Troubleshoot sculpting

This table lists common sculpting problems and possible solutions:

Problem/Error Message Possible Solution(s)

Sculpted strokes appear shaky, not smooth.

Shakiness from your hand can make it difficult to sculpt smooth strokes. Turn on the Steady Stroke option to produce a smoother stroke. See Produce smooth tool strokes.

The cursor outline indicating the radius for the sculpting tool disappears.

  • The outline for the tool cursor only appears when the sculpting tool is over the model in the viewport. Position the cursor over the model to view it.
  • The Radius setting is set too large and the outline appears outside of the current viewport. This can occur when setting the Radius using the B hotkey if the tool cursor is off the model. See Sculpting tool settings.

No stroke appears when sculpting on a model.

  • The resolution of the model is too coarse in comparison to the size of the current sculpt tool. Add more subdivision levels to increase the model’s resolution or increase the radius of the tool.
  • The sculpt tool Strength setting is set too low for the sculpting tool. Increase the Strength.

Two sculpt tool cursors appear on the surface of the model.

The Mirror setting for the tool is on. If you don’t want to sculpt symmetrically, turn Mirror off. See Sculpting tool settings.

Sculpting causes large spike effects to appear on the model.

The Strength setting for the tool is set too high in relation to the tool radius. Undo your stroke (Ctrl + Z) and reduce the Strength setting for the sculpting tool. See Sculpting tool settings.

Symmetry setting has no effect when sculpting.

An incorrect mirror axis is specified. Check the Mirror sculpting setting and reset as required.

If the model was moved off the XYZ origin, some mirror axis properties will not work. See Sculpt using tool symmetry.

Sculpting performance is slow.

To mitigate slow interactive performance, there's a few things you can try:
  • In the Preferences' Display settings, set Viewport 2.0's Rendering Engine to OpenGL. Then in the current sculpting brush's Tool Settings' Display section, turn off both Show Frozen/Masked and Wireframe Display.

  • Sculpting at higher subdivision levels (when many vertices are modified by a particular sized brush) requires more RAM than lower subdivision levels (using the same sized brush) because fewer vertices are affected.

    In general, make changes that affect larger regions of a surface at a lower subdivision level. Fewer vertices are moved, so sculpting performance improves.

Related topics

Parent topic: Sculpting in Maya