itch.io

Hi,

OBJ export isn’t a great fit for the current state of the mesh export. The format doesn’t support vertex colors (unlike PLY), which means important data would be lost. Additionally, the generated meshes are still quite dense and not clean enough for most 3D applications without some form of post-processing.

STL also doesn’t support vertex colors, but in that case I assume most people are using it for 3D printing and applying color after printing.

So before adding more export formats, I’d prefer to further improve the mesh quality and overall usability of the export.

Cheers,
Sascha

Thank you, I really appreciate it :)

Glad to hear it feels intuitive and useful for you, that's exactly what I’m aiming for. And it's great to know it's become part of your regular workflow.

Cheers,
Sascha

Hi,

SDF Modeler is free to use for personal and commercial projects. Redistribution or modification is not permitted.

Cheers,
Sascha

Very nice! Glad you're enjoying the software.

Cheers,
Sascha

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 :)

Cheers,
Sascha

Hi,

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

Cheers,
Sascha

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

Thanks!

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

Hi,

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

You're welcome! I'm doing my best :)

Cheers,
Sascha

Hi,

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).

Cheers,
Sascha

Thanks mate — really appreciate it! :)

That's incredibly kind — thank you so much! :)

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 :)

Cheers,
Sascha

Thanks for the kind words — glad you like the new update :)

Really glad to hear that! Cheers Sascha :)

Hi,

you can simply drag and drop one shape onto another in the hierarchy to combine or group them.

Cheers,
Sascha

Hi,

That’s already possible :) You can simply drag one shape onto another in the hierarchy to create a subgroup or nested boolean group.

Cheers,
Sascha

Hi Dan,

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.

Have a great day.

Cheers,
Sascha

That looks pretty awesome — Haha, naming it like that would definitely be a tongue twister! I’ll think about it for future releases :)

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

Cheers,
Sascha

For more control over the top/bottom you can also add a negative cube.



Cheers,
Sascha

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

Hi Dan,

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

Thanks a lot!

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

Thanks, Dan!

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.

Cheers,
Sascha

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!

Cheers,
Sascha

Hi,
I’m still a bit of a newbie when it comes to developing for macOS 😅 — this might be resolved in the next release with updated notarization.

In the meantime, feel free to join the SDF Modeler Discord for easier troubleshooting:
https://discord.gg/U7yxeqJBfW

Thanks for checking it out!
Cheers,
Sascha

Beautiful images! :) SDF modeling definitely feels freeing — no more thinking about the constraints of the past. Glad you're enjoying it!

Cheers,
Sascha

No worries at all — just wanted to make sure your message didn’t go unanswered here too.

Hi,

as I already mentioned on Discord — I’ll definitely look into the taskbar issue!

And yep, I’m fully convinced by now: we need more export formats 😄 Thanks a lot for the kind words and the feedback, really appreciate it!

Cheers,
Sascha

That’s cool — glad you’re having fun with it! There actually is a Discord server, though I’ve mostly started it for troubleshooting:

https://discord.gg/U7yxeqJBfW

Everyone who’s interested is welcome to join!

Cheers,
Sascha

Thanks for the suggestion! I’m planning to add more blend operations and options over time. We’ll see what’s feasible as things evolve.

Cheers,
Sascha

Interesting! I’ll definitely take a look into it — sounds like a weird one.

Thanks, and you’re very welcome — glad you’re enjoying the Mac version!

Cheers,
Sascha

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!

Cheers,
Sascha

Thanks a lot — glad you like it! :)

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.

Cheers,
Sascha