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Sculpt with layers

Bake any shape into a distance field and push, pull, smooth or carve its surface with brushes — edits live on a sculpt layer you can undo.

Sculpting turns a solid part into a signed-distance field (SDF) you can shape with brushes, the way you would push and pull clay. Instead of editing triangles directly, your brush strokes write into a distance-field layer that is re-meshed live, so you can build up organic forms — faces, creatures, smooth blends — that would be tedious to model with primitives and booleans.

Use it when you want freeform, hand-shaped detail rather than precise parametric geometry. The original part is hidden (not deleted) when you convert, so you can always undo or show it again.

Sculpting: brushing an SDF surface
Overview. An organic form shaped with the sculpt brushes, demonstrating my complete lack of artistic skill.

How to use it

  1. Convert a part to sculpt

    Select a part in the scene, then run Convert to Sculpt (command palette, or the Object section convert button). This opens the Convert to Sculpt dialog.

  2. Set resolution and convert

    In the dialog, set Resolution (cells along longest axis) — higher captures more detail at the cost of memory and bake time. Leave Smooth lattice artifacts on to clear faint one-cell "zipper" noise. Click Convert.

  3. Enter sculpt mode

    With the resulting sculpt part selected, run Sculpt — enter sculpt mode (the contextual Sculpt pill on the object toolbar, or the command palette). The Brush tool palette opens in the left sidebar.

  4. Pick a brush

    Pick a brush from the Brush grid: Draw, Carve, Clay, Smooth, Flatten, Scrape, Crease, Pinch, Inflate, Grab, Paint, Cells, Stamp, or Profile.

  5. Choose a brush shape

    For Draw / Carve, choose a brush Shape (Sphere, Box, Capsule, Torus, Octa) — other tools ignore shape.

  6. Tune brush settings

    Tune the brush under Brush settings: Radius (mm), Strength, and Blend (mm) (how much each dab melts into the surface; 0 = hard).

  7. Sculpt the surface

    Click and drag on the surface to sculpt. Shift-drag applies the opposite tool.

  8. Enable mirror symmetry

    Optionally enable Mirror X/Y/Z to sculpt symmetrically (with a per-axis plane offset in mm).

  9. Exit sculpt mode

    When done, run Exit sculpt mode (the check button / palette), or press Escape.

The Brush tool palette in sculpt mode
In the editor. The sculpt-mode Brush palette and Brush settings.

Tips

  • The Paint tool recolours the surface — Strength acts as opacity, and unpainted areas keep the base colour.
  • The Cells tool adds grid-locked blocks (Shift removes); the radius slider becomes the block size, then the result is re-distanced into smooth blobs.
  • The Stamp tool imprints a scene part or a black/white image; click/drag to imprint, Shift-drag to subtract. Images support Cut vs Relief modes with a Depth control.
  • Click Increase detail to double the sculpt grid resolution for finer brushwork; small brushes auto-refine too.
  • Auto-redistance re-solves the distance field after each stroke for steadier picking and falloff — turn it off for faster strokes on big sculpts.
  • The full toolset (Clay, Crease, Pinch, Stamp, Profile and non-sphere shapes) is a premium "Sculpt Pro" feature; Draw/Carve/Smooth/Grab + the sphere brush stay free.

Try it in your browser

Open CubbyCAD and put Sculpt with layers to work — it runs in the browser, no install.

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