Combing allows you to interactively orient the normals of your geometry.
Combing allows you to interactively orient the normals of your geometry.
As you move the mouse over the geometry, you will see a circular brush follow the surface to show where you would comb. The size of this brush and its orientation will show you which points will be affected by a comb operation.
Like all the brush tools, you have two different brushes: your
Foreground brush and your Background brush. You comb with your
foreground brush using the 
and the background with the 
.
Each of the brushes also can have its own independent operation. To
select the operation for each brush, Ctrl + 
to bring up the operation
menu. The options are:
Comb Normals: In this mode, the normals of your geometry will tilt in the direction your brush is dragged.
Smooth Normals: The normals under the brush are smoothed out to remove any sudden changes in their direction.
Erase Changes: Thus is a local undo - it restores the normals under your brush to the pre-comb values.
The other main parameters are:
Comb Lift: How flat the normals should lie on the surface. 0 is flat on the surface, 1 is standing upright, and -1 standing downright.
Radius: The size of the brush.
Opacity: How strong the brush is. A fully opaque brush replaces the original normal, while a less opaque brush blends it.
The other Ctrl + Menu options are:
Circle/Square/Bitmap Brush: The shape of the brush. The bitmap is set in the operation parameters dialog.
Orient Brush To Surface: When disabled, the brush is always oriented the same way. This is useful when combing crinkly geometry.
Accumulate to Stencil: This advanced option is described in more detail in the manual.