Best practices using the Blur brush

The Blur brush lets texture artists blur localized areas of a 3D model without exporting texture maps to an image editing application. To achieve best results with the Blur brush, be aware of the following:

• The Blur brush works as a screen-based operation that captures the 3D View to calculate a blurred image. Any operation that changes the screen image also causes a recalculation and update to the reference image. This includes dollying, tumbling or tracking the 3D View, toggling paint layer visibility, and accessing features in the Object List. Mudbox also recalculates and updates the image if you adjust the Blur Radius property. You may notice a slight pause during the recalculation.
• The relationship between the camera position and the model has an impact on the blur results. That is, dollying and zooming within the 3D View affects the blur results even if other Blur brush properties remain constant. As a result, you may want to adjust the Blur Radius value after dollying the camera in order to achieve the same blur result.
• For best results, keep Use Texture Filtering on when using the Blur brush.
• The blur effect is applied only to the currently selected layer. If some paint layers have active blend modes, the results may be occluded by other layers above the selected layer in the layer stack. In this circumstance, consider turning off any other layers that are not required when using this tool.
• Blur artifacts can occur in a number of circumstances. For example, when the brush ring intersects the edge of the 3D View a hard edge on the blur results occurs in those locations. To minimize unexpected color edits on the texture, avoid dragging the brush ring across the silhouette edge of the model, or across areas of a model that face away from the camera viewing plane.

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