Sculpt Paths

A sculpt path is a curve laid on the model that the selected sculpt brush sculpts along. The path stays editable for as long as it exists: move a point or pull a handle and the stroke is taken back off and sculpted again, so you can reshape a seam, a crease or a ridge until it sits right instead of redrawing it.

Turning on the Stroke Tool

In Sculpt, turn on the Stroke Tool in the column of sculpt tool icons beside the sidebar. While it is on, clicking the model lays a curve rather than sculpting directly, and the Stroke Properties accordion opens in the sidebar.

The path sculpts with the brush that was selected when it was drawn, and keeps using that brush on every re-sculpt. To switch it to the brush and settings you have now, press Use Current Brush. Grab, Rotate and the Mask brush cannot be laid along a path — pick another brush. Dynamic topology is always off for a path’s stroke.

Drawing and editing a path

Click the model to place the first point; each further click adds a point, and dragging while you click pulls out that point’s handles. Press Enter or Finish to stop adding points — the path stays editable. Afterwards, drag a point to move it or drag a handle to bend the curve; the stroke is re-sculpted live as you drag. Points you have not shaped by hand keep smooth handles worked out from their neighbours. Points are placed and edited with the bezier pen, as in the Paint Stroke Tool: a plain click places a corner (the Curvature Pen places smooth points), Shift and Ctrl while dragging slow a point down or keep it to one direction, and it snaps into line with other points.

Control	What it does
Enter	Finish adding points. The path stays editable.
Esc	Stop adding points; pressed again, deselect the point; again, let go of the path.
Backspace	While laying points, remove the last one.
Delete	Remove the selected point.
[ / ]	Shrink / grow the brush size at the selected point.
Shift+[ / ]	Lower / raise the strength at the selected point.
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y	Step back and forward through path edits while the Stroke Tool is on.

Per-point size and strength

Every point carries its own brush size and strength, and the stroke blends smoothly from one point’s values to the next. Select a point and use the keys above, or set it in Stroke Properties. Sizes are stored in model units, not screen pixels, so the stroke comes out the same however the camera has moved between edits.

Control	What it does
New Path	The next click on the model starts a new path.
Delete Path	Delete this path and the layer holding its stroke.
Use Current Brush	Re-sculpt the path with the brush and settings as they are now.
Point Size	The brush radius at the selected point.
Point Opacity	The strength at the selected point; it scales the brush’s intensity there.
Taper Start / Taper End	Thin the stroke to a point over this share of its length at the start or end.
Tip follows curve	Turn the brush tip along the curve.
Closed loop	Join the last point to the first — a ring round a limb.
Symmetry	Mirror the stroke across the model’s symmetry plane.
Walk geodesically	Follow the shortest way across the surface between points — round a limb, into a fold — instead of the curve’s own shape snapped onto the surface.
Dash / Gap	Sculpt this many dabs, skip that many, repeated along the path.
Parallel Lines / Line Spacing	Lay the stroke several times side by side, this far apart.

The Paths — Sculpt window

Window > Paths - Sculpt lists every sculpt path on the model. Click a path to edit it with the Stroke Tool; the eye button shows or hides its curve on screen. Right-click a path for:

Control	What it does
Rename...	Give the path a new name (double-clicking it does the same).
Duplicate Path	Copy the path; the copy sculpts into a sculpt layer of its own.
Delete Path	Delete the path and remove its sculpt layer from the model.

The buttons at the bottom of the window start a New Path and delete the selected one. Deleting asks for no confirmation, but while the Stroke Tool is on Ctrl+Z brings the path back.

Sculpt paths and sculpt layers

Each path sculpts into a sculpt layer of its own, named after the path. On every edit that layer is taken off the model, emptied and sculpted again from the surface as it is without the path, so nothing of the old stroke is left behind and your other sculpting is never touched. Hiding the layer hides the path’s stroke, and its strength scales it like any other sculpt layer. With Paint while sculpting on, the path also lays paint into a vertex-paint layer of its own.

To lay paint rather than shape along a curve, use the Paint version of the tool — see Stroke Tool.