Coming from Blender or ZBrush
Most of what you know carries over. The biggest difference is underneath: Shapeaway’s clay is a volume (a signed-distance grid), not a mesh.
What’s different
Section titled “What’s different”- No topology. There’s no dynamic topology, remesher or retopology step. Cut holes, merge parts and pull out long horns without the surface stretching.
- Resolution is a detail level, set per object (Draft to Studio). For pores and scales beyond it, use a detail mesh: a mesh with subdivision levels that you sculpt, like multires.
- Invert is Ctrl, smooth is Shift, as in ZBrush.
- Watertight by default. Exports never have holes or flipped faces.
Tool map
Section titled “Tool map”| You know | In Shapeaway |
|---|---|
| Clay Buildup, Draw | Add, Clay Strips |
| Standard, inverted | Carve |
| Dam Standard | Dam Standard |
| Move, Grab | Grab, Move (connected surface only, on detail meshes) |
| Snake Hook | Snake Hook |
| hPolish, Trim Dynamic | Polish, Trim |
| Layer | Layer |
| Inflate, Pinch | Inflate, Pinch |
| Polypaint, texture paint | Paint |
| Mask by cavity | Mask cavities, Mask peaks (Masking) |
| Extract | Extract (Masking) |
| Subtools, objects | Objects |
| Live Boolean, Boolean modifier | Merge, Subtract, Intersect |
| Subdivision levels, multires | Detail meshes |
| Alphas | Stamps and surface alphas |
| FiberMesh, hair curves | Hair |
Moving files between apps
Section titled “Moving files between apps”- Into Shapeaway: STL, OBJ, PLY and glTF/GLB, with vertex colours and textures. See Importing meshes.
- Out to Blender: GLB keeps colours, materials, and objects as separate nodes; OBJ for meshes; Hair curves for Blender’s curves-to-hair.
- Out to a game engine: bake maps onto a low-poly OBJ.
Shortcuts can be rebound in Settings if you want your old muscle memory back.
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