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Mesh Morpher documentation

Sculpt Tools

8 pages · exported 2026-09-11 · https://meshmorpher.com/docs/studio-and-graph/sculpt-tools

Studio and Graph

Sculpt Tools

The brushes and tools that appear in the viewport when a sculpting node is selected, and every setting behind them.

These are the brushes and tools that appear in the viewport once you select an interactive node such as Sculpt Mesh. They are not settings you dial in ahead of time and run once - you work with them live, dragging and stamping in the viewport, and nothing is written back to the graph until you press Accept.

Where the tools live

A sculpting node's UI is spread across four places:

Surface What you will find there
Tool tower The column of icon buttons down the side of the viewport, one per tool the selected node offers. Click a button to activate that tool; drag one out to reassign it to a radial-menu wedge.
Viewport pills The row of buttons across the top of the viewport - Brush, Material, Indicator, Symmetry, Pressure, Alpha. Each opens the settings shared by every brush, regardless of which one is active.
Floating panel A draggable, collapsible panel inside the viewport, titled with the active tool's own name. It holds that tool's own settings and action buttons, and snaps to the nearest viewport edge, remembering its position and expanded state per tool. Tools that have nothing of their own to configure - Move, Sculpt, Inflate, Pinch, Plane, Flatten, Clay, Scrape and Fill - do not show one at all; their only knobs are the shared viewport pills above.
Details panel The docked Details tab carries the chrome shared by every tool on the node: the Sculpt Layers stack, the Masking settings, and the Sections list.

Accept commits

Accept and Cancel sit bottom-centre of the viewport while any tool is active.

  • Accept - "Apply the active tool's pending changes and propagate the result to the node's output pin(s)." This is the only thing that writes your strokes to the node's output.
  • Cancel - "Discard the active tool's pending changes and exit the tool without writing to the node's output pin(s)."

Nothing you do with a brush is visible outside the node until you press Accept.

Sculpting needs a real GPU. Every sculpt tool runs as a compute shader, and there is no CPU fallback: on a device that does not report Shader Model 5 (DirectX 11) or newer, sculpting refuses to run rather than running slowly.

In this section

  • The Brushes - every tool in the tower, what it does to the mesh, and its default shortcut.
  • Brush Settings - the Size, Stroke and Advanced settings shared by every brush, plus falloff, Indicator and Material.
  • Symmetry - mirroring strokes across an axis, and why the origin follows the mesh.
  • Masking and Selection - painting, marqueeing and filtering which vertices a brush is allowed to reach.
  • Stamps, Alphas and VDM - texture stamps, the brush library on disk, and vector displacement maps.
  • Sculpt Layers - the stack every stroke records into, and why sculpting starts out blocked.
  • Sculpting Shortcuts - mouse gestures, keyboard defaults, undo, and the on-screen hints.

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.

Studio and Graph › Sculpt Tools

Brush Settings

Size, strength, falloff and the rest of the shared brush controls, including how brush radius is actually computed.

The Brush pill in the viewport toolbar holds the settings every brush shares, in three groups: Size, Stroke and Advanced. They apply no matter which brush is active.

Size

Setting What it does Default Range
Size "Brush radius in world units." 0.25 min 0, no max
Specify Radius "Use the explicit radius instead of the auto-fit size." off -
Radius "Half-extent of the affected region in world units." 10 min 0, deliberately no max

Size is a fraction until you turn Specify Radius on. With Specify Radius off, Size is not a world-space number - it is a 0 to 1 fraction remapped against the mesh's own bounding box: radius = 0.5 * lerp(MaxDim * 0.01, MaxDim, Size), where MaxDim is the mesh's largest bounding-box dimension. At Size 0 that is half of 1% of MaxDim, at Size 1 it is half of MaxDim itself. That is why the same Size value gives you a small brush on a small prop and a huge one on a building - it scales with whatever you are sculpting. Turn Specify Radius on and the Radius field is used exactly as typed, in world units, so it stays comparable between meshes.

