Sometimes the form is fine and it's just in the wrong place. Two tools move things instead of building them: the Grab brush for regions of the surface, and the transform gizmo for whole layers.

The Grab brush

Grab (the Move group) grips the surface under the cursor and drags it with you — press, pull, release. It's the brush for posing and proportion: pulling a jaw forward, dragging a limb into line, stretching a silhouette until it reads.

A sphere with one side pulled out toward the upper right by the Grab brush, stretching the silhouette into an egg shape
Grab — grip and pull. Big size, big moves.

Grab is a move, not a build — it takes the existing surface with it, so big pulls stretch the triangles underneath. That's normal. Work at a large brush size for proportion changes (small grabs make dents, large grabs make decisions), and when stretched areas start misbehaving, Remesh re-flows them.

Grab's falloff is tuned separately from the other brushes for a smooth, natural pull-off toward the edge of the grip.

Snake Hook

Snake Hook sits beside Grab and pulls too, but it never lets go of the pointer: every dab grips whatever is under the cursor now and pulls it by the distance the pointer moved, so one long drag draws the surface out behind it into a horn, a tentacle or a spike. Grab moves a fixed patch; Snake Hook keeps feeding more surface into the pull.

  • Falloff shapes the taper: soft for a rounded tentacle, hard for a stalk.
  • Size is how much surface each dab grips. A small brush pulls a thin spike; a big one pulls a broad lobe.
  • A long pull stretches the triangles underneath, like Grab: Remesh or a Reflow afterwards gives the new form even topology.
  • Radial symmetry turns the pulls with it, so a crown of spikes is one drag.

Morph

Morph brushes the surface back towards a shape you stored. In the Topology section press Morph target: Store when the layer is as you want to be able to come back to; sculpt on as much as you like; then paint with Morph wherever you want that stored shape back. Each dab pulls the surface under it towards the target, Strength setting how fast, so a light touch blends between the two shapes and a few passes restore the stored one.

  • The target belongs to the mesh as it was when you stored it. A topology change (Subdivide, Remesh, a Clip cut) drops it; store it again.
  • Store again at any time to make the current shape the target. Clear target forgets it.
  • Use it for a sculpted expression you can dial back, or to recover a form after an experiment went too far.

The transform gizmo

The Move / Rotate / Scale tools on the left rail switch from sculpting to object transforms. A gizmo appears on the active layer — drag a colour-coded handle to transform along that axis, or use the outer ring to work in the screen plane.

The transform gizmo with coloured axis handles shown on a sphere
The Move gizmo on a layer. Each layer transforms independently.

Transforms operate on the active layer — which is what makes layers so useful for posing multi-part sculpts; see Working with layers.

While a transform tool is active, the options bar shows the gizmo's controls (Axes, Origin and Reset origin are also in the Symmetry section of the panel):

  • Axes: Local / World — Local handles follow the object's own orientation (they turn with it); World handles stay fixed to the world axes.
  • Origin: Locked / Unlocked — unlock it and dragging the gizmo re-places the layer's origin point — the spot the gizmo sits at, and the point rotation and scale act about — without moving the model. Lock again to transform about the new origin. Perfect for setting a shoulder as a rotation pivot.
  • Reset — put the layer's origin point back at the centre of the world, upright, where every layer starts. The model does not move.
  • Fit view — F (in View ▸ Gizmo) — centre and frame the model.

Masked transforms

Transforms respect the mask: masked vertices stay put while the rest of the layer moves. Mask a hand, invert so only the arm is free, rotate — a quick pose without any rigging.

With Symmetry on (X, Y, Z or any combination), a masked transform is mirrored across every active plane too: drag the free part on one side and its mirror image on the other side moves the same way, as seen in the mirror — pull one ear out and the other ear comes out with it, rotate one eye and the other rotates the opposite way.

The gizmo only ever moves the active layer. A mirrored copy of it on another layer (the copy that Duplicate followed by Mirror makes) stays where it is; select that layer to move it.

The options bar shows the gizmo's controls while a transform tool is active: the Local / World axes, the origin lock and Reset. Move, Rotate and Scale themselves are on the tool rail at the left.

Pose by Mesh Set

The Pose tool, on the rail below Move, Rotate and Scale, does the masking and the pivot for you. It works on a layer's Mesh Sets — a finished blockout gets one per stroke, and Auto, By angle, By colour or From mask make them on any layer.

  • Click a part — the forearm, say. Everything else is masked, the gizmo appears at the joint, the centre of the border between that part and the part it hangs from (the neighbouring set it shares the longest border with — the upper arm), and the gizmo's blue axis runs along the limb. Turn, move or scale it with the gizmo; each drag is one Undo.
  • Shift+click more parts to move them together — forearm and hand. The gizmo stays at the joint between the whole moving group and the rest.
  • Joint softness in the Pose section spreads the bend across the joint, so a limb bends smoothly instead of folding like a hinge: 0 bends sharply at the border, higher values spread it further each side (at 1, over the joint's width each side). The blend follows the surface of the model from the joint, so it never spills onto a part that only sits close by, like an arm hanging beside the body. Past a 50° bend the blend widens as far as the bend needs, so the inside of a sharp elbow or knee curves round instead of pinching.
  • Symmetry poses the mirror-side part mirrored: click the right forearm with Symmetry X on and the left one bends the same way, as seen in the mirror. A part that lies across the mirror plane, like a head, moves as one piece.
  • Esc or Let go releases the part. The pose mask is only there while you pose: leave the tool and your own mask and gizmo origin come back exactly as they were.

If the layer has no Mesh Sets yet, the Pose section says how to make them.

Transforms and origin moves are undoable with Ctrl+Z like everything else.

That completes the brush set. Next section: Subdivision & the triangle budget.