SculptForge Files

Dynamic topology (Sculptris Pro), vector displacement brushes, QRemesh Guides, sculpt layers on every subdivision level, and ZBrush-style keys in Blender's Sculpt Mode.

Dynamic topology (ZBrush's Sculptris Pro)

Guide chapter docs/guide/dynamic-topology.md.

• Dynamic on the top shelf (and in the Draw palette): every brush except Move, masking and painting remeshes the surface under it each dab: splits long edges (on the curve the normals describe), collapses short ones, flips for even valences and relaxes the new vertices, only inside the brush.
• Detail slider (0-100): the target edge length relative to the brush radius (Sculptris Pro), or with the Constant detail preference one size for the whole mesh. Smooth remeshes towards twice the size, so it simplifies.
• Keeps the mesh manifold with no degenerate or flipped triangles; boundaries, polygroup borders and the symmetry plane only slide along themselves; fully masked and hidden parts are left alone. X/Y/Z symmetry remeshes mirror images together, so the topology is mirrored too.
• Carries mask, polypaint, paint layers, polygroups and sculpt layer offsets; quads under the brush become triangles; UVs are dropped (Undo restores them). Meshes with subdivision levels are refused, as in ZBrush.
• Undo keeps only the vertex and triangle slots the stroke touched. The BVH (incremental inserts, removals, leaf splits), the adjacency (editable per vertex during a stroke) and the GPU (per-cluster patches instead of a full upload) follow each dab.
• dyntopo command (enabled, detail, constant) for the console, CLI, MCP and Python; Dynamic and Detail are saved with project settings; stored UI layouts get the new top-shelf items on load.
• Benchmark: --bench-dyntopo (docs/performance.md). On an M1 Pro, a medium dab on a 1M-triangle sphere takes 9-13 ms including the GPU update.

Vector displacement brushes

Guide: docs/guide/sculpting.md, "Vector displacement brushes".

• VDM brush (new brush type): one DragRect stamps a whole 3D shape with overhangs. Each point under the stamp moves by its texel's vector in the brush's tangent frame (Z = the surface's area normal, Y = the drag direction, X = right), scaled by the radius and Z Intensity (50 = the map's own size, 100 = twice). Alt digs in (X, Y kept, Z flipped, as Blender). Symmetry mirrors the stamp exactly (the mirrored pass flips the frame's handedness); mask, Front faces only, sculpt layers and undo as every brush. Works with subdivision levels.
• DragDot stroke: one stamp of the Draw Size that slides under the cursor until release (any brush).
• Built-in maps (procedural, CC0): Horn, Ear Curl, Scales, Nostril.
• Brush > Vector Displacement: the maps with thumbnails, Load VDM (OpenEXR 16/32-bit, any compression, or .sfvdm; dropping an .exr loads it too) with Swap Y/Z, Flip X/Y/Z and Scale for maps from other apps, New VDM Plane, Create VDM, Export EXR. While the VDM brush is the brush, the Alpha tile and picker show the maps, and the stroke switches to DragRect (the previous stroke comes back with the next brush).
• Create VDM from a plane (ZBrush's VDM plane, Blender's VDM Brush Baker): a 2 x 2 VDM plane with UVs and a masked border as a new SubTool (the others hidden, top view); Create VDM rasterizes each point's offset through the UVs into a map saved in the brush library (Divide keeps the UVs).
• Blender's convention, checked against the VDM Brush Baker's source and in Blender 4.2 and 5.2: RGB = XYZ in brush radii over the brush's square, first scanline = top. Exported EXRs read in Blender with the same vectors the same way up; Blender's 32-bit ZIP/PIZ and 16-bit EXRs load unchanged.
• Library: VDMs live as .sfvdm (header, name, float32 XYZ) next to the .sfbrush files, user over studio over built-in by name; project settings remember the brush's map by name.
• Commands: vdm_set, vdm_list, vdm_export, vdm_new_plane, vdm_capture, vdm_stamp, vdm_delete; the stroke command and Python/MCP stamp the brush's map too. OpenEXR via vendored tinyexr 1.0.13 (BSD-3), built on stb's zlib (no new dependency).

Blender add-on: ZBrush-style keys in Sculpt Mode

Guide: docs/guide/blender.md, "ZBrush-style keys in Sculpt Mode".

