How To Get The Instructor’s Level of Brush Detail?

[Roger Smith]

Can I please ask for clarification on how the instructor achieved such high level of brush detail? In the beginning of the tutorial his screen shows only a Multires modifier with the level viewport set to 0. Although his screen shows a nice clean sphere, applying only this modifier with viewport set to 0 shows only a square. He did say his sphere has 1.5 million faces, so I instead hit “Ctrl 5” (had to delete the multi res modifier because that set the level viewport to 5) to create a subdivision modifier, then I set the levels viewport on the subdivision modifier to 9 and applied it, which gave me 1.5 million faces.

However, using the brushes at this high level still did not give me the crisp details we see on the instructor’s screen. Instead, my brush sculpts are still pixelated. I believe I have matched the brush settings exactly, so I don’t understand what else I need to do.

Can I please ask for some additional instruction on this point?

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hi Roger,

Add and Apply a Subdivision Surface Modifier with Level 4 to a Cube and then Add a Multires Modifier and Subdivide it 5 times. This will give about 1.5 million Faces.

Watch out: in the Video Kent has a Multires with Level 5 on Sculpt. The Level 0 of the Viewport is irrelevant when you are in Sculpt Mode.

You can also start with a File > New > Sculpting and Add a Multires Modifier and Subdivide 3 times (or just use CTRL+3, while you are already in Sculpt Mode):

Further, Brush Size and how far you are zoomed in or out are also important in how Textures look, so that also might explain different looking results from Kent’s.

[Omar Domenech]

This always happens, and apart from all the technical aspects, there’s also the fact that sculpting is inherently different from modeling in that it depends a lot on you wrist. Much like drawing is, you can have pencil and paper and if you don’t know how to draw, you wont be able to make something great appear on the paper. Someone that does know how to draw, having the same tools as you, pencil and paper, will be able to make something great appear on the paper.

Sculpting has that much in similar. Kent is a master at sculpting and he makes it look easy, but he knows how to apply the pressure in the tablet enough, he know the subtleties to make those strokes come out smooth. So it’s all about practice as well as the technical and that always seems to caught us off guard.

[Roger Smith]

Thank you for the responses.  It does appear to be a skill deficiency so I will look forward to improving my own.

[Saurabh Singh]

If desired, the same result as the instructor’s can be achieved by setting the texture mapping to “Tiled”. Note, however, that the Blender documentation recommends using either “View Plane” or “Area Plane” for most purposes, ideally matching the sculpt plane settings. For more details, see: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/4.2/sculpt_paint/brush/texture.html.

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