Geometry Paint Feature

Mesh AK has a powerful geometry paint feature allowing to change many aspects of a mesh by a brushstroke. Mesh AK supports tablet drivers. You may change a mesh by simply clicking on it or painting on your tablet. Max' reference coordinate systems are also supported; this allows you for example to sculpt objects in world space (z axis points to top, which is interesting for sculpting landscapes), local space (which is more interesting for modeling, where the z axis points along the normal) or screen space (which is interesting if you want to sculpt surface details of models).

These are the options all Geometry paint tools have in common:

• Tool: With the combo box "tool" you select the tool to change the mesh, e.g. "sculpt" or "select". Detailed descriptions to the various tools are listed below. Dependent of the selected tool, a new dialog may appear, with specific options for the selected tool - description of this see below at the tools section. Not every tool works in every subobject mode. For example "sculpt" makes no sense in element subobject mode. In this case the tool is not selectable in this subobject mode, it doesn't show up in the combo box.

• Paint: With the "paint" button you switch into paint mode. When you move the cursor over the mesh now, you will see a 3d-cursor gizmo, which follows the shape of the mesh. This is the paint cursor. The "sphere" shows the range of the influence of the cursor. If you have stylus size pressure enabled, it will also show the strength of the current brush stroke by its size. The cross will show you the direction of the brush stroke. the slightly longer line of the cross shows the z axis direction, into which your brush stroke will work.

• Once: If checked, one brush stroke will work only once on a brush stroke. If you move on the same location a second time during the same brushstroke, nothing will happen.

• Inv: The check box "inv" inverts your tool. E.g. if have chosen the tool "select", which selects vertices, faces etc., it will deselect instead. Shortcut for this checkbox is "M". This checkbox may be disabled, if the tool doesn't support an inverse mode. E.g. the deletion tool doesn't support an inverse mode, because the inversion of delete would be create, and there is no create tool.

• Size: this shows your cursor size in world units. Shortcuts for this spinner are "," and "." (on a German keyboard), like in Photoshop.

• Delay: this sets a delay in milliseconds for painting, if painting is too fast (e.g. Paint scatter paints too many objects too fast)

• Feath: This allows you to "soften" the edge of the influence. The influence is smoother, if you set it to 1.0.
  
  

• Curve: This brings up the Paint Falloff Curve dialog, where you can enter the falloff curve of the brush.
  

• Styl: The "Styl" checkboxes represent, if stylus pressure is used for the values. According to the used tool, some or all of them may be unuseable ("greyed out"), because they can't be used by the tool. E.g. a selection tool can't use "depth", because it is useless for this tool - you can't set the strength of a selection)

• Siz: The stylus influences the size of the cursor. You see this by the cursor size in the viewport.

• Fea: Ths stylus influences the feather range, where a hard pressure means a hard frame, and softer pressure means a soft frame.

• Depth. The stylus influences the depth, the strength of the tool.

• Normals Options: These options are only available if the used paint tool supports normals, such as Sculpt and Paint Scatter.
  
• Average: This sets, how the normal is calculated. If switched off, each vertex/face/poly is moved by it's own normal. If switched on, the average normal of each vertex/face/polygon in the brush stroke is calculated, and the vertex/face/polygon is moved in this average direction.
• By Pivot: This sets the type of normal. If switched off, the real vertex/face/poly normal is used. This has the problem, that the normals constantly change, if they are not locked (see below). If switched on, not the real normal is used, but a line from the pivot point through the vertex/face/poly. This has the advantage, that these "normals" doesn't change, when you paint on the mesh. Additionally, you can influence the direction by moving the pivot.
• Lock Normals: Locks the normals in their current state. The normals are frozen in its current state - no matter how much you paint, they stay the same.
• Save/Load Normals: I have to confess, that this option is not very useful. You may save and load the normals of the current mesh, but loading the normals is only possible into the same mesh, without any vertex or face changes (adding/deleting verts and faces).