Voxel Tools

When you’re in the Voxel Room, there are a robust set of tools that you can use for sculpting and performing different operations.

They are located on the left-side tool panel.
You can always access the Voxel Tool Panel by pressing “Spacebar” anywhere on the screen. As with any other panel, you can dock it for your convenience.

Intro to 3D Coat 010 – Sculpt Room – Vox Tools

Vox Clay: It lets you blend expansive strokes quickly on the surface of your model. It will also simultaneously smooths the surface after you’ve applied it.
Grow: Increases or decreases the surface beneath the cursor. None of the Brush Alphas affect “Grow”, just the brush size and the intensity. Press “LMB” and move the mouse to produce an expanded section.
CTRL+RMB to produce a contracted section. On the top panel, the “Growth power” slider controls the intensity of the expansion, and the “Thaw power” slider controls the intensity of the contraction.
Build: The build tool grows the surface constantly when you move the brush. This is a deprecated brush from 4.9, so it may be replaced with another brush based on Voxel Brush Engine.
Airbrush: Airbrush tool from the 4.9 toolsets.
Smooth: A dedicated tool for evening out any irregular areas of a sculpture. See also Smoothing Options.
Fill: Fills any cavities or voids that you apply the brush to. Its action is similar to the “Smooth” tool but more precise. It’s useful when making cavities shallower but not fully level with the rest of the surface. It sometimes requires very high-intensity settings to fill areas.
Carve: It lets you place high peaks and deep gouges quickly on your model, but with no smoothing.
Blob: Very much like the “2D Paint” tool, but with fewer options.
Sphere: This tool is a quick way to create bubbles, bodies, eyeballs, etc. The size of the sphere is dependent on the size of the brush. You can also make it dependent on stylus pressure: click on the icon near the Sphere extrusion slider. The maximum size will be the maximum size of the brush.
You can create separate spheres, and long, “pill-shaped” cylinders rounded at the ends by the Left click-dragging in open space. Because of this, regular, “button-based” viewport navigation needs to be accompanied by holding down the “Alt” key.

How pick the depth when drawing a shape. How to you control where the shape appears in depth?

The tool would draw on a plane defined by “last pick point”. That is, if your cursor goes over the voxels at the top in your example either at the time you start your stroke or at the time you end your stroke depending on the tool, then it will draw at that depth. In order to avoid drawing on different planes unintentionally, use the 2d Paint tool with plane defined by RMB. That way you will be sure to draw on the same plane unless you click RMB. If you do use 2d Paint, you may find that the red plane preview is really annoying. In the tool options you can reduce it in size so that it doesn’t bother you.
You could try another tool which has the “on plane” checkbox, it should work basically the same with any tool since you seem to be using rectangle mode.

Plane: This tool allows cutting off everything in front of a defined plane. Use RMB and tool options to align the plane. This tool respects rectangle painting. CTRL will invert the action and fill the hole behind the plane.
2D-Paint: This tool paints voxel thickness on two axes you specify by right-clicking anywhere in space or on the surface of an object. Notice first that as you rotate the view and move the brush, it’s moving along the two axes. When you change your view, new strokes will always face the camera. Pick any Brush Alpha you like and just paint!

It also has an important option on the top toolbar:
“Double-sided”. With this checked, you can paint double-sided strokes.
Plane: This tool acts just like a carpenter’s wood plane does. It will scrape the volume away from the set position and the normal of the brush cursor. You set the brush cursor’s position and normal by clicking and holding the RMB and then dragging along the surface of a voxel object. There are five modes by which you decide the position of the brush:

• 1. Pick point & forward direction: This will place the cursor at the last location you used the RMB, facing toward the camera.
• 2. Pick point only: This will place the cursor at the last location you used the RMB only. Its direction is based on the settings in the parameters tab.
• 3. Pick point & direction: This will place the cursor at the last location you used the RMB, and its direction will be based on the average normals of the voxels that your brush covers.
• 4. Pick point & direction (local): This will place the cursor at the last location you used the RMB, and its direction will be based on the single normal of the voxel your brush is centered on.
• 5. Navigate: It lets you navigate the viewport. This can also be done while holding the ALT key.

2D paint is a useful tool combined with Stamp Drag mode using different alphas. Use it to add ornaments to your sculpture.

Scrape: This tool is not affected by pens, just the size of the brush and the Intensity. It’s very similar to the Flatten tool: it flattens the surface beneath the brush.
Pinch: This makes very nice tight edges, cavities, and peaks.
Smudge: This tool drags the surface topology along with the brush. It’s great for producing wrinkles on a character or clothing.