The 3D sculpting manual

Digital sculpting is 3D modelling done the way you would work clay. You push, pull, smooth, pinch and carve a lump of material with brushes, and the computer keeps track of the hundreds of thousands of triangles underneath. You think about form, not vertices.

Traditional, or hard-surface, modelling is a technical craft that rewards planning and precision — the right tool for a chair, a wrench or a building. Sculpting is an intuitive craft that rewards observation and repetition. It is the right tool for anything organic: a face, a creature, a hand, folds of cloth, a rock.

Most 3D artists use both. You sculpt the form you want, then rebuild clean geometry over it (retopology) so it animates and renders efficiently. Mold does the sculpting half, and hands the result to Mixos Paint for texturing or to Mixos Studio to place in a scene.

Less than most people expect, because sculpting borrows an intuition you already have. You have pressed a thumb into clay and smoothed a bump, and that knowledge transfers almost directly. Beginners usually make recognisable shapes inside an hour — not true of polygon modelling, where the first hour goes on learning what an edge loop is.

What is genuinely hard is the same thing that is hard about drawing: seeing accurately. Getting a face to read as a particular person takes the practice a pencil would, and no software shortens that. The good news is that it is practice, not talent — it accrues.

The other traditional barrier is logistical: a licence, a download, a machine that can run it, a driver to keep current. Many people who want to try sculpting stall somewhere in that chain. Mold sits on the other side of it — open a tab, sign in, and you are sculpting.

You need a browser that provides WebGPU, the graphics API built into current browsers. There is nothing to download, no plugin and no driver to manage. If your browser cannot provide WebGPU, Mold tells you when you arrive rather than failing halfway through a stroke.

• Desktop and laptop — an up-to-date Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Brave on macOS, Windows, Linux or ChromeOS, or Safari 26+ on macOS. Mouse, trackpad and pressure-sensitive tablets all work.
• iPad — Safari 26+ on iPadOS. Mold keeps the desktop layout with finger-sized controls, and Apple Pencil pressure drives the brushes.
• Phones and Android tablets — a current Chrome. Phones get their own upright layout; see sculpting on a tablet or phone.
• Chromebooks — which cannot run desktop sculpting packages at all — run Mold as long as ChromeOS supplies WebGPU.

Hardware decides how far you can push a sculpt, not whether you can start. Mold sizes its triangle budget to the device — up to 6 million triangles on a desktop with 8 GB or more of memory, 4 million on other desktops, 1.5 million on an iPad or tablet and 1 million on a phone — and runs Divide, remeshing and opening a large sculpt in the background with a progress bar. Saved sculpts live in your account, so you can rough a shape out anywhere and finish it at a desk.

The fastest way to understand sculpting is to make something bad on purpose. Work quickly, do not undo, and follow the five steps below. The point is to feel how the brushes behave, not to produce anything you would keep.

1. 1
   Open Mold with a sphere — Go to Mold. A new sculpt starts as a sphere, the traditional starting point because it has no features to fight — every sculpt is the process of finding a shape inside it.
2. 2
   Block the big shape with Clay — Press 6 for the Clay brush and set a large radius with the [ and ] keys. Build the broad masses first — a head shape, a body, a rough silhouette — and resist detail.
3. 3
   Smooth constantly — Press 3 for Smooth, or hold Shift while you stroke with any brush. Experienced sculptors alternate building and smoothing several times a minute; smoothing is half the technique, not cleanup at the end.
4. 4
   Subdivide when the form is right — Press D to add a finer subdivision level — but only once the broad shape reads correctly. Subdividing early gives you a high-resolution version of a bad shape, which is much harder to fix.
5. 5
   Carve the detail — At the higher level, switch to Dam (E) for sharp crease lines, Pinch (8) to tighten edges and Crease (9) for ridges. Symmetry is on from the start, so both sides get the same treatment; X toggles it.

There is a reliable path through this, and it is much shorter than the amount of tutorial content in the world suggests. Most people stall not from lack of material but from studying tools instead of practising form. Work through the sequence below in order.

