sculpt_startup.blend

Everything should happen in the 3D View

Following what I said in my UI proposal some time ago, and with Dyntopo having its options in the Tool Shelf, I've made some adjustments to my default Sculpt layout.
Only the 3D View with an open Tool Shelf is needed to start sculpting now, removing even more unnecessary choices and making access to Sculpt Mode in Blender easier.

Ctrl+UpArrow shows the full layout which contains the 3D View, an Outliner set to 'visible layers', and the Properties window.

With this layout you can sculpt various objects without having to leave Sculpt Mode, selecting them from the Outliner.

Here's a demo video of a few objects sculpted with Dyntopo and the current layout:

We could switch a few more things to the 3D View to make the two extra windows redundant.

Matcap or Material assignment.
In past GSOC projects, a Matcap selector was coded and added to the Properties panel of the 3D View. While I liked it, and it was quite handy for sculpting, it could have been a bit more flexible, allowing to assign a different matcap to each object for example, or even using materials instead of matcaps.

Selection.
Paweł Łyczkowski proposed in a recent mail to bf-funboard to use Ctrl+Shift+Click (or some other combination of keys) for switching between objects regardless of the mode you're in, that could be a good solution.


Changes from Blender default settings:

Default Cube with three levels of subdivision already applied.
Lamp and Camera moved to a hidden layer.
Display set to 'Only Render'.

New Sculpt layout selected by default.

Snake Hook as default brush.

Fast Sculpt Mat.

GLSL Sculpt Mat.

3D View default shading set to GLSL.

Default object set to Sculpt Mode.

Outliner set to 'visible layers'.

X-Symmetry active by default.

Added Draw Smooth brush with Smooth Stroke active.

Added Crease Carve and Crease Soft.

Added Scrape/Peaks Area Locked brush.

This is another short demo using Crease and Scrape:


And here's the download link:

Edit (linked to my new defaults instead):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2105283/sculptstartup/defaults.7z

Dyntopo is not in trunk yet, though.


The most similar work flow with features currently in trunk involves using Remesh.

Under the same mantra of moving things to 3D View I started using Nicholas Bishop's Remesh Operator and assigned it to a key, then asked for some help to create another operator for Boolean Union.

Here's an example:


And these are the scripts for both operators:

Sculpt-Remesh
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2105283/sculptstartup/sculpt-remesh.py

Boolean Union
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2105283/sculptstartup/boolean-union.py



I don't know if there's enough interest in this, but I'm going to keep working on it and, hopefully, it might help making the sculpting experience more pleasant and accessible for someone else than myself.


Finally, a big thank you to Nicholas Bishop for the feedback on the startup.blend and all his amazing work on Sculpt mode. :)


EDIT: Updated files

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2105283/sculptstartup/lgm_kednar/config.7z