Sculpting allows us to think more about the shape of the object and less about its technical part, such as its topology. So, the goal of this method is to really concentrate on the design part of the object. We won't see the vertices, edges, or polygons. The technique is more efficient when the goal is to reach an organic object. When you model with the tools that we have previously shown to you (the poly modeling method) you need to keep the topology in mind while researching the shape, and it is even more complicated when you have finer details. So what if we want to have a good topology with a sculpture? We have to do a retopology, but you'll see this in the next chapter
When we modeled the Robot Toy in the previous chapter, we used a mouse. While we are sculpting, it's pretty hard to use a mouse because it is not precise according to the process. This is why we use a pen tablet that gives the sensibility needed to get the right shape. It takes some time to get used to this, but with practice you will have more control over your sculpture.
In order to navigate with the pen tablet in the 3D viewport, go to the User Preferences panel (Ctrl + Alt + U) and check the Emulate 3 Button mouse option. We will now be able to use the Alt key to navigate. Refer to Chapter 1, Straight into Blender! for more precise details.
It's also a good thing to check the Emulate Numpad option in order to be able to switch views with the keys that are above the QWERTY keys.
A pen tablet with its stylus
In order to access all the tools needed for sculpting we need to go into the Sculpt Mode. The Sculpt Mode won't let us access the components of our mesh as in the Edit Mode, and we also won't be able to apply transformations on our objects as in the Object Mode. To switch to the Sculpt Mode, we select it in the drop-down menu located in the header of the viewport. As you can see, it is in the same place as the Edit Mode and the Object Mode.
Sculpting usually takes more resources than poly modeling because the number of polygons will quickly increase each time you want to add details. This is why we need to activate some settings that will boost our viewport. This is done as follows:
- The first setting that we will check is located under the System tab in the User Preferences window (Ctrl + Alt + U) and it is called VBOs. It is used by OpenGL (the rendering API used by Blender) to better organize the data displayed on the screen.
- In the Options tab, under the Options subpanel in the left panel of the viewport (in the Sculpt Mode), we will activate the Fast Navigate option.
- We will also ensure that the Double Sided option is turned off. To do this, we can use a nice little add-on called Sculpt Tool. After the add-on is installed, on the Sculpt tab of the left panel of the viewport we now have the Double Sided Off option. Note that you can always access any option by pressing the Space key in the viewport and by typing the name of the tool that you want.
- Later, when we sculpt our objects, we don't want to have something else other than our objects in the viewport. So we will deactivate the grid, the gizmos, and any other viewport information that we don't need.
- In order to do this, we will go to the right panel of the viewport. We can open this by pressing the N key, and under the Display subpanel we will check the Only Render option.
- By checking this option, we will simply deactivate all the options that are below the Only Render option, such as Outline Selected that consumes a lot of resources of the viewport. Remember this option as we will toggle it on or off depending on our needs.