Stroke

Setting What it does Default Range
Step Size "Minimum spacing between brush samples along a stroke." 0.001 min 0
Strength "Effect intensity applied per pass." 0.5 min 0, UI max 5
Smooth Strength "Strength of the smoothing applied while holding Shift (and by the Smooth tool)." 0.6 0-1
Smooth Iterations "Number of smoothing passes applied per Shift stamp (and by the Smooth tool)." 3 1-8
Depth "How far below the surface the brush pushes." 0.0 unbounded
Falloff "Curve controlling brush strength from center to edge." 0.5 0-1
Falloff Type "Falloff type." Smooth see below
Spacing "Distance between brush stamps along a stroke, as a fraction of brush size - the "Spacing" control in Photoshop / Krita / Blender. 0 = continuous: the brush applies every frame, so holding it still keeps building up at the same spot (default). Higher values lay a discrete, frame-rate-independent stamp trail with gaps between stamps." 0.0 clamp 0-2, UI 0-1
Lazy Mouse "Stabilize the stroke: the brush trails the cursor on a string and only advances when the cursor moves beyond the lazy radius." off -
Lazy Mouse Radius "Lazy-mouse string length as a fraction of brush size." Shown only when Lazy Mouse is on. 0.5 clamp 0-4, UI 0-2
Update Vertex Selection "When ON, the brush's affected region re-collects under the cursor as you drag, so the working set follows the stroke. When OFF, the region is fixed at the point where the stroke started and every stamp keeps re-applying to that same spot. Drag-style brushes (Move/Grab) always translate their captured set by the live cursor, so this flag only changes how stamp-style brushes (Sculpt/Inflate/Smooth/Pinch/Flatten/...) behave." on -

Depth is only used by a couple of tools - it acts as an inward crease bias on Pinch, and it sinks the capture centre below the surface for Grab and Move. Other brushes ignore it.

Advanced

Setting What it does Default Range
Only Facing Camera "Only affect vertices that face the camera." Hidden when Only Connected is on. off -
Only Connected "Only affect vertices reachable from the brush center." off -
Angle Threshold "Maximum angle between neighbours allowed when walking." 180 means the walk never stops. Shown only when Only Connected is on. 180.0 -
Walk Stops At UV Seams "Stop the connectivity walk at UV seams. OFF by default: most meshes have UV seams everywhere, and a seam cutting through the middle of the brush pins one side while the other moves - visible spikes/tears. Opt in when you genuinely want UV islands isolated." Shown only when Only Connected is on. off -
Walk Stops At Normal Seams "Stop the connectivity walk at hard normal seams (same caveat as UV seams)." Shown only when Only Connected is on. off -

Falloff types

The Falloff Type dropdown offers eight shapes: Smooth, Linear, Inverse, Round, Box Smooth, Box Linear, Box Inverse, Box Round.

The four round falloffs share one shape: everything within (1 - Falloff) * Radius of the brush centre is at full strength, then a ramp to the edge:

Falloff Type Profile from the full-strength core to the edge
Smooth cubic ease (w^3)
Linear straight ramp (w)
Inverse cubic of the linear weight
Round circular ease (1 - t^2)

Box falloffs measure distance to an axis-aligned box in a surface-oriented frame instead of to the brush centre, so the footprint reads square rather than round. That box is still clipped to the brush sphere, so a Box brush has its eight corners sliced off and shows a hard step where the cut happens. Both are deliberate, not a bug.

Indicator pill

Setting What it does Default
Indicator Thickness "Outline thickness for the brush indicator." 0.5
Indicator Color "Outline color for the brush indicator." Black
Show Indicator Sphere "Show the filled sphere around the brush center." on
Indicator Sphere Color "Color of the filled brush indicator sphere." cyan
Indicator Sphere Alpha "Transparency of the brush indicator sphere." 1.0

The indicator only shows on a real mesh hit - it hides as soon as the cursor leaves the surface, and in marquee mode.

Material pill

General preview settings, grouped into Wireframe and Material.

