Deform Brush
Deform shapes directly in the viewport with sculpting brushes.
What it does
Deform Brush sculpts an image, a shape, or geometry from strokes painted directly in the viewport: push, twirl, pinch, bloat. Each stroke is stored as a lightweight descriptor and turned into a deformation field at cook time, so the result updates live while painting and stays editable afterwards. Nothing is baked into pixels or points until you ask for it.
A second output carries the deformation itself as a vector field, for wiring into Displace, Sample Field, or a physics setup to reuse the same painted motion elsewhere.
When to use it
Interactive liquify on an image, shape or geometry (push, twirl, pinch, bloat, smooth, turbulence) instead of numeric offsets.
Painting a deformation once and reusing it as a field: wire the
fieldoutput into Displace or a physics node.Painting width, twist or turn along a shape or curve instead of moving positions: switch Target to Width, Twist or Turn.
Painting a field with nothing wired into Input, so the node is a pure field source that plugs into something else later.
| Parameter | Type | Default |
|---|---|---|
input | OneOf([FieldOf(Raster), Collection]) | — |
brush_strokes | String | "[]" |
mode | String | "Push" |
radius | Number | 50 |
strength | Number | 0.500 |
falloff | String | "Smooth" |
target | String | "Position" |
amount | Number | 1 |
Gotchas
Target only matters for shapes and geometry. On an image input the brush always paints positional displacement, and Width, Twist and Turn have no effect until a shape or geometry is deformed instead.
Amount is ignored while Target is Position. It scales only how much is deposited into the Width, Twist or Turn channel, so raise it after switching Target, not before.
Smooth strokes on an image are a genuine relax pass, a local blur-and-blend, so they render slightly heavier than Push, Twirl, Pinch, Bloat or Turbulence strokes on the same image.
Leave Input unconnected to use Deform Brush as a pure field painter: output becomes the painted field itself, ready to wire into Displace or another field-consuming node.
Worked example
Add a Deform Brush and wire an image, shape, or geometry into Input.
Set Mode to Push, Twirl, Pinch, Bloat, Smooth, or Turbulence, and pick a Radius and Strength to suit the scale of the content.
Paint strokes directly in the viewport. Each stroke is stored and re-evaluated live as you add more.
Adjust Falloff to change how soft or hard the brush edge is.
To sculpt a shape's width or twist instead of its position, switch Target to Width, Twist, or Turn and raise Amount.
Optionally wire the
fieldoutput into Displace or a physics node to reuse the same painted deformation elsewhere.
See also
Deform · Follow Path · Smooth · Vector fields