It would be really nice to have the ability to designate or “lock” certain layers as “paint only” or “sculpt only” layers. If you designated a layer as “paint only”, the only tools that would work on that layer would be paint, smudge, and mask. Any action or tool which actually moves vertices/alters mesh would become inactive. And vice-versa, you could designate some layers as “sculpt only”; all tools/actions would be active on this layer except the paint tool. There could be 2 small checkboxes at the bottom of the drop down menu you get when you press the 3 dots under each layer. One checkbox would be “paint only”, the other “sculpt only”. By default both boxes would be unchecked, and the layer would function as normal; however, once one of the boxes was checked, it would limit the type of action that could be done on the layer. At a later stage you could uncheck a box if you needed to add a different type of action to that layer; in other words the layer wouldn’t be permanently fixed as “sculpt only” or “paint only”, just when the relevant box was ticked.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who has accidentally painted on a layer reserved for sculpting or vice versa; it’s so easy to get carried away when sculpting and you forget to check the layer you’re on, particularly when making quick, small adjustments. Before you know it you’ve done too much to easily undo and go back. Having the ability to lock a layer to painting only, or sculpting only would really helpful.
That functionality is already there. Layer with offset factor 0 is paint only, color factor 0 makes it sculpt only. Furthermore you can have roughness and metalness dedicated layers.
I think you might be right. There is a slight difference between my idea and setting the factors to 0, in that with the factors set at 0 your action (sculpting or painting) is recorded on the layer, but hidden; with my idea it wouldn’t be possible to affect the layer with the wrong action at all. But thinking it through, I think your suggestion would be very effective at achieving what I want - it would certainly act as a reminder not to do the wrong thing on a given layer. Thanks, I will start using it!
Hey Jim,
Recorded paint/sculpt/roughness/metalness actions can be deleted simply by creating a new layer above and collapse it down. The name of the original layer will remain.
Using layers with differnt factors is very powerfull and i use them all the time.
Have fun!
Thanks, that’s really helpful. I’ll try it out. There always seem to be new things to learn in the app!
You might know this already, but I only noticed it yesterday; the layer icon displays a coloured dot to indicate your layer state:
green: layer is selected and visible
pink: layer is selected and disabled
red: painting on base layer
Also I noticed that if you’re in the pink state (layer is selected but disabled), nomad will let you draw the stroke, but then it will disappear when you finish the stroke. This is a good visual reminder to stop and think, because yes, the strokes are being saved into that disabled layer!
I also noticed that I couldn’t use the layers like blendshapes where I was sculpting an expression, and wanted to drive it above 100%, or set it to -100%. Turns out you can; don’t use the main layer slider which is locked to 0 to 1 range, but click the ‘…’ button. The offset slider in there can be set above 1 or below 0.
Thanks - I don’t think I’d realised that pink meant invisible.