1. 1
   Learn six brushes, not sixty — Clay, Smooth, Grab, Dam, Pinch and Flatten will carry you through your first several months. Every other brush is a convenience one of those six could approximate, and learning the full catalogue first is the most common way to waste a month.
2. 2
   Sculpt primitives from observation — An egg. An apple. A pebble. A pear. They sound trivial and are not — they teach you to judge silhouette and surface transitions with nothing to hide behind. Do ten.
3. 3
   Move to anatomy in parts — A nose, an ear, an eye and its socket, a hand. Parts before wholes, always: a head sculpted by someone who has never sculpted an ear separately will have a bad ear.
4. 4
   Sculpt a skull before a face — A face is a soft surface draped over hard landmarks — brow ridge, cheekbone, jaw, temple. Sculpt the skull once and every later head improves, because you finally know what is underneath.
5. 5
   Copy a master, then work from reference — Re-sculpt a piece you admire to feel its decisions, then move to photographs. Load them into Mold's reference views rather than sculpting from memory.
6. 6
   Finish things — A finished mediocre sculpt teaches more than five abandoned promising ones, because only finishing forces you through the parts you are avoiding.

Give it about three months of regular short sessions rather than occasional long ones. Thirty minutes daily beats a five-hour Saturday, because sculpting improvement is mostly perceptual and perception consolidates between sessions.

Mold is organised around six modes, on the bar across the top of the viewport. The mode decides what the tool rail on the left offers and what the bar along the bottom controls. Switch with a click, or with Shift and the mode's number.

Top barmixosMoldUnsaved sculptWire · Ray↶ ↷Send to Paint →

Tools

SculptMask Transpose Mesh Deform Rigmode barClay 6 · Size · Strength · Add Dig · Morethe mode's settings bar

Object · ViewObjectsLayersSubdivisionSymmetryStroke

Drag the panel sideways to see all of it.

Sculpt (⇧1)

Shape the surface with brushes. Where you will spend most of your time — the other five modes serve it.

Mask (⇧2)

Protect part of the model so the next operation leaves it alone.

Transpose (⇧3)

Move, rotate or scale whatever is not masked, with a gizmo.

Mesh (⇧4)

Rebuild the topology — subdivide, remesh, decimate, boolean and trim — and place, repeat and insert objects.

Deform (⇧5)

Reshape the whole object at once — bend, twist, taper, inflate, noise.

Rig (⇧6)

Build a skeleton inside the sculpt, bind it and pose it.

The panel on the right has two tabs:

• Object — the model: the Objects list, Subdivision and Symmetry, plus whatever the current mode needs (Layers, Morph targets and Stroke in Sculpt; Face Sets, Visibility and Mask in Mask mode; Placement, Repeat, Insert and the mesh tools in Mesh mode; the bone list in Rig).
• View — how you look at it: Material, Lights, Camera, Reference, Render and Input & handedness.

Everything Mold can do is reachable from the top bar. The document sits on the left, the view toggles in the middle, and history and the handoff to Paint on the right.

• ⌘K (Ctrl+K) searches every mode, brush, command and export. Type what you want — "remesh", "mirror", "turntable" — and run it from the list.
• ☰ Sculpt menu, beside the save button, holds the document actions: New sculpt, Save as new sculpt, Open sculpt, both imports, Export — which also opens the 3D print panel — Send to Paint, Send to Studio and a link to this manual.
• ? opens a sheet of every keyboard shortcut, the same list as Keyboard shortcuts.
• Right-click a panel — the brush bar, the tool rail, a section of the Object panel, the mode bar — for a Help row that opens this manual at the part describing it. The tool rail's Help follows the mode you are in.
• On a phone, the ☰ carries the full set of menus instead — File, Edit, Object, Mesh, Deform, Mask, View and Help.

The guided tour starts from the card Mold shows on your first visit (Show me around). Afterwards, search ⌘K for "tour": Take the guided tour replays it, and two shorter tours cover reshaping and rebuilding, and rigging and posing. On a phone they are under ☰ ▸ Help.

You move the camera with the same gestures everywhere in Mold. The rule that matters: a press that lands on the model sculpts, and a press that lands on empty space moves the camera.

Orbit

Drag on empty space. Hold Alt to orbit even over the model — the escape hatch when the mesh fills the screen.

Pan

Middle-drag, or drag with two fingers — on touch, even in the middle of a stroke.

Zoom

Scroll the wheel, or pinch.

Frame the model

Double-tap empty space (touch).

Undo / redo

Tap with two fingers to undo, three to redo (touch).

Switch object

Click another object. The first click selects it; the next stroke sculpts it.

On touch, that rule means you can work one-handed without hunting for a mode toggle — an iPad session feels closer to drawing than to operating software.

Press W, or Wire in the top bar, to show the wireframe. It is the quickest way to see how much geometry is under the brush. Most "the brush feels mushy" complaints are really "there aren't enough triangles here yet".

The View tab changes how the model is shown so you can check it. Sculptors switch material and camera constantly — not for looks, but because each one exposes a different kind of mistake.

