC have a Paint and Smear brushes.
In sculpt-dev branch, Fairing, Scene Project Symmetrize and Array were done by Pablo.
UV Smooth, Sharpen Color Boundary and Displacement Heal were done by Joe.

Most of brushes have not been thought with Dyntopo in mind. Brushes added by Pablo were also initially thought for his voxel remesher workflow.
Joe has the big task to make them working fine with Dyntopo.

Since dyntopo exists, everybody had in mind a Grab brush like what you describe.
But initially, it was thought just as a way to adjust mesh by moving its vertices freely as in Edit mode.
Snake Hook, as its name suggests, was initially thought to create hooks or thorns in a non dyntopo workflow.

Sergey sincerely thought that he had solved the multires bug, during a moment.
Pablo said that the bug could not be solved with Multires as a modifier.
It looks like there is a problem about the way info is propagated and stored. What I understood is that bug is not solved ; because that would imply to modify a lot current workflow and redesign multires from scratch. And they had other strategic targets to work on (Cycles X, Asset Browser, Viewport Compositor, etc…), at that period.

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9479

Well, it turns out easy come, easy go.
rB969a571e0fbf (blender.org)

Perhaps an issue with the code was found and he needs more time to get it right. To get multires to a state where you just can’t break it would be the ideal goal.

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9480

I think I have this bug so rarely, almost as it does not exist. I think it can happen if your level 0 mesh too far away from multires levels , or if you change topology a lot . So better to apply Base time to time , and be very carful if you changing topology .
Also spikes can be fixed by mesh filter/ displacement eraser - just use lasso mask for this spikes -invert mask and apply mesh filter . Some times tricky to mask this spikes but I think it is best option for the moment.( you can grow mask to have more area affected after you masked spikes - can work better)
But for me I really almost never have this bug. maybe I am too accurate with it :slight_smile:

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9481

I had a bad feeling when i saw the commit since there was no review or anything, just commit to master and that is not the proper way.

There still seems some nice plans for sculpt improvements in 2022

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9482

Multires wasn’t made from scratch, was it? I remember vaguely that Sergey worked on the current code and improved some stuff but doing it all over again proved to be much more work than they expected. …Or something like that, don’t want to spread lies lol, I just don’t remember exactly how that went :sweat_smile:

Anyway, as @regis3d said that spike bug hasn’t been an issue for me in a while, there has to be massive changes on the base topology for it to appear.

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9483

Oh i would love to see Sergey writing Multires from scratch. Maybe one day.

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9484

The notes for the recent sculpt/paint meeting stated the tool should’ve gone through the review process, especially since it did not work as intended anyway. There was also a blurb about making sure multires is good enough to not need such a tool.

In short, the team will have to bring all substantial changes through the review process like seen with the other modules.

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9485

I had this issue when there was no change to the base mesh, so while this is an obscure bug, it happens and when it happens it makes the process quite nasty.

To get rid of those spikes, I generally apply the multi res then fix it on high density mesh in sculpt mode with smooth and couple other brushes, sometimes I use the smooth mod with weights. Then I reapply the multires modifier. This is the most solid method I found to be working however this method has another nasty bug, it destroys existing vertex groups, which I already filed a bug about.

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9486

Nice.

Also enable “Remesh” when we are already in Dynotopo mode would be much appreciated.
Unecessary waste of time to do : switch off Dynotopo, click Remesh, switch on Dynotopo.

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9487

I must disappoint you, many 3D artist use Blender for Sculpting and does have alpha brushes and it’s not complicated to do it, you must learn it how to use like any other software.

Many people witch using other 3D software are jealous on Blender, but they certainly shouldn’t be.

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9488

I must disappoint you, many 3D artist use Blender for Sculpting and does have alpha brushes and it’s not complicated to do it, you must learn it how to use like any other software.

You know what, we should totally go back to Blender sculpt mode back when it was first released. I mean, you must learn how to use it like any other software, am I not right?

Blender isn’t our baby, sometimes people exaggerate on the requests or don’t do them in the best manner, but let’s learn to take criticism/feedback and motivate people to do it in the best way possible instead of taking it in an almost personal level like it’s hurting our choice of software.

And Alpha brushes / panels is one of the points in Blender which is ancient and more complicated than it should be (it’s been like this since I can remember, I’m not sure if has ever been improved). We do have some free addons which help a lot with it, but still, some simple (native) alpha management would go a long way.

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