Setting What it does Default
Enable Wireframe "Show the mesh wireframe over the surface." off
Material Mode "Preview material style used for the sculpt mesh." Values: Focus, Tension, Transparent, Mesh. Mesh
Focus Color Mode "How Focus mode colours the surface - Flat clay, per-section colours, or the mesh's own baked vertex colours. Shown only in Focus mode. Section Colors forces section boundaries even on meshes that carry vertex colours (which Vertex Colors would otherwise display)." Values: Flat (Clay), Section Colors, Vertex Colors. Shown only when Material Mode is Focus. Flat (Clay)
Tension Compress Color "Color shown where the surface is compressed." Tension mode only. Red
Tension Stretch Color "Color shown where the surface is stretched." Tension mode only. Green
Tension Neutral Color "Color shown where the surface is undeformed." Tension mode only. Black
Transparent Color "Tint used in transparent preview mode." Transparent mode only. blue
Opacity "Surface transparency, where 1 is fully opaque." Transparent mode only. 0.65 (0-1)
Two Sided "Render both faces of the preview material." Transparent mode only. off

Tension mode is live while you sculpt - the preview recomputes the tension colour after every deform. Focus and Tension modes also turn shadow casting off on the preview mesh.

Studio and Graph › Sculpt Tools

Symmetry

Mirroring strokes across an axis, and why the symmetry plane keeps tracking the mesh after you move it.

The Symmetry pill in the viewport toolbar mirrors your strokes across an axis, so a stroke on one side of the mesh is applied to both at once.

Its label changes with the state: plain Symmetry when it is off, then Symmetry: X, Symmetry: Y or Symmetry: Z once it is on and an axis is set, or Symmetry: ON if it is on with no axis. Its tooltip is "Symmetry settings - toggle ({0}), cycle axis ({1})" with your current key bindings filled in.

Settings

Setting Default What it does
Enable Symmetry off "Mirror brush strokes across the symmetry axis."
Symmetry Axis X "World axis the stroke is reflected across (X = left/right)." Shown only when symmetry is on.
Symmetry Origin (0, 0, 0) "World-space origin of the symmetry plane - the plane no longer has to pass through the world origin." Shown only when symmetry is on.

Keys

Command Default What it does
Toggle Symmetry X Turns symmetry on or off. If the axis was still None, it also sets it to X.
Cycle Symmetry Axis Shift+X Steps X then Y then Z then back to X, and force-enables symmetry if it was off.

Both keys, like the rest of the sculpting shortcuts, only do anything while a brush tool is active.

The origin follows the mesh

Symmetry Origin is an offset, not a fixed world point. The symmetry plane's actual position is recomputed as the live mesh's bounding-box centre plus Symmetry Origin, every time you activate the tool, toggle or cycle symmetry, commit a stroke, or undo/redo. That is what keeps the mirror lined up after the Transform tool moves the mesh - if the origin were a fixed world-space point, moving the mesh would throw symmetry off-centre.

The symmetry plane overlay

While symmetry is on, a translucent rectangle with a 4x4 inner grid is drawn on the symmetry plane, sized to the mesh's bounds plus 10%, and the brush indicator gets a second ring at the mirrored position. This overlay has its own switch, independent of symmetry itself, in Settings > Theme > 3D Viewport, and its own colour (default RGBA 0.25, 0.80, 1.0, 0.50 - a translucent light blue). Turning the overlay off does not turn symmetry off - it only stops drawing the plane.

Studio and Graph › Sculpt Tools

Masking and Selection

Paint a mask to limit where the brushes bite, then grow, shrink, blur or invert it. Nothing painted means the whole mesh is editable.

The polarity rule. The mask here is an isolate/include mask, not a ZBrush-style freeze mask. With nothing painted, the whole mesh is editable. As soon as you paint anything, only the painted area is editable, and a partially painted (feathered) area is affected partially. There is no separate "protect" paint - painting always defines what brushes CAN touch, never what they cannot.

The Weights input pin states the same contract in its own tooltip: "1 is full strength, 0 is frozen, in between feathers."

