SculptForge User Guide

This guide explains every part of SculptForge, the free, open-source sculpting app for VFX, animation and games: how the interface is organised, how to sculpt, mask, paint (on vertices or textures) and manage SubTools, how to generate models with AI, and how to get your work into a game engine, a film pipeline, Blender or ZBrush. It is written for SculptForge 0.4.

You can read it inside SculptForge (Help > User Guide, or Shift+F1) or on the SculptForge website. If you're coming from ZBrush, start with Coming from ZBrush and keep the Glossary at hand: ZBrush's keys and gestures work as they are.

The SculptForge window with its main regions labelled
The SculptForge window with its main regions labelled

Getting started#

  1. Welcome to SculptForge
  2. What's new
  3. Coming from ZBrush
  4. Installing SculptForge
  5. The interface
  6. Navigating the view

Sculpting#

  1. Sculpting and brushes
  2. Brush Lab and sharing brushes
  3. Masking
  4. Polygroups and visibility
  5. SubTools
  6. Polypaint and materials
  7. Texture painting
  8. Sculpt layers and blend shapes
  9. Facial shapes and live face
  10. Subdivision levels
  11. Dynamic topology
  12. Moving, rotating and posing (Gizmo 3D)
  13. Subdivide, remesh, decimate and LODs
  14. Quad retopology and detail projection

AI and capture#

  1. Image and text to 3D
  2. Gaussian splats
  3. Scan an object into a splat
  4. From scan to sculptable mesh
  5. Phone capture and AR

Files and pipelines#

  1. Baking normal and displacement maps
  2. Exporting, Unreal and ZBrush
  3. Working with Blender
  4. Projects, autosave and QuickSave
  5. Scripting and automation
  6. SculptForge for studios

Reference#

  1. Keyboard and mouse
  2. Performance and big meshes
  3. Troubleshooting and FAQ
  4. Glossary

Getting help#

  • Hold Ctrl and point at any button for what it does, its shortcut and its script command.
  • Press F1 for every shortcut and mouse gesture, and F3 to find any command by name.
  • Ask questions and report problems on the issue tracker (Help > Report a problem).

SculptForge is free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. This guide is part of SculptForge and is covered by the same licence.

Also in the app: Help > User Guide (Shift+F1). Found a mistake? Edit this page on GitHub.