Aligned Brush: Wrap & Follow Curve
Normally a brush image is a stamp: every dab lays down its own copy of the picture, centred on the dab. Aligned Brush turns the image into a pattern fixed to the surface instead. The image stays put and tiles across the model, and brushing over an area reveals it where you brush — like working through a stencil. Use it for scales, weave, chain mail, panel patterns or any texture that must line up from one stroke to the next.
The Aligned Brush checkbox sits under the brush images in the sculpt palette, on the same row as Rake Brush. It needs a brush image, so it is greyed out while the round brush is selected.
Placing the target
The pattern is pinned to the model by a target. Ticking Aligned Brush with no target yet asks for one straight away: the palette reads Click the model to place the brush target. Until a target exists, the brush stamps normally.
When you click the model, three things are frozen at that moment:
- Where you click is where the pattern is pinned.
- Brush radius at that moment is how big one tile of the pattern is.
- The angle you are looking from is the angle the pattern is projected at.
Because all three are frozen, the pattern stays put on the model when you orbit. Once a target is placed, Place Target is replaced by Re-place: click it, then click the model to put the target somewhere else, facing the way you are looking now.
Revealing is not additive. The brush remembers where it has already carved the pattern and will not carve there again, so going back over an area cannot deepen it. Placing the target again — even in the same spot — forgets that and lets you carve it afresh.
Adjusting the target with the keyboard
With a target placed, the T, Y and H keys (by default) put move, rotate and scale handles on it. Ctrl+/ opens the Aligned Brush keys window, a small floating list of these keys that stays open while you work:
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| T | Move handles on the target. |
| Y | Rotate handles on the target. |
| H | Scale handles, and the scale keys below. |
| Up / Down (Scale mode) | Make the tile taller / shorter. |
| Right / Left (Scale mode) | Make the tile wider / narrower. |
| Page Up / Page Down (Scale mode) | Make the tile bigger / smaller, both directions together. |
| Home (Scale mode) | Make the tile square again. |
| Shift + any of the above (Scale mode) | A fine step: 1% instead of 5%. |
| Left / Right (otherwise) | Turn the pattern 1 degree (15 with Shift). |
Resizing the tile changes the pattern, so it also forgets what has already been carved.
Wrap to surface
A flat projection stretches wherever the surface turns away from it and streaks where the surface turns past side-on. No amount of aiming the target fixes that: one plane has one direction, and a curved surface does not. With Wrap to surface on, each point takes the projection that faces it most squarely, so the pattern keeps the same size and shape all the way round a form.
Turn it off to lay a pattern flat onto a flat area, like a decal. It is greyed out while Follow Curve (with a curve drawn) or Target Mouse is wrapping the pattern instead.
Target Mouse
Target Mouse, beside Re-place, wraps the pattern round the form under the target — round a straight line through its middle, along the axis ticked beside the button. The target then follows the cursor round the form a whole tile at a time, sized so each tile's edge meets the next, so strokes laid side by side line up.
The X / Y / Z boxes after it choose the world axis to wrap round: Y for an upright leg or torso, X or Z for a limb lying along them. Only one can be ticked; ticking another moves the tick.
Target Mouse suits straight forms. For a bent arm or leg, use Follow Curve.
Follow Curve
Follow Curve wraps the pattern round a curve you draw down the middle of a limb, so it flows along a bent leg or arm and all the way round it, every tile the target's own size from one end to the other.
Drawing the curve
Ticking Follow Curve with no curve yet starts laying one. Click down the middle of the limb, ideally viewing it from the side: each point you click goes half-way through the model. Drag as you click to pull a point's handles; plain clicks are smoothed from their neighbours.
| Key or button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Click / drag | Add a point / pull its handles. |
| Enter or Done | Finish the curve and wrap the pattern round it. A curve needs at least two points. |
| Backspace, Ctrl+Z or Undo Point | Take back the last point laid. |
| Esc | Stop. With two or more points the curve is kept and used; with fewer it is dropped. |
Working with a finished curve
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Redraw Curve | Lay the curve again, from its first point. (It reads Draw Curve when there is no curve.) |
| Clear Curve | Remove the curve. |
| Follow bends | How closely the pattern turns with the curve's bends, 0–100%. 100% follows the curve exactly, which bunches the pattern on the inside of a bend like a knee and spreads it on the outside; lower it to lay the pattern round a smoother line that turns more gradually. The curve itself is not changed. |
| Edit Curve | Click a point on the curve to select it, then drag it, or drag the ends of its handles to reshape the curve through it. Delete removes the selected point (a curve keeps at least two). Esc or the button again finishes editing. |
| Centre in 4 directions | While editing, with a point selected: moves the point to the middle of the limb side to side as well. A point already sits half-way between the skin in front and behind, as seen from where it was placed; this also centres it between the skin to its left and right in that view. |
Turning Follow Curve off keeps the curve, so you can turn it on again later.
Project from curve and Taper with Limb
While a wrap is in force (Follow Curve with a curve, or Target Mouse), two more checkboxes appear:
| Control | On | Off |
|---|---|---|
| Project from curve | The pattern is projected straight out from the centre curve: each tile a fixed slice of the way round and a fixed length down it. Tiles keep a clean shape and never twist, and grow a little where the skin bulges away from the curve. | Each tile is measured across the skin itself, the same size everywhere on it. |
| Taper with Limb | Tiles grow and shrink with the limb — broad round a thigh, fine round an ankle — and fit round it a whole number of times, so the pattern has no seam. | Every tile is the brush target's own size all the way down, and the pattern meets itself at one seam round the back, directly opposite where the target was placed. |
Aligned Brush in Paint mode
The Paint palette has the same Aligned Brush checkbox, on its Rake Brush row, with the same target, Wrap to surface, Follow Curve and Target Mouse controls. Here it paints through the brush image as a pattern. The target is shared between the tabs, so a pattern carved in Sculpt paints in exactly the same place in Paint.
The Paint palette's Clone Brush section also has an Aligned checkbox that pins the clone image to the model in the same way, using the same shared target.