Tools

This menu shows tweakable parameters for the active tool. You can change the active tool from your SideBar shortcut buttons or the tool picker, also found in the SideBar.

Every tool in Forger has a different set of parameters, and each parameter within a tool will change the way this tool behaves when applied to the target mesh (or canvas).

There is a tool preview at the top of the Tool panel (only applies to brushes), so you can get quick feedback about how a parameter may affect the active brush visually, by tweaking it and having a look at the refreshed preview.

Sculpting Tools:

Forger comes with various different brushes. Each brush has two different modes, a normal and an "alternate" mode; the "alternate" mode can be triggered by pressing the "Alternate Shortcut Button" found in the sidebar in sculpting context.

A tools behavior will change depending on whether it is running in "regular" or "alternate" mode.

Generic Brush Parameters

Base

Size: Size of the brush
Size Modifier: Determines how the size of the brush can be modified (None/Pressure).
Flow/Strength: Strength of the brush (in screen space units)
Flow/Strength Modifier: Determines how the flow of the brush will vary (None: constant/ Pressure: pressure-dependent).
Spacing: defines the minimum distance between two consecutive dabs of the brush in the same stroke (in brush size units 1.0 = brush size).

Stroke

Stroke Type:
- Dabbing: Each sample of the brush stroke will be evaluated as a dab (dot) at the input coordinates.
- Line: Between each sample of the brush stroke, Forger will fill in with as many dabs as necessary (considering the brushes spacing), making strokes look as continuous lines.
Smooth Stroke: Defines whether smooth stroke is enabled or not.
Smooth Stroke Distance: Distance in screen space units at which the brush stroke will take effect, any distance smaller than this will be ignored, this parameter is used to make smooth lines and curves removing unwanted jitters (only available when "Stroke Type" is set to line).

Tip Shape

Tip File: the file to be used as the brush tip, set through the Stamps panel.
Tip Angle: the initial angle of the tip image to use.
Tip Flip U: flips the tip image on the X-axis.
Tip Flip V: flips the tip image on the Y-axis.
Tip Orient Stroke: Aligns the tip image to the stroke, making it follow it.
Tip Filter: Filtering applied to the tip image (Bilinear/Nearest).
Hardness: Simulates the hardness of brushes, smaller values make softer edged brush tips while higher values make harder-edged ones.

Shape Dynamics

Size Jitter: Adds a certain randomness to the brush size.
Flow Jitter: Adds a certain randomness to the brush flow.
Angle Jitter: Adds a certain randomness to the brush tip angle.
Position Jitter: Adds a certain randomness to the brush placement from where the user put it.

Other Sculpting Parameters

Falloff: Curve that represents the decay of the strength as vertices get further away from the center of the brush.
Buildup: When disabled, there will be a limit of how much an area can be sculpted in successive stroke-overlapping interactions within the same stroke.

Standard

Regular: Pushes vertices in the direction of the average normal.

Alternate: Pushes vertices in the opposite direction of the area normal.

Clay

Regular: Moves vertices with a nice clay-like effect, filling holes and building up in the direction of the average normal.

Alternate: Works in the opposite direction of the area normal.

Flatten

Regular: Pushes vertices over the average plane defined by the average point position of the affected vertices and the area normal.

Alternate: Same effect.

Move

Regular: Moves vertices in screen coordinates from the starting coords.

Alternate: Pushes vertices along the area normal from the starting coords.

Pull

Regular: Moves vertices in screen coordinates.

Alternate: Pushes vertices along the area normal.

Layer

Regular: Pushes vertices up to a per stroke limit in the direction of the area normal.

Alternate: Works in the opposite direction of the area normal.

Inflate

Regular: Pushes vertices in the direction of their own normal.

Alternate: Works in the opposite direction.

Pinch

Regular: Pushes affected vertices closer to the center of the stroke.

Alternate: Pushes vertices away from the center of the stroke.

Scrape

Regular: Pushes vertices onto the average plane defined by the positions of the affected vertices and the area normal.

Alternate: Same effect.

Smooth

Regular: Averages the position of the affected vertices with their adjacent ones. This brush is heavily affected by the density of the mesh area(s) where the brush is acting upon.

Alternate: Same effect.

Stamp

Regular: Pushes vertices along the avergage normal or the VDM normal based on the stamp you have selected in the stamp picker.

Alternate: Works in the opposite direction.

Relax

Regular: Evens out the positions of the vertices while keeping the surface forms.

Alternate: Same effect.

Color

Regular: Allows applying vertex colors onto the mesh.

Alternate: Eye dropper.

Mask

Regular: Marks affected vertices as masked, all brushes will have less or no effect on masked areas.

Alternate: unmasks affected areas.

Misc Tools:

Transform Tool

This tool allows applying various types of transformations to the selected mesh.

It can be used to Translate, Rotate and Scale a mesh or parts of a mesh (when masking is involved). The tool "mode" can be changed by pressing the different translate/rotate/scale buttons on the sidebar.

You can offset the pivot by pressing the "alternate" shortcut.

The pivot can also be snapped to the geometry by using the masking shortcut, when doing so, you can also orient the pivot by dragging your viewport input after the initial touch to snap. Pressing the smooth shortcut will snap the manipulator to the closest 90 degree angle.

Different handle representations will be drawn depending on the transformation mode that the tool is in:

Universal

Contains all three manipulators.

Translation

(central) Translates along the axis described by the action line.
(extreme) Translates along the plane described by the action line.

Rotate

(central) Rotates along the axis described by the action line.
(extreme) Rotates based on the viewing angle around the pivot described by the action line.

Scale

(central) Scales along the axis described by the action line.
(extreme) Scales uniformly around the pivot described by the action line.

This tool also allows you to set up topological masking when using the masking shortcut whilst the tool action line is being modified. The tool will try to find a matching loop crossing the action line around the origin and mask everything on the other side.

Caliper

Allows you to measure the distance between two points, you can also set an amount of segments to divide the line in, this helps measuring distances and proportions.