How to mask

Action Binding / UI
Enter/leave mask-paint mode Mask: ON / Mask: OFF button in the Masking block, or M. Tooltip: "Toggle mask painting on/off (M)". The label is green when on, red when off.
Paint With mask mode on, LMB-drag on the surface. A click that misses the mesh entirely is a true no-op.
Erase Shift + LMB-drag.
Switch Brush / Marquee mode Mode: Brush / Mode: Marquee button, or Shift+M. Tooltip: "Cycle selection mode (Brush / Marquee) (Shift+M)". Switching to Marquee also force-enables mask mode.
Marquee-select Drag a rectangle in the viewport - it draws as a translucent blue fill with a 1px outline. Ctrl adds to the selection, Shift removes, no modifier replaces it.
Camera-facing filter for marquee Facing: On / Facing: Off button. Tooltip: "When marquee-selecting, pick only camera-facing vertices (skip back faces behind the visible surface)."
Invert Invert button, or Ctrl+I. Tooltip: "Invert the current vertex selection (Ctrl+I)". This is a graded invert (mask' = 1 - mask), so feathered edges survive.
Clear Clear Mask button, or Alt+M. Tooltip: "Clear the entire vertex mask (CPU selection + GPU paint) and drop the on-mesh overlay. Also clears any rows selected in the Sections list. (Alt+M)".
Mask by sections Click rows in the Sections list at the bottom of the Masking block. Columns are Section and Visible, each row has a visibility eye whose tooltip is "Toggle visibility of this section in the preview viewport. Hidden sections are excluded from brush ROI capture." A section the app cannot name renders as <unknown>.

The mask overlay is not tied to mask-paint mode: it shows whenever paint mode is on, or whenever a mask already exists - so leaving mask mode to go sculpt does not hide the tint.

Filter operations

Five GPU operations plus Boundary select, all in the Masking block:

Button Tooltip Default key
Blur "Soften the mask edge (one-ring average, feathered)" - runs 2 iterations Ctrl+B
Grow "Expand the mask by one ring" Ctrl+G
Shrink "Contract the mask by one ring" Ctrl+Shift+G
Sharpen "Tighten the mask edge (unsharp)" Ctrl+Shift+B
Cavity "Mask by cavity: concave crevices become masked (replaces the current mask)" - strength 4 Ctrl+K
Boundary "Select every open-boundary vertex into the mask. Boundary topology is detected on the CPU; the result is uploaded to the GPU-resident mask like the other selection ops." none

Grow and Shrink can step by world distance instead of by vertex ring - see Grow Shrink By Distance below.

Masking settings

Setting Default What it does
Wireframe Color Blue "Colour of the live mask-selection wireframe drawn over the mesh." Applies live.
Solid Mask Fill on "Render the masked area as a solid surface (the legacy "selection mesh") on top of the mesh, not just its wireframe. Always on while the wireframe overlay / wireframe view mode is active, where the mask wireframe would otherwise be hidden by the mesh wireframe."
Solid Mask Opacity 0.8 (0.05-1.0) "How opaque that solid mask surface is. Keep it low - the tint should read as a coloured wash over the surface, not as a flat patch that hides the shape."
Full Strength Mask on "Paint the mask at FULL strength (1.0) with a hard edge, ignoring the brush falloff - every vertex inside the brush is fully masked. Off: the falloff feathers the mask, and tools scale their effect by that gradient."
Selection Mode Brush "How vertices are added to the selection." Values: Brush, Marquee.
Ignore Boundary Vertices off "Skip vertices that lie on a mesh boundary."
Render Unselected on "Draw unselected vertices behind the selection." Turning this off isolates the mesh to the masked sections.
Hit Back Faces off "Allow brush hits on back-facing triangles." Also gates whether mask paint can soak through to the far side.
Enable Mask Selection off "Toggled on/off via the mask-paint UI (action row Mask ON/OFF button + the runtime details panel). When true the brush paints into the selection set instead of deforming geometry."
Marquee Front Facing Only on "When marquee-selecting, pick only vertices whose (welded) normal faces the camera, skipping back-facing verts behind the visible surface."
Grow Shrink By Distance off "Grow / Shrink offset the mask by a world DISTANCE instead of by one vertex ring. A ring step advances further through sparse geometry than dense geometry, so on an uneven mesh the mask shears out of shape; a distance step is the same everywhere. Both modes preserve a feathered edge - they translate the falloff, not flatten it."
Grow Shrink Distance 1.0 (UI 0-25) "How far Grow / Shrink move the mask edge, in world units." Shown only when Grow Shrink By Distance is on.

The Weights pin seeds the mask

The Weights input on Sculpt Mesh is how you feed in a mask from elsewhere in the graph, rather than painting one by hand:

Pin Tooltip
Mesh (in) "The mesh you want to sculpt on."
Rest Pose (in) "The same mesh before you sculpted it. Delta is measured against this, and the Restore brush paints back toward it."
Weights (in) "Where the brushes are allowed to bite: 1 is full strength, 0 is frozen, in between feathers. Leave it unconnected to sculpt the whole mesh."
Reference (in) "The surface the Project brush pushes vertices onto. The other brushes ignore it."
Mesh (out) "The sculpted mesh, once you press Accept."
Delta (out) "How far each vertex moved from the Rest Pose. Feed it to Apply Deltas to put the same change on a different mesh."

