Guide Sculpt

Guide Sculpt lets you comb, cut and shape guides by hand using Blender's own Sculpt Curves tools — and keeps that work when the groom regenerates.

Sculpt is a layer, not a bake

The oldest complaint about procedural grooming is that the moment you sculpt by hand, regeneration destroys the work. Guide Sculpt stores your edits as a relative, id-keyed delta layer rather than as a snapshot of the guides. The delta composes on top of whatever the generator produces, so it follows changes to guide count, length, distribution and seed.

Comb a part line at 500 guides and it is still there at 2,000.

Edits are matched to guides by stable guide id. Guides that did not exist when you sculpted — because you raised the count — are filled in from their nearest sculpted neighbours by UV proximity, so new hair adopts the shape of the hair around it instead of snapping back to the generator.

Controls

Sculpt

Enters Blender's Sculpt Curves mode with the guides as the active object. Every Blender curve tool is available: Comb, Smooth, Add, Delete, Grow/Shrink, Pinch, Snake Hook, Puff and Slide.

Leave sculpt mode when you are done and the edits are captured into the layer automatically.

Strength

Blend between the upstream guides and your sculpted result.

Range: 0.0 to 1.0 (Default: 1.0)

  • 0.0 — show the upstream guides, as if the layer were off
  • 1.0 — show the sculpted result in full
  • In between — dial the hand work back without losing it

Because it is a blend rather than a switch, this is a safe way to check how much of the look is coming from your sculpting versus the generator.

Clear Sculpt Data

Removes all sculpt data on this layer and reverts to the upstream guides. This cannot be undone from the panel, so treat it as a reset rather than an undo — Blender's own Ctrl+Z is the right tool for stepping back a stroke.

Where it goes in the stack

Guide Sculpt belongs in the guide stack, after the generator and before Interpolate. Anything upstream of it (density, length, distribution, seed) flows through the layer. Anything downstream works on the sculpted result.

Removed controls

Earlier versions exposed Match Mode, Follow Generator and Inherit Length. They are gone from the panel. They only affected the legacy absolute-snapshot path, and the delta layer does their job inherently — it already follows generator count, length and seed changes, and already matches by guide id. Leaving them on screen implied behaviour that no longer exists.

Old files that set them still load; the fields are kept for compatibility and ignored.

Tips

  • Sculpt early, at a low guide count. It is faster to comb 300 guides than 2,000, and the layer carries the work up when you raise the count.
  • Use Strength to audit. Pull it to 0 and back to see exactly what your hand work is contributing.
  • Part lines and hairlines are worth sculpting. They are the two things a distribution will never get right on its own.