Brute3D Documentation

Every item on the Brute3D menu bar and toolbars, plus what each toolbar tab is for. Hover over an item to see what it does.

Top Toolbar

Layout

Customizable icons

left side, default order

  • Object Mode
  • Vertex Mode
  • Face Mode
  • Invert Selection
  • Soft Select
  • Soft Radius dropdown: radius slider
  • Selection Priority dropdown: All, Mesh, Joint, Control, IK Handle, Lights, Cameras
  • Group Rotate
  • Object Rotate
  • Crop Keys Crop To Keyframes
  • Combine Objects
  • Separate Objects right-click: options
  • Bake Animation right-click: options
  • Smooth Keys Smooth Keys (SPK Filter); right-click: options
  • Reference Character Reference 6' Character

Ctrl+Shift+right-click moves any Edit or Mesh menu command onto this toolbar, or moves a toolbar icon back into its menu.

Fixed icons

right side, left to right

  • Browser Window
  • Open Scene
  • Save Scene
  • Save Scene As
  • New Scene
  • Render View
  • Realtime IPR Render
  • IPR Render
  • Render Settings opens the Sky/Render Settings node
  • Select View Camera
  • Batch Render Editor
  • View Sequences Image Sequence Viewer
  • Program Settings

Shelf

Icon row above the viewport; View > Shelf toggles it

  • Duplicate Selected
  • Duplicate to Instance
  • Connection Editor coming soon
  • Set Driven Key
  • Delete All Nodes On Selected
  • Paint Separate Mesh
  • Duplicate Faces
  • Paint Select Components
  • Paint Delete Faces
  • Copy Skin Weights
  • Snap Object
  • Freeze Transformations right-click: options
  • Combine Objects
  • Separate Objects
  • Mirror Object
  • Flip
  • Smooth
  • Graph Editor
  • Pose Library
  • Data Manager
  • Bake Animation
  • Smooth Keys (SPK Filter)
  • Cache All Alembic Files

Left Toolbox

Vertical, left of the viewport

  • Select ToolQ
  • Lasso Select Tool
  • Paint Select Components
  • Orbit Tool
  • Pan Tool
  • Zoom Tool
  • Walk Tool
  • Draw Through Slice Poly
  • Sculpting
  • Painting
  • Freeze Transformations right-click: options
  • Center Pivot
  • Click to Focus depth of field
  • Graph Editor
  • Data Manager
  • Last Used Tool slot repeats the last tool

Viewport Toolbar

Top centre of the viewport

Icon strip

  • Select View Camera
    • right-click:
    • Create Camera
    • Clear All Keyframes
  • Set Resolution dropdown
    • 720p (1280 x 720)
    • HD (1920 x 1080)
    • 4K (3840 x 2160)
    • Your presets
  • Grid
    • right-click:
    • Display X Axis
    • Display Y Axis
  • Resolution Gate
  • Isolate Selection

View

dropdown

  • Focal Length slider
  • Keep Framing
  • Viewport Illumination slider
  • Joint Visibility slider
  • Gate Overscan slider
  • All
  • Auto Expand to Selection
  • Cameras
  • Controls
  • Display Shaded Mode
  • Generation Progress
  • Gizmo
  • HDRI Background
  • IK Handles
  • Joint Axis
  • Joints
  • Joints X-Ray
  • Light Gizmo
  • Lights
  • Location Axis
  • Mouse Over Highlighting
  • Outlines
  • Polygons
  • Scene Info
  • Selection Highlight
  • Shelf
  • Soft Select Gradient
  • World / Local gizmo axis toggle, Alt+W
  • Camera button persp or the current camera name
    • click: cycle to the next camera
    • right-click:
    • persp / scene cameras
    • Tear Off Viewport

Timeline Bar

  • Go to range start
  • Previous keyAlt+<
  • Step back one frame<
  • Play / Stop
  • Step forward one frame>
  • Next keyAlt+>
  • Go to range end
  • Key
  • Del
  • Auto Auto Key
  • Retime Retime Animation
    • while armed:
    • Snap keys to whole frames
    • Process
    • Retry
    • Cancel

Toolbar Tabs

The tabs along the top toolbar and what each one is for

Layout

Default tab

The Layout tab is the main workspace and the one Brute3D opens in. You build and arrange scenes in the 3D viewport, with the Outliner on the left and the Channel Editor and Attribute Editor on the right. The top toolbar, shelf, left toolbox, viewport toolbar and timeline listed above all belong to this tab. You can select whole objects or switch to vertex/face component mode, transform with the gizmo (W/E/R) and use Soft Select. Sculpting and texture painting happen right in this viewport from the left toolbox, with brush settings on the right. Rigging, deformers, grooms, keyframe animation and the Graph Editor all work from here. The IPR buttons open the Render View and render the scene with the Brute Renderer.

