Metamorphic Sculpt
Last modified: 10 March 2025note
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Introduction
The Sculpt tab is probably where you will spend most of your time in Metamorphic. This tab enables the user to dynamically alter the appearance of geometry with a set of tools that should be familiar to users of other sculpting software. It's best to use any of these sculpting tools with high-polygon meshes as the quality of the modification will strictly depend on the polygonal resolution of your mesh. The keyboard shortcut/modifier will be listed at the end of the Tool title.
Tools
Push/Pull P
The default tool. Push/Pull will raise peaks or create troughs (if you use Negative Strength on the Brush Parameters tab) on your geometry. Other items on the Brush Parameters tab will directly influence your sculpts, such as Symmetry on X, Symmetry on Y, Stroke Steps, Stroke Coarseness, and perhaps most dramatically Use Brush Nodes.
Clay C
Clay will simulate adding extra material to your form, to the extent set by the Strength setting on the Brush Parameters tab. Additional material can be added on top of any already painted, but Clay will only put down so much material each time you paint.
Flatten F
Flattens the mesh based on the brush normal.
More/Less M
Exagerrates the mesh based on the brush normal. Using this tool in negative mode attenuates the sculpt.
Smooth S or Shift
Averages vertex displacement with neighboring vertices to smooth out geometry.
Smudge D
Smudge is like a 3D drag on the geometry.
Restore R
Restore is a brush-based undo system. You are essentially painting back previous states of the geometry.
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All the above tools respect Use Selection As Mask, if the toggle is on, and create keys for animation purposes
Options
Protect Open Edges - This pins open edges to protect them from sculpting operations
Zero Sculpt - Completely restores to zero any sculpts made on a keyframe returning the mesh to its original form
Record Stroke - Used for realtime animating. Use Record Stroke when you hit Play in Layout and want to create an animation of sculpting as Layout is playing
UV Map - Used to construct tangent coordinates
Relax Iterations - The number of smoothing iterations to use to calculate for Smoothing and Smudging
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Contributed by Richard Feeney