When you wire a weight map into Weights, its graded values are uploaded verbatim as the starting mask - so a wired weight map IS the starting mask, feathering included. It takes effect when you select the Sculpt Mesh node, not continuously, and if you also edit the mask by hand afterwards, your edit wins.

Studio and Graph › Sculpt Tools

Stamps, Alphas and VDM

Stamp a grayscale alpha through the brush falloff, or stamp a vector displacement map that can produce real overhangs.

The Alpha pill

Every brush except Displace shows an Alpha pill in the viewport toolbar (Displace has its own texture picker in its panel instead). The pill's label is Alpha when nothing is chosen, or Alpha: {name} once you have picked one.

Setting What it does Default
Alpha Texture "Brush alpha (stamp texture) by session texture-registry name; the grayscale alpha modulates the falloff across the brush footprint (ZBrush-style stamps). None = plain falloff." Shown as a texture picker with 32x32 thumbnails; the first entry is always None, and float-format textures carry a " (VDM)" badge. An empty registry shows "(no textures loaded - add a Load Texture node)". None
Alpha Rotation "Alpha rotation: follow the stroke (Rake), randomize per stamp, or a fixed angle." Values: Rake (follow stroke), Random, Fixed angle. Shown only once an alpha is chosen. Rake (follow stroke)
Alpha Angle "Fixed alpha angle in degrees." Shown only when Alpha Rotation is Fixed angle. 0.0 (-360 to 360)

Once an alpha is active, the on-surface brush indicator swaps from a plain sphere to a flat quad showing the texture, oriented exactly as the stamp will be laid down.

The brush library on disk

Alphas and VDMs are read from two folders:

  1. Shipped - inside the plugin, under Resources/Alphas.
  2. User - %LOCALAPPDATA%/MeshMorpher/Alphas. This is deliberately outside the install directory, which is read-only for a normal user when the app is installed under Program Files - drop your own files here and they show up alongside the shipped ones.

Both folders are published into the graph's texture registry automatically, so anything in them appears in the Alpha and Selected Texture dropdowns without needing a Load Texture node. The shipped library itself is listed right there in the dropdown - open it to see exactly what your build includes, rather than relying on a fixed count here.

Which format goes in which folder is decided by file extension, not by sub-folder, so your own sub-folders work the same way:

  • Alphas - 8-bit grayscale PNG (BMP, TGA and JPG also work; 16-bit grayscale and colour sources are accepted and reduced to Rec.709 luma). White is full brush strength, black is no effect.
  • VDMs - OpenEXR, 16-bit half float, 4-channel RGBA, ZIP-compressed. A 1-channel grayscale EXR is rejected as a VDM.

Every shipped alpha except Alpha_HardCircle fades to black before the image border, because the brush maps the stamp footprint onto the whole 0-1 UV square - an alpha that is still bright at its border would stamp a hard square edge into the mesh. Keep the same margin in anything you author yourself.

The VDM convention

A vector displacement map replaces the brush's height dome with real, directional offsets. The convention (Native source space):

  • Space - tangent/stamp space. Red is the offset along the stamp's U axis, green along V, and blue along the outward surface normal (positive blue = outward). Alpha is unused and written as 1.0.
  • Values - signed and zero-centred: 0.0 means no displacement.
  • Units - fractions of the stamp footprint's diameter. The shader multiplies by 2 x Radius, so a blue value of 0.25 lifts by half the brush radius - which is why authored VDM values look small.
  • Midpoint - derived, never a setting you configure: a float pixel format uses 0.0 as the midpoint, anything else uses 0.5. If an 8-bit VDM has sRGB enabled on its Load Texture node, you will see the toast: "VDM stamp '{0}' has sRGB enabled on its Load Texture node - disable sRGB there, or the gamma-decoded gain will warp the displacement."