• Material is ten swatches — Clay, Grey, White, Red wax, Dark, Porcelain, Jade, Skin, Bronze and Chrome. A hard, shiny one exposes tool marks that matte clay hides; a flat neutral one reads silhouette. With several objects a swatch applies to the selected one, and All puts every object on it.
• Lit surface — picking an Environment switches from swatches to real lighting, where each object's colour, Roughness and Metallic show.
• Cavity darkens crevices so depth reads at a glance; Depth sets how strongly.
• Lights shapes the lit look and Ray renders — see lighting the sculpt.
• Camera snaps to Front, Back, Left, Right, Top or Bottom — the checks every sculptor makes. Ortho takes the perspective out, so Front becomes a true elevation; it pauses while Ray is on.
• Lens sets the field of view. A wide angle makes the near side of a head look bigger than the far side, which flatters bad proportions — drop it to judge proportion, raise it to navigate.
• Turntable video spins the camera once around the sculpt in eight seconds and saves a video. Frame the angle and look you want first.

Two more checks live in the top bar and ⌘K. Ray renders the model with a path tracer for a finished look — Ray stills covers saving one. Toggle flat shading (⌘K) shows every triangle as a flat facet, which makes uneven density easy to spot.

Mold runs on an iPad and on a phone with the same tools as the desktop. Only the layout changes.

On an iPad, Mold keeps the desktop layout with larger touch targets. Held upright, the Object panel folds into a tab on the right edge; tap Object to slide it in, and the model reframes to make room.

On a phone, held upright, the rails give way to a dock at the bottom. A strip above it keeps the active tool, Size and Strength in reach. The current mode shows as a chip in the top bar — tap it to switch.

Tools

Every brush for the current mode. Long-press a brush to pin it to a Favourites row at the top.

Brush (or the mode's name)

The settings the desktop shows in the bottom bar.

Object

The Object tab — objects, layers, subdivision, symmetry.

View

The View tab — material, camera, reference, input.

Turned sideways, a phone has too little height to sculpt in, so Mold asks you to turn it back. Nothing is lost while it waits.

With a stylus, the first touch of the pen turns on Stylus only: a resting hand cannot sculpt, and fingers only move the camera. The switches live in the View tab under Input & handedness:

• Stylus only — fingers move the camera but never sculpt.
• Pressure → strength — on by default; press harder to dig deeper. While it is on, Strength curve reshapes the response, from ignoring pressure to 200% at a full press.
• Pressure → size — off by default, because a footprint that changes under you is hard to aim. While it is on, Size curve does the same for the footprint.
• Tilt turns the tip and Roll turns the tip — let the pen's tilt or barrel roll turn the brush's tip. Both start off.
• Left-handed — mirrors the tool rail and settings column.
• Hide interface — clears everything but the model. Escape, or the faint button left on screen, brings it back. On a phone, Focus canvas in the ☰ does the same.

A Mold scene holds as many objects as the device's triangle budget has room for, each with its own geometry, subdivision levels and history — the + button's tooltip says how much room is left. You manage them in the Objects list at the top of the Object tab. + adds one of nine primitives — sphere, box, capsule, ellipsoid, cylinder, cone, torus, disk and plane — beside what you have.

Use objects for anything separately shaped: eyes, teeth, horns, armour plates, a base. Sculpting them into one continuous surface is a beginner reflex that costs you later, because every remesh then has to reconcile shapes that were never meant to touch.

Each row can be hidden, soloed, duplicated, deleted, or renamed with a double-click. Click an object in the viewport to select it; your next stroke sculpts it. The verbs under the list act on the selected object:

Split

Moves the masked region into an object of its own.

Extract

Turns the masked region into a new closed shell, as thick as the Shell setting — the start of an armour plate.

Extrude

Raises the masked region as an attached block, by the Extrude height.

Separate

Gives each disconnected piece its own object.

Mirror

Copies the object across the symmetry axis as a new object. ⌘K also has Mirror object in place.

Merge

Joins every visible object into one. ⌘K also offers a merge into a single watertight solid.

Close holes

Caps every open boundary so the object is a closed solid again.

Boolean

Subtracts, intersects or unions another object — see booleans.

Group

Puts the object in a new group, a folder in the list.

Groups fold and unfold with a click, rename with a double-click, and show or hide their members together. Each object row's folder button moves it into a group, or out with No group; Ungroup on a group lets its objects go without touching them.

To sculpt on your own mesh, import it from the ☰ Sculpt menu. Mold reads GLB, glTF, FBX, OBJ, PLY, STL, DAE, 3MF and USDZ files up to 150 MB.