Creation

The Creation tab is for making new models with AI. The left side holds reference pages: a built-in web browser with its own tabs, a File browser for your PC and an Image Editing tab. Images can be saved to the Bin, an image stash stored alongside the current project. Below them, the AI Generator panel picks a provider (MeshyAI, TripoAI, Nano Banana, or bruteDepthGeo, which runs locally) and takes a text prompt and/or an input image in the Add Image slot. Each provider has its own options, such as Meshy's art style and PBR refine, Tripo's model version, Ultra Mesh Quality and Generate in Parts, or bruteDepthGeo's depth model and GPU/CPU device. Nano Banana generates images rather than models, and its result can be fed back in as the input image. Generator settings can be saved and reapplied as presets, and the panel shows your remaining credits and an estimate for the job. Finished models download and import straight into the viewport with their textures.

Retopologize

The Retopologize tab rebuilds dense meshes (sculpts, scans, AI models) as clean, even quad meshes. The meshes selected when you enter the tab become the sources, and the Sources button adds or removes meshes. Target Faces (or one of its quick presets) sets the approximate quad count, and Edge Scale makes the result coarser. Sharp Edges keeps hard creases above the Sharp Angle, Smooth Normals helps faceted input, and Adaptivity and Anisotropy control how quads shrink and stretch on curved areas. Clean Borders handles open edges such as eye holes and rims, so the new border snaps onto the original edge. Auto Generate UV's unwraps each result afterwards with the UV tab's settings. Retopologize turns every source into its own result object, and running it again refreshes that result. The viewport splits into the original on the left and the result on the right, with an Original/Retopologized toggle to compare.

UV

The UV tab is for creating and editing a mesh's UV layout, with the 3D model and its UV layout side by side. Unwrap UVs generates a new layout automatically, tuned by Max Cost, Normal Dev, Straightness, Quality, Detail Boost, Resolution, Padding and Brute Force. Detail paint marks areas of the model that should get more texture space, and Planar Projection projects the UVs flat from the current camera. In the layout you can select UVs, then move, rotate and scale them (W/E/R) or pull them with the Grab brush. Shells can be moved left or right between UDIM tiles, packed into a new tile, or redistributed evenly. Create UDIM Shells lets you lasso regions of the model and assign each one to a UDIM tile (1001, 1002 and so on), and Complete UDIM unwraps every region inside its own tile. Object, Vertex and Face mode buttons are here too, so you can select faces and assign shaders while looking at the layout.

Texture Transfer

The Texture Transfer tab copies texture maps from one mesh onto another with different UVs or topology, for example from a high-res sculpt or scan onto its retopologized version. Pick the Source and Target meshes (Load Selected fills them from your selection order, Flip swaps them), and they appear in side-by-side viewports. Choose the output resolution and the destination folder (Dest...), and optionally Auto Generate UV's on the target first. Bake Attributes bakes the source's color-correction sliders into the maps; with it off, the maps transfer raw and the slider values are copied to the target instead. Bake Ambient Occlusion ray-traces AO on the target and multiplies it into the diffuse map, with an SSAO preview in the viewports. Transfer Texture Maps writes the new maps, and Open Directory shows them in Explorer.

Deformation Transfer

The Deformation Transfer tab copies blendshapes from one mesh onto another mesh of any topology (Sumner & Popovic deformation transfer). Choose a Source that has a blendShape node and a Target, and Flip swaps them; the source shows on the left and the target on the right. To guide the match, click a vertex on the source and then its matching vertex on the target to add a marker pair. Fit Source To Target deforms a copy of the source onto the target before pairing, with settings for how smoothly and stiffly it bends and how far apart triangles may be to pair. Preview Fit adds the fitted source to the scene so you can check the match before committing. Tick which source shapes to bring over, then Transfer creates a blendShape node on the target with each one rebuilt on the target's topology. The transfer can be undone.

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