The Displace Tool panel

Setting What it does Default
Selected Texture "Name of the registered texture to displace with - picked from the dropdown of textures the graph has loaded." Thumbnail picker, with a (VDM) badge on float textures. None
Magnitude "Overall amount applied per vertex. For the VDM brush this is the displacement intensity: 1 = the map's authored proportions (true scale) at any drag size, for Native source-space maps. Blender/Custom source-space maps get VDMAmplitudeScale auto-fitted on texture selection, so their effective scale at Magnitude 1 depends on that fit." 1.0
UV Scale "Tiling applied to texture coordinates." Whole-mesh action only. (1, 1)
UV Offset "Constant offset added to texture coordinates." Whole-mesh action only. (0, 0)
Center "Pivot value the effect is balanced around." Whole-mesh action only. 0.5
Image Channel "R = 0 / G = 1 / B = 2 / A = 3 - clamped to 0..3 at apply time." 0 (0-3)
Vector Displacement "BRUSH mode: treat the selected texture as a tangent-space VECTOR displacement map (VDM) - RGB = offsets along the stamp's U / V / normal axes, so one stamp can produce overhangs (ears, scales, lips) a grayscale height texture cannot. Scalar textures displace along the brush normal as usual. VDM stamping lives ONLY on this tool." off
VDM Source Space "How the selected VDM's channels are laid out. Leave on Native for anything made with Bake VDM Brush or from the shipped library; switch when importing a map authored by another tool's convention." Values: Native (baked or shipped here), Blender VDM Brush Baker, Custom. Shown only when Vector Displacement is on. Native (baked or shipped here)
Custom Swap UV "Custom convention: swap the U/V channels (R<->G) before applying the negations below." Custom only. off
Custom Negate U "Custom convention: negate the U (post-swap R) channel." Custom only. off
Custom Negate V "Custom convention: negate the V (post-swap G) channel." Custom only. off
Custom Negate N "Custom convention: negate the normal (B) channel." Custom only. off
VDM Amplitude Scale "Multiplier for maps authored in absolute units rather than fractions of the stamp footprint. [...] an imported ZBP bake auto-fits (its authored units are unknown ahead of time), while a Bake VDM Brush output or a shipped library map never does (already true-scale). A texture of unknown provenance (e.g. Load Texture From File) falls back to the old rule: auto-fit unless VDMSourceSpace is Native. Can always be overridden afterwards; Blender's default 2 m grid needs roughly 0.5." VDM only. 1.0 (0.01-100)
Mirror Stamp "Flips the stamp left-right so one authored file (e.g. VDM_Form_Ear) serves both sides instead of shipping a mirrored second file." VDM only. off

Displace's settings persist between sessions, the same as every other tool's stored settings.

Two buttons sit below the panel:

  • Displace - runs the whole-mesh, UV-based height displace. It stays disabled unless mask-paint mode is off, the mesh is loaded, GPU sculpt data is ready, and Selected Texture resolves to something real.
  • Fit Amplitude - visible only when Vector Displacement is on, and enabled once a VDM texture resolves. It reads the map on the CPU and sets VDM Amplitude Scale so the peak displacement lands at a sane fraction of the stamp footprint.

The VDM stroke is not a normal stroke

With Vector Displacement on and a texture resolved, the Displace brush switches to a drag-to-scale gesture (the ZBrush "DragRect" pattern) instead of a normal spaced stroke:

  • The press anchors a single stamp on the surface.
  • Dragging out grows it, dragging back in shrinks it, and the drag direction rotates it.
  • The radius has a floor of 0.02x and a cap of 20x the brush size at the moment you pressed.
  • A press-and-release inside 0.05x - effectively a plain click - reverts the whole stroke and commits nothing.

In this mode, Strength, pressure and brush size are deliberately ignored: the drag is the size, and the map is the shape. Only Magnitude scales the result. Ctrl inverts it.

A normal brush stroke, by contrast, re-stamps repeatedly as you drag, spaced and scaled by Strength, Spacing and brush size the same as every other brush. A grayscale texture (or Vector Displacement left off) always uses the normal stroke engine.

If the mesh under the stamp is too coarse to carry its detail, you will see the toast: "The target mesh is too coarse for this VDM stamp's detail - subdivide under the stamp."

Studio and Graph › Sculpt Tools

Sculpt Layers

Every stroke records into the active layer. The stack starts empty, so sculpting waits until you add one.

