The PolyMesh Object type will translate Surface operations to 2D textures. Displacement tools will be baked in real time to the normal map. You can use this feature for hand painting models or generating extra detail on low poly assets without relying on a high poly mesh bake.

Before starting using PolyMesh Surface tools, you need to use Surface Rebuild to generate an editable surface with the desired detail size (same workflow as with GeoMesh for high poly sculpting). Keep in mind:

  • Surface tool will write to a 2D textures using the PolyMesh UVs. This UVs will be generated when using Surface Rebuild. UVs will be unwrapped using the Seams created with the Mask Seam tool. If any part of the geometry cannot be unwrapped with the provided seams, Uniform will default to unwrap each polygon individually.
  • Uniform supports importing existing meshes with existing UVs for texture painting or normal map authoring. You can use the Texture Paint Mesh Import for this purpose. When importing existing UVs, make sure there are no overlaps and the whole asset fits into the (0, 1) UV space in order to avoid artifacts.

The Displacement domain has a “Smoothing” property that controls how smooth the base interpolation of the normal map is. Try adjusting this value before starting normal map sculpting the way it best fits your asset. Adjusting this value afterwards will deform all sculpted detail on top, so it will create surface artifacts.