Sculpt Tool lets you do digital sculpting inside 3ds Max
Gameloft Romania lead 3D character artist Mihail Lupu has released Sculpt Tool for 3ds Max, a neat new script that makes it possible to do simple digital sculpting inside the 3D software.
The tool is intended to make it possible to make small edits to organic models like characters and terrain without having to leave 3ds Max and launch a dedicated sculpting application like ZBrush.
Sculpt and remesh organic models inside 3ds Max
Sculpt Tool adds a set of basic sculpting brushes to 3ds Max, including Sculpt, Clay, Knife, Carve, Smooth, Flatten and Move, making it possible to sculpt Editable Poly objects and models with an Edit Poly modifier.
It’s intended for making relatively small edits to existing assets, so you don’t have to use a pen tablet to control it: the interface is also designed to be controlled with a mouse and keyboard.
Users can also brush-select faces on the surface of a model to define material IDs or smoothing groups.
In addition, it is possible perform Boolean operations – Union, Subtract or Intersection – on models and remesh the Booleaned surface, making it possible to perform larger edits on models.
Intended to be used with ZBrush, rather than as a replacement for it
Rather than being intended as a replacement for specialist sculpting software like ZBrush or Mudbox, Sculpt Tool is intended as a way to make quick edits inside 3ds Max, without having to switch applications.
It is designed to be used in conjunction with dedicated sculpting software: material IDs defined using the tool can be used as Polygroups in ZBrush, for example.
However, even in isolation, it’s capable of creating some reasonably complex forms, as you can see from the video above which shows a timelapse of a stylised head being created using Sculpt Tool.
Price and system requirements
Sculpt Tool is compatible with 3ds Max 2023+. A Personal licence, for use on projects with up to 2,000 sales, costs $19.95. A full Studio licence costs $44.95. All licences are node-locked.
Read more about Sculpt Tool for 3ds Max on Mihail Lupu’s ArtStation store