Every stroke you make records into a layer in the Sculpt Layers stack, in the Details panel. The stack is per node.

The stack starts empty, and sculpting is refused until you add a layer. Selecting a fresh Sculpt Mesh node opens a new layer session with nothing in it. Try to sculpt before adding one and you get the toast "No active sculpt layer - add or select a layer in the Layers panel to sculpt." instead of a stroke. Mask painting is not affected by this gate and works with zero layers - it is a selection, not a content edit.

The panel's empty state spells out the same thing: "No layers - sculpting is disabled. Add a layer to start sculpting (every stroke records into the active layer; per-layer strength, visibility, delete)."

Buttons

Button / control Tooltip
+ "Add a new layer (it becomes the recording layer)"
Dup "Duplicate the active layer"
Merge "Merge the active layer into the one below it (bakes both at their current strength)"
Del "Delete the active layer (its sculpting is removed from the surface; undoable)"
eye icon "Show/hide this layer's contribution. Hiding the recording layer hands recording to the nearest visible layer."
row / name "Click the row to make this the recording layer; double-click the name to rename"
opacity slider "Layer strength 0..1 - applies live on every layer, the recording one included"

New layers are auto-named "Layer N". The recording layer is whichever one you last clicked (or duplicated, or added) - every stroke goes into that one until you click a different row.

Sculpt layers do not have blend modes - that control belongs to paint layers only.

Saving

The whole stack - every layer, its strength and its visibility - is written into the node when you press Accept, and is restored the next time you select the node and reactivate the tool.

Studio and Graph › Sculpt Tools

Sculpting Shortcuts

Mouse gestures, modifier keys, the hold-and-drag adjustments, the radial brush menu and what undo covers.

All bindings below are the defaults. Every one is remappable in Edit > Settings > Shortcuts, category "Sculpt Brush" for the keyboard commands, or "Brush Palette (number keys 1-9, then 0 + radial menu)" for the ten quick-select slots.

Mouse

Gesture Result
LMB drag on the mesh A brush stroke, mask paint, or marquee - whichever mode is active.
LMB drag + Shift Smooth, on every brush (uses the shared Smooth Strength and Smooth Iterations, not Strength).
LMB drag + Ctrl Invert the brush direction - push becomes pull, inflate becomes deflate, build becomes dig, scale-up becomes scale-down, twist reverses.
Alt + LMB Camera orbit. This always takes the click away from the tool under the default and Maya navigation presets; under the Blender preset, Alt+LMB is handed back to the tool instead.
RMB drag Camera look; hold WASDQE at the same time to fly, and the wheel adjusts fly speed while RMB is held.
MMB drag Camera pan.
Wheel Dolly.
Ctrl / Shift + LMB, in Marquee mode Add to / remove from the selection. No modifier replaces it.
Drag a tool-tower button Starts a tool drag - drop it on a radial-menu wedge to reassign that palette slot, which is remembered afterward.

Keyboard

Command Default What it does
Adjust Brush Size (hold) B Hold and slide the mouse horizontally to scale the brush. Blocks strokes while held, and the cursor is warped back to where you started on release.
Adjust Brush Falloff (hold) N Same gesture, edits Falloff (clamped 0-1).
Adjust Brush Strength (hold) T Same gesture, edits Strength.
Decrease / Increase Brush Size [ / ] Multiplies the radius by 1/1.1 or 1.1 - a proportional step, and holding the key ramps up.
Decrease / Increase Brush Strength Shift+[ / Shift+] +-0.05 on Strength.
Brush Slot 1-10 1-9, then 0 Quick-selects that palette brush. Does nothing if the current node does not offer that tool.
Radial Brush Menu (hold) Space Fans the palette brushes around the cursor - move to a wedge and release to pick it. Escape cancels. Only opens when the cursor is over the viewport.
Toggle Symmetry X Also sets the axis to X if it was still None.
Cycle Symmetry Axis Shift+X X, then Y, then Z, then back to X - also force-enables symmetry.
Toggle Mask-Paint Mode M Enters or leaves mask paint.
Mask: Marquee Mode Shift+M Cycles between Brush and Marquee selection mode.
Invert Mask Ctrl+I Graded invert of the current mask.
Clear Mask Alt+M Clears the mask and the Sections selection.
Toggle Lazy Mouse L Turns Lazy Mouse on or off.
Mask: Blur / Sharpen / Grow / Shrink / Cavity Ctrl+B / Ctrl+Shift+B / Ctrl+G / Ctrl+Shift+G / Ctrl+K Runs that mask filter - see Masking and Selection.
Frame Selected F Focuses the point under the brush cursor if one is hovering the mesh, otherwise frames the whole mesh.
Undo / Redo Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y Ctrl+Shift+Z also works as redo.

