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I'm new to this. Why do we actually want to shade an object Matcap for sculpting etc?

Duarte Farrajota Ramos
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Tim vokes
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    I don't know, do you want to? ;) Well, some people think matcaps help visualize the geometry better with their shading and find it therefore helpful for sculpting. But different people like to use different matcaps and other don't use matcaps at all. So, 1. you don't have to use matcaps, 2. if or which matcaps you use is personal preference and 3. I guess I'm voting to close this question for mostly generating opinion-based answers. Apart from the general statement that matcaps might help but are not mandatory. – Gordon Brinkmann Nov 18 '22 at 10:58
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    Matcaps are very useful to check the mesh for deformations. Especially the car paint and stripes matcaps can reveal unwanted distortions that you cannot see with studio light. They are also lightweight because they have baked in light and shadow and do not use textures or materials. – Blunder Nov 19 '22 at 18:55

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There is no such a rule or "standard" workflow. You can shade your models in any way you want when modelling, sculpting or working on them any other way.

While sculpting/modelling you need to see and understand the forms of the object so in some cases changing the shading and lighting helps to do just that - see the forms better. No need to use matcaps, you can do that in any way that happens to work for you, matcaps are just one easy and convenient way to change material and lighting temporarily and while that might not be the most realistic way of shading objects in a lot of 3d scenes, it is definitely good enough for sculpting that's why it's popular.

Martynas Žiemys
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