Yeah, compared to the exciting days of Mr. Dobarro, Sculpt Mode seems to gather a bit of dust lately. Some bug fixing here and there, and some experiments in the Sculpt Dev builds, but no major advancements in the main Blender releases. Under the hood, work has started on a node-based brush system, and I’m afraid it’s going to take a fair amount of time before that will be really usable. Still hoping for insert mesh brushes, painting in Multires, a really good native auto-retopologizer, and more porting of Sculpt Dev features that are still missing in the main Blender.
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Any particular reason for this? Seems like an unnecessary overuse of the node concept, not to mention dev resource focus. Maybe I’m not seeing it, but you’d think resources would be better focused on improving the brush engine if anything?
This is exactly the sort of sidetracking that Dobarro did while the core of the UX was left in a sorry state.
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Julien posted on the process behind sculpting the character for Project Heist, with experiments of sculpt layers workflow using Sculpt Layers add on.
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Interesting. Good to see them move the R&D projects away from cartoony and towards the stylised realism.
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Yeah, we’ll have to wait and see how the node-based brush system will be implemented. I guess it’s part of the ‘Everything Nodes’ umbrella project. I just hope the nodes approach won’t bring along overhead. It’d be nice to be able to create, store and share custom brushes like in ZeeBee.
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Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I just don’t see it though. Unless you’re making crazy brushes that move towards the abstract, but bread and butter sculpting brushes like clay/polish/cut…why would you need nodes?
Anyway, I’m speculating blind, but it just seems like a strange use of resources if there is only a single dev working on sculpt mode. Wait and see, as you say.
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Everything Nodes really means everything eventually. I assume they’re doing it now versus doing something new and then replacing it with nodes later.
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Nah, it should be postponed indefinitely… 
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I personally am for node-based brush system. Especially with upcoming physics/simulation nodes, capability of making your own physical brushes similar to cloth brushes would be great.
But I’m also with many of you guys in that hoping for improvements in UX, multires, performance, etc. before anything.
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Native fast sculpt layer system please. Oh and vertex paint multires support plus multires performance improvements! Blurring (alt a) a mask in Multires is a pain and so is dividing and switching between subd levels. Yes i repeat myself. 
I don’t care that much about a brush managament system - i think it’s wasted time and manpower for now.
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Nonono 
“main character of the new Open Movie Project, we set ourselves a high goal: Hyper Realism!”
I don’t mean to be unnecessarily negative, but this does show how detached things are in terms of decision making. The goal was as nice as it was unrealistic. If it led us closer to getting features which many of us need on a daily basis (mostly stability and performance, nice and simple basics) it’d be awesome, but it seems that regardless of the project they’re working on trying to achieve the strategic targets.
I think the project is more something to show off. “See? You said we couldn’t do it but look how wrong you were.” instead of “Ah right. We see now what everyone was on about regarding this and that.”
Looking on the bright side - as much as I don’t need nodes most of the time during work, I do look forward to getting a node based system for rigging or shattering stuff one of these days. I honestly don’t see myself needing one for brushes that frequently (even though I’m sculpting professionally for almost 20 years now).
Nodes are putting a hold on many things for some time now. I guess if it becomes popular it might give us more resources as well, with a lot of people already sharing/selling node groups for this and that.
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I think the node system is meant for managing the settings of the brushes, not create completely new brushes from scratch. Although there have been proposals to port the “math” of the brushes into a node system, but I think that’s way too granular and probably not worth the effort.
It’s also not 100% decided that it’ll be a node system. You can read the devs designs in the latest module meeting notes (scroll down a bit):
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Oh right, I thought it might be some sort of low level node system to build brushes. I understand the ‘everything’ nodes concept of introducing nodes across all modes, but using nodes for brush settings? 
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From what I’ve read in multiple tasks, designs and in the chat it looks like exact opposite. Nodes are supposed to be used for brush creation and for picking relevant brush options that are supposed to be visible in the sculpting UI. With pre-configured brush pallette shipped with vanilla Blender and some optional brushes made by community you could potentially sculpt for an eternity and not touch a single brush node if you’d like.
It’s true that brush node editor is not set in stone and is not considered a priority. Which begs the question why so much people here are freaking out because of it?
It makes me laugh every time I visit this thread how much faff couple noodle boxes can create here. You will use nodes and you will be happy! 
Relevant link:
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My problem isn’t with nodes(I’ve been using nodes in different programs for as long as I can remember), rather my point was in using nodes for the sake of nodes when a slider will do just as well or better.
Either way, it will be interesting to see which way it goes.
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I think it’s mostly about a lot of things being on hold because if it.
It’s an interesting concept, but it’s useful for some departments and less so for others. Great for environment/layout and almost irrelevant for anything character/creature related. The later of which would prefer to have the basics right, like multires or layers, maybe add some retopo to it which isn’t exactly a new thing in cg.
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About using nodes I didn’t had you in mind
I don’t think sliders are going away when it comes to sculpt UI.
The way I understand brush node editor design proposal is this:
For brush creating and advanced configuration there is separate editor or even workspace with predefined primitive with matcap just for testing new brush and node editor similar to shader/geometry nodes. If you want to make new brush you go there, change/add and expose parameters you want for a brush - just like you pick which geometry attributes you want to pass from geo-nodes.
This job should be done by a developer (for vanilla brushes) and by the folks who want to make new brushes.
For regular sculpting your UI should expose for a given brush only the parameters that are set in brush editor. This can radically clean up brush/tool settings UI where you can have 2,5, 10 or whatever parameters/sliders you ultimately want.
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This actually sounds like a fun sandbox environment, although there aren’t that many brush settings to experiment with in Blender, as opposed to Zbrush, for instance.
I can definitely see the usefulness in this.
Ultimately, it will open it up to a huge public library of user made brushes, a la Zbrush.
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According to Joseph Eagar there are ~50 settings for every brush. That’s quite a lot if you ask me (but I don’t use ZB).
Exactly. And some people here are freaking out. I don’t get it.
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