Sculpting - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 65

6
sculPting

The addition of sculpting tools to Blender's arsenal
has vastly broadened the range of creations possible
and the level of detail we can add to our creations.
In addition, sculpting allows for much more free-
dom in the route taken to create a model; prior to
its introduction, we had to labor to create topol-
ogy to support each element of a model. Now, with
sculpting, we can start from a much simpler mesh,
use multiresolution subdivision to provide the level
of control necessary to support the forms we want,
and worry about the topology later.
In this chapter, we'll introduce Blender's sculpt-
ing tools and show you how to use Sculpt mode.
We'll look at customizing the appearance of Sculpt
mode and the tools you can use to get the most out
of Blender when sculpting. Then, we'll move on
to using these tools to start sculpting on the base
meshes we created in Chapter 4, taking them from
simple, low-res base meshes to highly detailed,
sculpted models. Finally, we'll look at some general
principles for sculpting.

Sculpt Mode
In order to sculpt in Blender, you'll need to enter
Sculpt mode in the 3D Viewport, as shown in
Figure 6-1. Once in Sculpt mode, make sure you
have the Tool Shelf open ( T ), as this is where you'll
find all of Blender's Sculpt mode options and tools.
The familiar Tool Shelf on the left of the
Viewport is now home to our Brush options for
sculpting, where we can choose between different
brushes and adjust their settings. Brush options
include the type of brush; whether it will utilize pres-
sure input from a graphics tablet (recommended if
you have one); and the size, falloff, and shape of the
brush. Figure 6-1 also shows how the 3D Viewport
has been set up to make sculpting easier—you use
Blender's GLSL shading and enable Only Render to
display only objects that will be rendered. This keeps
the grid and any superfluous objects in your scene,
such as lamps and cameras, out of your way while
sculpting. We will cover these settings in more depth
in “Customizing the 3D Viewport” on page 73.