The symmetry, mask and lazy-mouse keys only do anything while a brush tool is active - they are no-ops for gizmo tools (Transform, Lattice Deformer) and for action-only tools.

Hold-and-drag adjust

While B, N or T is held, a small pill (220x64) follows the cursor showing which value you are editing and its live number to four decimal places: BRUSH SIZE with a cyan dot, FALLOFF with a violet dot, or STRENGTH with an orange dot. The step per pixel of mouse movement for the Size adjust is the Step Size setting.

Radial menu

Hold Space over the viewport to fan the ten palette brushes out around the cursor. Move into a wedge and release to pick it, or press Escape to cancel without picking anything. The menu's centre shows the name of whichever brush you are currently hovering, or "Pick a brush" while the cursor sits in the small dead zone in the middle.

Undo

One undo entry is pushed per stroke, when the stroke commits on release - not continuously while you drag. Each entry is labelled with the tool that made it: "Move Brush", "Sculpt Brush", "Inflate Brush", "Pinch Brush", "Flatten Brush", "Clay Brush", "Scrape Brush", "Fill Brush", "Smooth Brush", "Restore Brush", "Grab Brush", "Scale Brush", "Twist Brush", "Project Brush", "Blend Brush", "Laplacian Smooth", "Mirror Deltas", "Delta Mush", "Displacement", "Transform" and "Lattice Deform" (anything else falls back to "Brush Stroke").

Mask painting is not undoable. It is a selection, not a mesh-data edit, so it never pushes an undo entry. Ctrl+Z after painting a mask undoes the last mesh edit, not your paint.

Undoing or redoing a stroke also re-derives the symmetry plane, so the mirror keeps tracking the geometry correctly.

On-screen hints

Where Exact text When
Top-left, under the pane label Size %.2f Strength %.2f Falloff %.2f Symmetry %s, plus Mask when mask mode is on and Lazy when Lazy Mouse is on. Symmetry shows Off or the axis name. Whenever a brush tool is active, in the source viewport only.
Top-centre "Preparing sculpt data..." The GPU sculpt buffers are still building.
Toast "Preparing sculpt data - one moment..." You tried to stroke before the buffers were ready. Repeats at most every 2 seconds.
Toast "No active sculpt layer - add or select a layer in the Layers panel to sculpt." You tried to stroke with no active layer.
Toast "No active sculpt layer - add or select a layer in the Layers panel to restore." / "...to blend." You ran the whole-mesh Restore or Blend action with no active layer.
Toast "The target mesh is too coarse for this VDM stamp's detail - subdivide under the stamp." A VDM stamp on a mesh whose edge length is more than 5% of the stamp's diameter.
Toast "Blend Tool: Reference mesh is missing or doesn't match the live mesh vertex count - blending will have no effect." / "Blend Tool: Original mesh vertex count doesn't match the live mesh - Append/Subtract blend modes will have no effect." Blend is missing a valid Reference or Rest Pose. Shown once per change from valid to invalid.
Cursor-anchored pill BRUSH SIZE / FALLOFF / STRENGTH with the live value While B, N or T is held - see above.
Radial menu centre The hovered brush's name, or "Pick a brush" While Space is held.
Bottom-centre nav hint WASD walk . RMB look . Alt+LMB orbit . MMB pan . Wheel zoom . F focus (perspective) or MMB pan . Wheel zoom . F focus (ortho) Hidden while any tool is active - the Accept/Cancel banner takes that spot instead.
Layers panel empty state "No layers - sculpting is disabled. Add a layer to start sculpting (every stroke records into the active layer; per-layer strength, visibility, delete)." The Sculpt Layers stack is empty.
Layers panel title "Sculpt Layers" Always.
Tool panel chevron "Show / hide tool details" Always, as its tooltip.