How to Move UVs with the Sculpt Brush in Blender

Blender features a built-in UV Sculpting toolset that allows you to manipulate texture coordinates using brush strokes rather than moving individual vertices manually. This guide covers how to enable UV Sculpting in the UV Editor, select the Grab brush, adjust key settings, and smoothly tweak your UV layout for a clean, distortion-free texture map.

Step 1: Open the UV Editor and Select Your Mesh

1. Select your 3D object in the 3D Viewport.
2. Press Tab to enter Edit Mode and press A to select all vertices.
3. Switch your workspace to the UV Editing layout, or open a UV Editor window alongside your viewport.

Step 2: Enable the UV Sculpt Tool

1. In the UV Editor window, look at the left toolbar (press T if the toolbar is hidden).
2. Select the Grab brush tool from the toolbar.
3. Alternatively, in the UV Editor header menu, click UV and enable UV Sculpt to activate the sculpting mode.

Step 3: Adjust the Sculpt Brush Settings

Before grabbing UVs, configure your brush properties in the top Tool Bar or the Tool tab in the sidebar (press N):

• Radius: Controls brush size. Press F in the UV Editor to resize the brush dynamically.
• Strength: Controls how strongly the brush affects the UVs. Press Shift + F to change the strength.
• Display Falloff: Adjust the falloff type (e.g., Smooth, Sphere, Linear) to change how surrounding UV vertices respond to the brush movement.
• Lock Borders: Enable this option in the brush settings if you want to move inner UV vertices without disturbing the outer boundary edges of your UV islands.

Step 4: Grab and Move UVs

1. Hover your cursor over the area of the UV mesh you want to adjust.
2. Click and hold the Left Mouse Button, then drag to push, pull, and shape the UV coordinates smoothly.
3. Release the mouse button to set the UVs in place.

If you accidentally distort the mesh, switch to the Relax or Smooth sculpt brush from the same toolbar to push the UV coordinates back into an evenly distributed layout.