• Add-on preference ZBrush-style keys in Sculpt Mode (off by default): S / U / O radial Draw Size, Strength and Hardness (Focal Shift); Space the Sculpt context menu; B a brush list by ZBrush name (type to filter; Blender 4.3+ brush assets, 4.2 brush tools); Alt+drag Zsub; Ctrl(+Alt)+drag mask / unmask lasso; Ctrl+Shift(+Alt)+drag show only / hide inside; Ctrl+W group masked and clear the mask (else group visible); Ctrl+D Divide (Multires), D / Shift+D SDiv up / down; X symmetry; Shift+F wireframe; F frame; P perspective; L Stabilize Stroke; W / E / R move / scale / rotate. Turning it off (or disabling the add-on) removes them. The preferences and the guide list the ZBrush keys Blender has no equivalent for.
• tests/blender/test_in_blender.py checks every key's operator and settings, the data paths (Blender 4.2's unified paint settings vs 5's per-mode ones), the brush picks, SDiv and Divide, on/off, and the VDM EXR round trips; run in real Blender 4.2.23 and 5.2.3.

QRemesh Guides (ZBrush's ZRemesher Guides)

• QRemesh Guides brush (Tool > Geometry > QRemesh > Guides, the brush picker, F3): drag on the model to draw curves for QRemesh's edge loops to follow, around the eyes, the mouth, a joint. Curves are snapped to the surface, closed into a loop when they end where they started, mirrored with symmetry (a curve that is its own mirror image is kept once), shown over the model (faint where the model hides them), Alt+click deletes one; Delete Last and Clear. Ctrl still masks and Shift still smooths while the brush is picked.
• QRemesh puts an edge loop on every curve (a lattice line along it; along a closed curve the corners are placed at an even number of even steps, so the loop closes without a kink) and turns the edge flow around it to follow; Curves Strength (0-100, default 50) sets how far. With symmetry, a curve on either side guides both, and a loop across the middle (the mouth) meets its mirror image at a corner on the seam. A result with a broken loop or a fan by a guide is tried again with another start for the field. On a sphere with a circular guide round an "eye", the edges near it are within 2-8 degrees of its direction (about 22 without), and the loop closes (6 of 6 test eyes, 4 of 4 mouths across the middle, 507 of 512 in random sweeps with and without FMA; the misses are loops about 20 quads round).
• Guides belong to each SubTool, are saved in projects (qremesh_guides per SubTool in the manifest, no format change: older projects open, older versions ignore them) and copied to the kept original. Guides left far from the surface (the SubTool moved) are ignored with a note.
• Scripting: qremesh_guide (points, view, symmetry), qremesh_guide_delete_last, qremesh_guides_clear, qremesh_guides_info; qremesh gains guides and curves_strength.
• Keep Groups (loops along polygroup borders) and Use Polypaint (density) were already there.

Sculpt layers on subdivision levels

• Checked against ZBrush's 3D Layers and covered by tests: a layer recorded at the top survives Lower / Higher Res bit for bit, shows at lower levels as the same strokes in the base would, keeps one weight for every level, and survives Divide, Reconstruct Subdiv, Del Lower / Del Higher, undo, saving and loading at any level, and blend shape export from any level (subdiv_export). Layers added or sculpted at a low level show above. Nothing needed fixing; the Layers panel got Ctrl-hover help and the guide a "Layers and subdivision levels" section.

Other

• UI tests: camera YAW PITCH step; the guide's screenshot script turns the mesh back on after the splats shot (the subdivision-level shots after it showed only splats).
• sculptforge_tests NAME... runs only the tests whose names contain one of the arguments.

Downloads

New here? install/ explains which file to pick, or install with one command: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/islandmed/SculptForge/main/install/install.sh | sh (macOS / Linux), irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/islandmed/SculptForge/main/install/install.ps1 | iex (Windows PowerShell). Each file is also attached without its version number (e.g. SculptForge-macos.dmg) so links to releases/latest/download/... always get the newest build.

The builds are not code-signed yet. macOS: right-click the app → Open the first time. Windows: if SmartScreen appears, choose More info → Run anyway. Checksums are in SHA256SUMS.txt.