This palette of tools in Voxel Room is an abbreviated version of the sculpting tools found in the Surface Mode. Is much faster for sculpting than the regular volume mode.
Surface tools modify surface vertices instead of volume. This approach works much faster than voxel-based sculpting.
In general, we recommend that you click the letter “V” icon in the SculptTree and get to Surface mode (the letter “S” icon).
There is a much more powerful toolset for surface style modifications (see the Surface Mode descriptions in that section).
Modification of the surface leads to polygon stretching, so if you feel that the surface is stretched too much, press ENTER to apply changes and transform the surface back to voxels.
Only the surface mode tools will be available while editing in this mode, plus with the Pose, Move and Transform tools. Some of the surface tools have counter-parts from the volume sculpting tools.
There are several unique tools in this mode as well, which we shall discuss below.
Surface tools on Voxel mode
Clay: Flatten the surface and extrude using alpha and stencil. Edit brush parameters to set up the brush parameters in correspondence with your needs. You may duplicate the brush with RMB and create your brush preset.
Clay Fast: This is similar to the clay brush but works faster because there is no post-relaxing of the surface.
Draw: The draw tool is great for quickly sculpting horns or anything else like that. It is very much like the airbrush tool. However, it only operates on the surface of a volumetric object. Use LMB to raise the area beneath the cursor. CTRL+LMB indents the surface, and SHIFT+LMB smooths the geometry.
Flatten: This mode flattens the surface beneath the cursor by raising or lowering points to a common plane based on brush size and intensity. Height and angle are averaged from the point directly beneath the center of the cursor, and the effect is expanded to fill the entire cursor area.
Lute: This tool allows you to fill cavities as if you are working with the lute. Start to fill with lower pressure and a bigger one to get an accurate result. Combine this tool with smoothing to get the perfect results.
Trim Adaptive:
Flat Polish:
Chisel: It works like a scrape but dives into the surface slightly. It is very handy for creating sharp edges. Use CTRL for inverse action.
Fill: Fill cavities. Use CTRL to invert the action – to eliminate “embossing”.
Buildup: Behaves like the “Clay” tool but builds the surface up without limits (not only one layer as with clay).
Extrude: Extrude surface.
Expand: Extrude surface along normal vertex direction.
Absolute: Absolute extrusion – relative to initial surface shape.
Rapid: Very quick for rapid shape building.
Rapid Smooth
Scratches: Draw scratches along the stroke. Scratches will fade existing geometry as clay.
It simulates a real sculpting rake tool, creating scratches along the stroke. Great for creating muscle fibers and other similar looks. This tool does not respect brush Alphas. The difference between Scratches and Scratches2 is that Scratches2 smooths the edges of the brush stroke, while Scratches does not.
Mud: is Very similar to Rapid. However, this tool also has a noise parameter you can adjust to get variously bumped and stroked, similar to quickly applying clay to a real sculpture without smoothing it with water get that “mud” look. When you have more than one VoxTree object visible in the viewport, this tool will do its best to sculpt on the current layer but will create volume as if it were sculpting on both as one layer. This tool does not respect brush Alphas. The difference between Mud and Mud2 is that Mud2: smooths the edges of the brush stroke, while Mud does not.
Pinch: This is very great for making very nice tight edges, cavities, and peaks. You can better see that in the pictures below. It is identical to the Vox Pinch tool. However, it only operates on the surface of a volumetric object. This option draws the surface area closer to the radial center of the cursor. Use CTRL to expand the surface outward from the center of the cursor.
Smart Pinch
Roof Pinch
Shift: This tool slides/drags geometric points of surface topology along the stroking motion relative to screen space with the brush. It’s great for producing wrinkles and so on the character or a creature or for making cloth. It is identical to the Vox Follow tool. However, it only operates on the surface of a volumetric object.
Smooth on Surface mode
Smooth: Smooth the selected area.
Powerful Smoothing: This is most powerful smoothing. It performs local decimation, topological refinement and smoothing. In so way it will easily smooth even very detailed areas, level of details will be automatically adjusted. Smoothing Tangent smoothing allows to preserve shape but refine triangulation structure.
Relax:
Tangent Smoothing: Tangent smoothing allows to preserve shape but refine triangulation structure.
Reduce: Same as Cleanup->Reduce Tool.
Decimate:
Reconstruct: Same as Cleanup->Reconstruct Tool.
Add Detail: Subdivide mesh under the brush. Degree depends on brush radius.
Retopo Relax: Relax the retopo mesh and snap. This is usually important if you use the “Conform Retopo Mesh”.
Freeze:
Un-freeze:
Painting:
Eraser:
Relax Standard:
Smart Pinch: Smart Pinch tries to pinch the surface toward to line picked, smartly. The tool picks two points – one on the left and one on the right side of the brush. Then it builds 2 planes from those points and snaps surface to the closest plane. Also it adds a little pinch to underestimate the sharpness of the angle.
Super Relax: This is a powerful, valence-independent relax brush. It converts surface to the regular grid, relaxes, then bakes it back.
TGL_Pinch:
Voxel volumes does not support Layers. So, you can’t store selection into the voxel volume Layer. Turn it to the surface first.
Super relax: This is a powerful, valence-independent relax brush. It converts the surface to the regular grid, relaxes, then bakes it back.
Smooth Concave
Smooth Convex
Tangent
Sharpen
Freeze: Freeze parts of the surface. Use CTRL+D to clear frozen parts and CTRL+SHIFT+I to invert freeze.
Surface Hide: Hide the polygons from being seen or edited by stroking over an area. All polygons will be hidden that are under your brush. After hiding some polygons, using the hotkey combinations, CTRL+D will unhide, and CTRL+SHIFT+I will invert the hidden polygons with the visible polygons.
Snake Clay:
Copy Clay: This tool copies the surface areas. Point to the area you want to copy and click LMB. All that is within the diameter of the brush will be copied. Move the brush to the area where you want to apply the copy, and click LMB again. If you want to copy a new area, click “Clear Data”.
Tutorials
Dam Standard Brush Equivalent in 3DCoat: This video demonstrates 2 brushes in 3DCoat that are the closest equivalents to the Dam Standard brush in ZBrush, for those artists who have experience in the application.
A few tips are added regarding the usage of “Remove Stretching,” “Auto-Subdivide (dynamic subdivision beneath the brush) and the Magnify SL brush…which may often be used in conjunction with the Pinch Brush in 3DCoat.
Clay Engine Brushes: by Anton Tenitsky. Discord: / discord Instagram: / tenitskyart
Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/tenitsky