Studio and Graph › Sculpt Tools
The Brushes
Every brush, action tool and gizmo tool the sculpt tower offers, what each does to the mesh, and the settings it adds.
This is every tool the Sculpt Mesh node's tool tower offers. Shortcuts below are the palette defaults - the ten slots (keys 1-9 then 0) are user-editable in Edit > Settings > Shortcuts > Brush Palette, so treat every key here as a starting point, not a fixed binding.
A None button always sits at the top of the tower, on every node. It is not a tool - it just puts down whichever brush is active.
| Brush | What it does | Default key |
|---|---|---|
| Move | Drag-style. Grabs the vertices under the brush the moment you click, then drags that fixed set with the cursor - it keeps working even once the cursor leaves the mesh silhouette. Hold Ctrl to push/pull along the surface normal instead of dragging (drag right = out, left = in); hold Shift to smooth. | 0 (palette slot 10) |
| Grab | Drag-style elastic pull built on Kelvinlets. Captures a set at press, then applies the chosen Kelvinlet variant with the incremental drag delta on every stamp. Hold Shift to smooth. | 3 |
| Sculpt | The default draw brush. Pushes the dab along the brush's area-averaged surface normal for a clean dome. Hold Ctrl to carve in instead of building up; hold Shift to smooth. | 1 |
| Smooth | Dedicated smoothing brush - it always smooths, no modifier needed. Lerps each vertex toward its one-ring centroid. | 2 |
| Inflate | Pushes each vertex along its own per-vertex normal. Unlike Sculpt, speed scales linearly with brush size, so a bigger brush pushes further per stamp. Hold Ctrl to deflate; hold Shift to smooth. | 4 |
| Pinch | Pulls vertices toward the brush axis within the tangent plane - a crease/sharpen, not a collapse to a point. Hold Ctrl to invert. | 5 |
| Plane | The same tool as Flatten under a second name - see below. | unbound by default |
| Flatten | Computes the brush's median plane (the area-averaged position and normal of the affected region) and moves vertices toward it. | 6 |
| Clay | Flattens toward the median plane like Flatten, but the plane is lifted outward along its normal first, so material builds up while still following the local surface orientation. Hold Ctrl to dig in instead. | 7 |
| Scrape | Pushes only the vertices above the median plane back down onto it; vertices below are left alone. | 8 |
| Fill | The complement of Scrape - raises only the vertices below the median plane up onto it. | 9 |
| Restore | Lerps vertices back toward their Rest Pose position. Hold Shift to smooth. Needs the node's Rest Pose input wired - there is nothing to restore toward otherwise. | unbound by default |
| Transform | Gizmo tool, not a brush - spawns a translate/rotate/scale gizmo and commits a per-vertex transform on every drag. | unbound |
| Project | Snaps vertices onto a target surface: the node's Reference input, or material sections picked in the tool's own list. Needs one of those two wired, or Apply Project stays disabled. | unbound |
| Displace | Two tools in one: a brush that stamps a texture like a draw dome (or a true vector displacement, with a VDM), and a whole-mesh action that pushes every vertex along its normal by the texture sampled over UVs. This is the only VDM entry point in the app - see Stamps, Alphas and VDM. | unbound |
| Laplacian Smooth | Action tool - no per-stamp brush. Runs a full Laplacian smoothing pass, or a spike-fix pass, over the mesh (or the current selection) from its own panel. | unbound |
| Blend | Blends vertices toward their position on a morphed target read from the node's Reference input. Needs both Reference and Rest Pose wired with the same vertex count as the live mesh, or it does nothing beyond a warning. | unbound |
| Scale | Stamp-style Kelvinlet that scales the region under the brush. Hold Ctrl to shrink instead of grow; hold Shift to smooth. | unbound |
| Twist | Stamp-style Kelvinlet that twists the region under the brush around the brush normal. Hold Ctrl to reverse the rotation; hold Shift to smooth. | unbound |
| Mirror | Action tool - copies deltas you have already sculpted across a chosen axis, using weighted nearest neighbours. | unbound |
| Delta Mush | Action tool - runs the delta-mush algorithm against the rest-pose/current mesh pair to relax skinning-style artifacts. | unbound |
| Lattice Deformer | Gizmo tool - wraps the mesh in a free-form deformation cage of control points that you drag to reshape it. | unbound |
A few things worth being plain about:
- Move, Grab, Sculpt, Smooth, Inflate, Pinch, Plane, Flatten, Clay, Scrape, Fill, Restore, Project, Displace, Blend, Scale and Twist are brushes - you drag or stamp on the mesh with the cursor.
- Laplacian Smooth, Mirror and Delta Mush are action tools, not brushes: selecting them arms no cursor stroke, only the buttons in their floating panel.
- Transform and Lattice Deformer are gizmo tools: selecting them spawns a manipulation gizmo or a cage instead of a brush cursor.
- Plane and Flatten are the same tool. The node maps both entries to the same dispatch, so there is nothing Plane does that Flatten does not.
Animation Sequence Sculpt and Geometry Cache Sculpt offer this same tool set minus Lattice Deformer and Delta Mush.
Settings panels
The tools below open a floating panel of their own. Every other tool in the table above has no settings beyond the shared Brush Settings.
