Fig 1. Brushes

The Brushes panel is used to change parameters of the various sculpting brushes (see Fig 1). The first column Key indicates the key used, the second column Action describes what that key does, and the Amount column is where the strength of that brush is adjusted. The specific details of each of the different brushes are described in the following sections.

If you have the parameters setup just perfectly for a particular project or type of mesh, then you can save those out to a settings file than can be reloaded at a future date. The Load, Save and Delete buttons at the top of the Brushes panel are used to handle the settings files. If you save the current settings to a file called default.settings, then those parameters will be automatically restored whenever you start PlyEdit.

Fig 2. Relative Sizes

Common to all of the sculpting brushes are the <-> and <=> keys. These are used to adjust the size of the brush, by either typing in an exact radius, or by repeatedly tapping the <-> and <=> keys until the displayed radius is whats desired. If the mouse pointer is over a section of mesh, then a blue circle is displayed to show the area of affect of the current radius. Type <Enter> or click the <LMB> to accept the radius setting.

If you click the gray Set Brush Size button, then you can adjust the relative sizes of the different sculpting brushes (see Fig 2). Its perfectly OK to leave these all on 1.0, but I personally run my Noise brush at 1.5, which means that no matter what size I select with the <-> and <=> keys, the Noise brush will always be 50% bigger than the other brushes. Click the gray Set Brush Size button a second time to bring back the normal Brush panel buttons.