Geometry painting workflow

This page focuses on the geometry side of the Geometry & Texture Painter. It complements the main painter page with a more practical sculpting workflow.

Most used geometry modes

In practice, 4 paint modes tend to cover most day to day sculpting work:

Elevation for pushing terrain up, down, or smoothing transitions.
Height Sampling for creating flat platforms and matching terrain to a chosen height.
Sub Division for adding local polygon density where you need more shape detail.
Visibility for cutting openings such as cave entrances.

Reading the result while you sculpt

If your terrain is using a Gradient Lookup shading mode, the terrain can show automatic color adaptation based on slope and height while you paint. This makes the landform easier to read during sculpting, even before you begin dedicated color or texture painting.

To switch a terrain to this shading mode:

Select the terrain.
In the Inspector, go to Shading > Context > Set Shader.
In the Wizard, choose Gradient Lookup for the texturing model.
Click Apply.

Height Sampling for flat areas

Height Sampling is especially useful when you want to block out terraces, floors, or hand shaped platforms.

If there is no good point to sample from yet, you can type a value directly into the Sample Point Y field. In Scene View, hold Shift and left click to sample a height from the terrain. A strong brush with high opacity is usually better when you want to establish a clean flat level quickly.

For connecting flat areas, a practical workflow is to mix Height Sampling with Elevation smoothing to form ramps instead of perfectly sharp steps.

Sub Division for local detail

Sub Division is best treated as a local detail tool. Use it only where extra geometric density matters, such as hero areas, sharp landform features, or places that will be viewed up close.

Visibility for openings

Visibility only cuts holes in the terrain surface. It is appropriate for cave entrances and similar openings, not for building the whole cave interior.