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I've been looking for a way to sculpt straight lines in Blender for some time. The most common answer is to create a custom brush, but it seems inflexible.

Does anyone have a better solution? Also, is it a planned/possible feature for Blender in the future?

someonewithpc
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user2642470
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    There is a line tool in GSOC paint built of blender. get it from graphicall.org. Sometimes, its good to have some specific branches along with the official built. – Ali Jibran Jun 20 '14 at 07:19
  • try this one http://graphicall.org/1055 – Ali Jibran Jun 20 '14 at 07:26
  • the line tool is now available using any recent Blender build. Recently, constraining to angles has been worked on as well. – MarcClintDion May 13 '15 at 11:43
  • This will probably get you what you're looking for. Seems like a very versatile tool. http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/52127/what-is-the-workflow-to-sculpt-construction-lines-using-the-curve-stroke-method – Ian.Gungee Dec 10 '16 at 15:44

3 Answers3

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I presume that this feature did not exist at the moment when this question was asked, but you can now go to Tools Menu -> Stroke -> Stroke Method and choose Line, and draw strokes as lines.

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Highstaker
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There is no sculpt tool to go "straight from this point to this point". You can turn on Smooth Stroke in the stroke panel, which can help draw a straighter line behind your stroke by removing most of the jitter.

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You can use masking to define the areas that your sculpting has effect. Using Box Mask will let you define a straight edge that your sculpting will stop at.

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Another option is to define a black and white texture and use stencil brush mapping to place the edge where you want your sculpt to stop. With the texture brush mapping set to stencil, the image will appear overlaid in the 3dview. Use the right mouse button to move it around, hold Shift to scale and Ctrl to rotate live in the 3dview which can be easier than adjusting in the toolbar panel.

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I made that using a simple blend texture using a colour ramp.

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sambler
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    There is a tool that can do this but it has not been committed to master yet. Anthony R's GSOC paint branch has curve and line tools. There are a couple builds available on GraphicAll.org. Search using the keyword 'paint' These new tools work in both Sculpt and Texture Paint. – MarcClintDion Jun 21 '14 at 04:59
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Try investigating your Pointing Device's properties, eg. by clicking its teensy little icon in your taskbar (eg. "Synaptics" on my v.low spec netbook) or I suppose you might use Windows Device Manager etc. I found a fantastic little sub- sub- sub- menu which constrains dragging to horizontal or vertical via user assignment of some 'modifier' key (left shift, right control etc). It actually works brilliantly, especially in conjunction with Blender's "Roll" commands (Shift+Numpad 4 or Numpad 6) which tweeks the view in fixed 15° increments for straight lines at the most common geometric angles.

You do have to watch for key conflicts (I set vertical / horizontal constraint to the right control key for example, which Blender reads as 'invert sculpt brush action' so I have to pre-invert explicitly via the toolbox button) but it's well worth the trouble given the possibilities it opens up.

David
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non-entity
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