Grab Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Type | Default (also Sharp, Laplacian, BiLaplacian) |
| Stiffness | 1.0 |
| Incompressiblity | 1.0 (UI range 0-0.1, clamped 0-1) |
| Integration Time | 1.0 |
| Brush Steps | 3 (0-100; 0 evaluates directly, skipping RK3 integration) |
Grab also uses the shared Depth setting to sink its capture centre below the surface.
Smooth Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Preserve UV Flow | off (cotangent-weighted smoothing instead of uniform) |
| Smooth Mode | Laplacian (also "Taubin (volume preserving)", "Relax (tangent only)") |
| Preserve Volume | off |
| Iterations | 10 (min 1) - used only by the Apply Smoothing button below, not by the per-stamp brush, and not saved between sessions |
Button: Apply Smoothing runs the smooth over the whole mesh, or the current selection if one is masked.
Restore Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Preserve Location | off |
| Smooth Outskirt Distance | 3.0 |
Buttons: Apply Restore (whole mesh or selection), a Right/Left/Up/Down/Front/Back side dropdown paired with Restore Side, and a section list paired with Relative Restore. A second, Relative Restore panel adds Attempt Clip Fix (off) and Clip Offset (0.01).
On the brush itself, Preserve Location is not applied - the GPU brush always restores toward the unshifted baseline. It only takes effect on the whole-mesh Apply Restore action.
Transform Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Preserve Pivot Point | on |
| Enable Gizmo Offseting | off |
| Smooth Outskirt Distance | 0.0 |
| Transform | manual XYZ entry |
Grid-snap pills for Translate, Rotate and Scale appear in the viewport toolbar while this tool is active.
Project Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Subdivision | 0 (0-4, subdivides the target) |
| Iterations | 1 (1-100) |
| Projection Method | Along Normal (also Ray Bidirectional, Along Brush Normal) |
| Smoothing Method | None (also Basic Smooth (Fast), Volume Preserving, Anti-Shrink) |
| Smoothing Iterations | 1 (0-10) - shown only when Smoothing Method is not None |
| Smoothing Strength | 0.5 (0-1) - same condition |
| Relax Projection | off - "Slide vertices along the surface to maintain detail" |
| Offset | 0.0 |
| Max Distance | 100.0 (min 0.0001) |
Also a section list, and an Apply Project button that stays disabled until a Reference or a picked section resolves.
Displace Tool
The full settings table lives on Stamps, Alphas and VDM, since most of them only matter once you turn on Vector Displacement. In brief: Selected Texture picks what to displace with, Magnitude scales the effect, and Vector Displacement switches the brush from a grayscale height stamp to a true tangent-space VDM stamp.
Laplacian Smooth Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Iterations | 400 (min 1) |
| Factor | 0.01 |
| Sigma | 0.8 |
| Corrective Smoothing | off |
| Spike Threshold | 3.0 (min 0) |
Buttons: Apply Laplacian and Apply Fix Spikes.
Blend Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Alpha | 1.0 (0-1) |
| Preserve Location | off |
| Smooth Outskirt Distance | 3.0 |
| Blend Type | Replace (also Append, Subtract) |
Button: Apply Blend. As with Restore, Preserve Location is honoured only by the whole-mesh action, not by the GPU brush.
Scale Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Stiffness | 1.0 |
| Incompressiblity | 1.0 |
| Integration Time | 1.0 |
| Brush Steps | 3 (0-100) |
Twist Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Type | Default (also Pull) |
| Stiffness | 1.0 |
| Incompressiblity | 1.0 |
| Integration Time | 1.0 |
| Brush Steps | 3 (0-100) |
Mirror Tool
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Mirror Selection | X |
| Only Current Deltas | on - mirrors from the side with more edits to the other side; off mirrors both ways |
| Neighbors | 4 (min 1) |
| Seam Threshold | 0.1 (min 0) |
Button: Mirror.
Delta Mush Tool
Settings are session-only - they reset the next time you activate the tool, rather than being remembered between sessions.
| Category | Setting | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Smoothing | Iterations | 200 |
| Smoothing | Weight Type | Cotangent |
| Detail | Amount | 1.0 |
| Detail | Frame Smoothing | 8 |
| Directional Smoothing | Inward | 0.7 |
| Directional Smoothing | Outward | 0.7 |
| Thin Feature Protection | Edge Preservation | 0.7 |
| Skin Sliding | Iterations | 5 |
| Skin Sliding | Stiffness | 0.5 |
| Strain Falloff | Iterations | 4 |
| Strain Falloff | Decay | 0.7 |
| Extreme Rotation | Angle Threshold | 120 degrees |
| Extreme Rotation | Iterations | 5 |
| Boundaries | Preserve Boundaries | off |
| Boundaries | Weight | 0.5 |
Button: Delta Mush.
Lattice Deformer Tool
| Category | Setting | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution | X Axis Resolution / Y Axis Resolution / Z Axis Resolution | 3 each (2-12) |
| Resolution | Padding | 0.01 |
| Resolution | Use Cubic Interpolation | off |
| Mirror | Mirror | None |
| Mirror | Mirror Threshold | 0.01 |
| Mirror | Mirror Rotation | on |
| Display | Control and edge colors | - |
| Display | Control Size | 6.0 (0 hides the control points) |
| Display | Edge Thickness | 0.1 |
Buttons: Regenerate Grid and Reset to Initial.