Thanks so much for the kind words. I’m really glad you’re enjoying it! Hopefully simpler and smoother workflows will emerge over time as things evolve :)
This might happen due to your GPU specs. SDF Modeler needs at least 2 GB of VRAM (preferably more). It would probably be easier to troubleshoot this on the SDF Modeler Discord: https://discord.gg/U7yxeqJBfW
Transparency is much cheaper for reference images since they’re rendered using a traditional raster pass. Making the shapes themselves transparent would be significantly more expensive with SDF Modeler’s custom renderer, which is why I’m currently trying to avoid that.
There is an option in the path tracer to render an object as transparent, but that’s probably not what you’re referring to. At the moment, there’s no way to make the viewport material itself transparent.
However, if your goal is to overlay reference images with semi-transparent shapes, you can place the reference image in front and adjust the image’s transparency instead.
At the moment, the best option is the "Right Mouse" navigation mode. It doesn't rely on the middle mouse button, so it should work reasonably well with a touchpad.
I do want to look into better touchpad support in the future, but it's a bit difficult to prioritize right now.
Select a point and press the + button to insert a new point after it or use the Duplicate button to copy the currently selected point (also available via Ctrl + D / Cmd + D).
Thanks a lot, really glad you like it! I'll probably look into support options for SDF Modeler in the future, but for now you're very welcome to join the Discord — https://discord.gg/U7yxeqJBfW
Always happy to have more people around for testing and feedback :)
Thanks a lot for the feedback! Rotation snapping is definitely planned, with angle increments to make clean ortho orientations quicker and easier. It will complement the reset rotation feature nicely.
Thanks! I’ll most likely open-source it if I ever grow tired of it, but for now I’m really enjoying working on it. I’m honestly pretty bad at working in teams, so for both your sanity and mine I prefer to work solo :D
I’ll add more modifiers as I go, but usually I’d just use a spline with two control points. If you set the curvature to 0, you’ll get a straight linear falloff between them.
I’m planning to add a template/prefab system in the future that will make it possible to reuse shapes across different models. That said, it will likely be independent of the grouping feature.
Thanks a lot for the kind words, glad you’re enjoying it! You’re absolutely right about non-uniform scaling on groups — that’s not supported at the moment because of how the system handles transformations internally. Once you mix non-uniform scaling with rotations in the hierarchy, the math turns into shears and other distortions, and the current SDF pipeline isn’t set up to handle that cleanly.
It’s definitely a technical limitation rather than an oversight. Appreciate you pointing it out, and who knows — maybe one day I’ll find a neat way around it.
Thanks a lot for the kind words! This request has actually come up quite a bit recently — the idea of entering a transformation state directly (without having to click on the gizmo first). I’ll see what I can do about bringing something like that in.
Ah, got it — thanks for clarifying! I was thinking in a different direction. That's not something SDF Modeler is really focusing on right now, since the main goal is interactive modeling and mesh export. But I do see the artistic use case you have in mind, and it could be interesting to revisit later once the core feature set is more solid.
A lot of people ask about some kind of “shader export” they could plug into Shadertoy or similar. The thing is, SDF Modeler doesn’t just brute-force raymarch — it uses a more sophisticated setup under the hood. That’s why it runs fast even with lots of shapes.
So simply exporting “passes” or a GLSL shader wouldn’t really reproduce what the renderer does here, and in practice would likely be far too slow.
GLTF or FBX would definitely be nice to have, but they’re probably only worth targeting once the generated geometry is more game-friendly. Right now, the export is still very high-poly and not really optimized for real-time use, so I’d like to improve topology and possibly add simplification options first. Once that’s in place, formats like GLTF and FBX will make a lot more sense.
Really appreciate your continued support. The bridge operation opens up some interesting new possibilities to create curved surfaces. I’m glad you’re enjoying the new features.
Hi! By default, the shortcut for Move is the W key. You can change key bindings in the Settings tab to better suit your workflow — including mapping it to G if that feels more natural.
Thanks a lot for the kind words — really glad you’re enjoying the software!
Hi, this question has been coming up more frequently lately, and I totally get why. I’ll definitely try to add support for more export formats when I find the time. Thanks for the suggestion!
The roundness of a shape definitely affects the final result, but the main issue when aiming for low-poly geometry is actually something else: there's currently no implementation for simplifying the exported mesh based on a geometric error tolerance.
What you'd need is an additional step during export that merges similar or flat triangles to reduce the overall count. That’s not implemented yet, but it’s something I’d like to look into for future versions.
Thank you so much — really glad you’re enjoying it!
I’ve already taken the first step toward improving topology and export quality in the next version, and I’ll make sure the flipped normals issue gets addressed as well.
We’re still in the early days of this new modeling technique, but it definitely feels right in a lot of ways. Give it some time — maybe we can help make it the new status quo :)
Hi, that's lovely. It is completely free to use for anything your heart desires. Feel free to use the models commercially, whether it's for 3D printing, games, or anything else. Have fun creating, and I'd love to see a picture or two! :)
