Comb surface tool

Combing allows you to interactively orient the normals of your geometry.

See also: Paint Capture Layer, Sculpt, UV Brush

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.