The Shot Sculpt SOP requires at least the character’s skin with the polygons on the first input. If you want to sculpt hair, as in this case, you also need the guide curves from a groom on the second input, for example from a Guide Deform SOP or a cached out Vellum simulation.

Before you start to sculpt the guides, click Open Shot Sculpt Pane. This button appends the node’s animation editor to the viewport. You can also see an empty Sculpt Track 0 entry. If you want to create additional tracks, open the node’s Tracks ▸ Tracks section and click the button to create a new track. You can change the track’s label with the Name parameter and apply a custom color.

When you set the sculpt node’s Geometry Type to Guides, you’ll have access to the brush set you might already know from the Guide Groom SOP. The Brush section also provides the entire range of parameters to configure the brush, for example Object Radius and Softness.

To actually sculpt the guides, hover the mouse cursor over the viewport and press Enter. A HUD with mouse actions and shortcuts indicates that you're now in brush mode. One of the first things you might want to do is to choose how you want to use the brush on the Brushes tab.

• By default, the brush has a flat tip in screen space. The radius is controlled with the Screen Radius parameter.

• When you turn on Surface Brush, the brush will follow the 3D-topology of the character’s skin. Here you control the brush size with the Object Radius parameter.

In both cases, the viewport representation of the brush is a red circle. You can change the size of the circle with the , or numerically with the aforementioned radius parameters.

Move the timeline marker to the frame where you want the changes to be fully visible. Alternatively, you can also click a frame on the timeline.

While you're brushing over the guides with the , you can watch the curves being deformed. When you release the mouse button, the node adds a red clip to the animation editor. As long as you stay on the exact same moment in time, you can more curves to the clip. Only when you use the brush on another frame, you’ll also get a new clip.

By default the clip has a duration of two seconds and the bell-shaped curve indicates ease-in and ease-out effects. When you drag the timeline marker over the clip area, you can see how the guides are deformed over time until they reach the sculpted state. Then, the effects becomes weaker and ends again with the original state. In conjunction with animated characters, you’ll also notice that the sculpted guides will follow the skin’s deformation.

If you want to change the length of the transition effects, you can do that visually by dragging the left and right limits of the clip. If you prefer numerical values, open the sculpt node’s Tracks tab and expand the Tracks ▸ Clips section. There, adjust the Blend In and Blend Out parameters to your needs. If you wish to change the default values, change the same-named parameters on the Defaults tab.

• It’s also possible to move an entire clip in the animation editor with -click and drag.

• If you want to delete a clip completely, select it in the animation editor and press the ⌦ Del key.

You can use masks to restrict the blend effect to certain parts of the character geometry. Unlike sculpting, masks don’t create a clip in the animation editor because they're not time-depending. A mask simply exists as a permanent feature on the polygons.

The shot sculpt node also provides a Mask section on the Brushes tab. Similar to tracks, you can also create multiple masks by increasing the Available Masks parameter’s button. The you can also assign different colors to your masks.

• To paint a mask, open the Brushes tab and set Geometry Type to Polygons.

• From the Brush dropdown menu, choose Paint Mask.

• In the viewport, you’ll now see a yellow brush. Paint over the areas you want to mask. Guides will only be affected outside the painted area.

Each mask has its own parameter set and you can use the handle to change the order of the masks. When you click the , you can also load an image from disk and use it as a mask.

The Shot Sculpt SOP also provides a Blendshape mode which is a very useful way to, for instance, blend certain guides to the original deformed, pre-simulated guides over a certain frame range. Or, alternatively, to blend the guides to a different simulation cache with different simulation settings.

• From the Mode dropdown menu, when you choose Blendshape, the Brush parameter will be set to Blend

• Then, set Geometry Type to Guides.

• Open the Tracks tab and expand the Tracks section. There, set Type to Blendshape.

• You now need to set your Guides Target geometries, for example if you are shot sculpting simulated curves, you might want to use your pre-simulation guides from a Guide Deform SOP as your Guides Target. Drag the nodes from the node editor to the appropriate parameter.

You can now go to the relevant frame and brush over the character to blend the guides to those in the target node. Please note that the Blendshape brush may react sluggish with high guide densities.

The shot sculpt node also provides an Attribute mode. When you choose it, the Brush dropdown menu will automatically switch to Paint Attribute. Please note that this feature is currently limited and you can only create float attributes with values between 0 and 1. If you need a different range, consider using an Attribute Remap SOP.

When you start painting on the guides (or polygons), you’ll get warning in the viewport telling you that you're on a sculpt track. This means that the track type has to match the selected mode:

• Open the Tracks tab and expand the Tracks section

• Optionally, create a new track

• From the Type dropdown menu, choose Attribute

• Use Attribute Name to assign a new name

As with the sculpt deformation, the attribute will be blended in and out. You can find the guide attribute values on the sculpt node’s second output.