Custom VDM Brushes in Blender from Existing Models

[@superkaboose1066]

Thank you!! I didn't think of shrinkwrapping, that way the UV stays intact

[@Genshi-studio]

Awesome!!!!❤❤❤❤❤

[@norph1975]

Thank you for tutorial, interesting and very useful way!

[@aneeqayounas]

My pleasure !!

[@krissosful]

Great tutorial, thanks a lot!

[@aneeqayounas]

Happy to help out :D

[@刘瑞丰-r4e]

awesome! But I get confused at the end, why a single vdm brush can draw both left ear and right ear? Is there a symmetry-like functionality?

[@aneeqayounas]

you can rotate your VDM brushes so I just rotated mine

[@ViralObservation]

While in sculpt mode, there will be a mirror option in the upper right corner of the 3d viewport. It's an icon with xyz buttons next to it. To make the ear flip, you would highlight the x button, then place your brush where you would like on one side of your model click and drag. It will now create a perfectly symmetrical mirrored brush on the other side. This works on the y and z axis as well as on multiple axis at once. Hope this helps!

[@AdamJanz3D]

Thanks so much for the helpful video! I just wish there was a simpler way to accomplish this without having to retopologize the mesh. 😄I wonder if first Ctrl-J joining the original mesh with a plane then using "Voxel or Quad Remesh" in the Vertex Data properties and finally UV-unwrapping the result again (since Remesh destroys UVs) could work? (Technically, you would still be retopologizing with this method, I just wonder if it might be simpler in some cases?)

[@aneeqayounas]

Yes definnitely this method will also work as long as you can get a good UV that is straight and does now have any wierd bend or overlaps it will work fine, for something like the ear in the video it would work perfectly, but for some other meshes it may cause issue. I would recommend the method in the video as we are not disturbing the orignal straight UV and instead distorting the mesh this way the output will always be good and useable.

[@AdamJanz3D]

@@aneeqayounas Thank you for your reply, Aneeqa! Have a good week ahead! 🙂

[@eldritch48]

So...essentially, resculpt your object using the shrinkwrapped version as a rough?

[@aneeqayounas]

Yes exactly!

[@eldritch48]

@@aneeqayounas While I'm sure that *works*, it's not really creating a VDM from an existing model, particularly if that model is complex. "Resculpt using roughs/reference" is very different from "take something that exists and use it as a VDM." I wonder if you could use booleans to merge existing objects with the plane, and then make a VDM from that...

[@eldritch48]

I see you replied to someone else with a similar idea...curious, do you happen to know what (or if) UVs matter for this? Those are for textures, which is a completely different process....

[@aneeqayounas]

@@eldritch48 for complex model just break it into smaller parts and it will work, as long as you can get the UV map to planer it works but I found best results when using shrinkwrap method

[@aneeqayounas]

@@eldritch48 vdm brushes are textures that are applied to brush in grayscale so its important when your making your own brushes you bake onto a plane with planer UV mapping otherwise you end up with wierd results

[@dmitryalexandersamoilov]

That's Samrt

[@aneeqayounas]

Thank you :D