Surface Layer

If you’re sculpting in 3D coat and coming from a ZBrush background, you may want to know what is the equivalent of the morph target tool and the morph brush. That’s what we’re going to focus on here. And we want to make sure that our layer in the sculpt tree object panel is in surface mode indicated by the [S] icon on the left hand side of the layer.

I need to also mention that the layer panel is exactly the same that you find in the paint workspace and it stores color, glossiness or roughness, metalness and depth. And in the depth channel, 3D coat is storing all your deformation changes. You never have to turn on a recording. 3DCoat’s just storing that information continuously throughout the sculpting process.

The equivalent of the switch button is simply hiding and unhiding the individual sculpt layers. Like you would adjust a morph target, you can adjust the depth intensity of a sculpt layer by going to the depth opacity parameter and making adjustments.

Magnify SL: The Magnify SL Brush allows users to increase or decrease the depth level of a Sculpt Layer, beneath their brush. It’s especially useful when an artist wants to feather the sculpted area, so that it blends in with surrounding sculpted detail.
Erase SL: erase the Magnify tool effect.

Tutorials

Morph Target & Morph Brush Equivalent in 3DCoat: This video demonstrates the general equivalents of a few tools many artists will be accustomed to using, coming from a Zbrush background. Namely Morph Targets and the Morph Brush.

Magnify & Erase Sculpt Layer Brushes: This video is an updated (3DCoat 2026) demonstration of the Magnify and Erase Sculpt Layer brushes. The Magnify SL Brush is similar to the Morph brush an artist may be familiar with in another major sculpting application. The Depth Opacity parameter in the Layer panel would be similar to the Morph Target. Hiding/Unhiding the Layer is the equivalent to clicking the Switch button.