1. 1
   Choose how it arrives — Import as object… adds the mesh beside your current sculpt. Import as new sculpt… starts over from it; the sculpt you were on is kept in your library first.
2. 2
   Let Mold prepare it — The mesh is centred and scaled to fit. A dense mesh keeps its detail up to a million triangles on a desktop (375,000 on a tablet, 250,000 on a phone); anything denser is simplified to that, and Mold tells you.
3. 3
   Divide, or rebuild the levels — A light mesh wants a Divide or two before fine detail. A dense one — a scan, say — can have its levels rebuilt instead: Mold offers Rebuild levels when it arrives, and the same button lives in the Subdivision section. A mesh over about 4 million triangles on a desktop (1.5 million on a tablet) is refused; decimate it in your 3D editor first.

Mold can generate a starting mesh if you would rather not begin from a sphere. Press + on the Objects list (or search ⌘K for "generate") and describe the object under the primitives — or switch to From image and give it a photo.

The result arrives as a new object with its topology rebuilt for sculpting. When Mold has rebuilt it, undo once to get the raw mesh instead.

• Engines — Draft and Balanced work on any account; High detail and Max fidelity need a paid plan.
• Cost — every generation spends AI credits, and the Generate button shows the cost for the engine you picked.
• Publishing — on the free plan, generations from a text description are also added anonymously to the public Community library (you keep your own copy). Generations from an image are never published.

Sculpting a head from memory produces a head you half-remember. The fix is a photograph next to the model, preferably front and profile. The Reference section of the View tab holds one image per view — Front, Back, Left, Right, Top, Bottom and a Free slot.

1. 1
   Pick a view — Click Front in the Reference section. The camera swings to that view.
2. 2
   Load the image — Press Load image and choose the front photo. It is drawn over the model like tracing paper, and you can sculpt straight through it.
3. 3
   Line it up — Set Opacity so you can see both, and Scale until the photo matches the model's size.
4. 4
   Repeat for the profile — Pick Left or Right and load the side photo. With two views loaded, Pin all views keeps the others visible as thumbnails.

An overlay follows whichever axis view the camera is on. Side-by-side instead gives the reference its own lane beside the model at full strength — better for studying an ear than for matching a silhouette. The two can be on at once.

Over and Behind, once an image is loaded, choose how it is drawn. Over is the tracing paper described above. Behind stands each view's image as a plane in the scene behind the model, so it orbits and zooms with it; Offset X and Offset Y slide it, and Re-centre on model stands the planes round the model as it is now. The Free sheet always stays Over.

Fit model to reference, in Over, turns the image from a guide into a constraint: it reshapes the model until its outline matches the image, from the current view. Line the image up first — the fit uses it exactly as placed. The same action is Fit in Deform mode. Reference images, their placement and offsets are saved with the sculpt.

Every brush shares one set of controls, in the bar along the bottom of the viewport. Size and Strength are always there; More opens the rest. Understanding these matters far more than memorising the brush list.

Size

The radius of influence — the setting you change most. [ and ] nudge it. It reads Size (screen) when the brush follows the screen rather than the model (see tips and curves).

Strength

How much one dab moves the surface; Shift+[ and Shift+] nudge it. It reads Rate on Smooth and Opacity on the mask brush; Grab has none, because it pulls by how far you drag.

Add / Dig

Build up or cut in. Hold Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) to flip it for one stroke. Twist reads CCW / CW; the mask brush reads Paint / Erase.

Presets

Saved brushes — see brush presets.

Hardness

Where the falloff from centre to edge begins.

Falloff

The shape of that falloff: Smooth, Round, Linear, Sharp or Flat — or Custom, a curve you draw. Soft falloffs build gentle mass; hard ones cut definite edges.

Stabilizer

Smooths your cursor's path before it reaches the surface — the difference between a wobbly crease and a clean one on a trackpad.

Spacing

How densely dabs are laid along a stroke.

Free / Line / Spray / Drag / Roll

Free follows the cursor, Line lays a straight run from press to release, and Spray scatters dabs within the radius for texture. Drag puts down one dab at the press point and sizes and turns it as you drag — the way to place a single alpha exactly. Roll runs the tip along the stroke as one continuous strip.

Options

The brush's tip, falloff curve, lazy mouse and the rest — see tips, curves and lazy mouse.

Backface

Stops a stroke reaching surfaces that face away from you — the far side of a thin ear.

Detail

Shown while Dyntopo is on: how fine the triangles it makes are. See dynamic topology.

Hold Shift and any brush becomes Smooth until you let go; in Mask mode, Shift smooths the mask instead. Pen pressure scales Strength automatically; see tablet and phone for the pressure switches and curves.

To size the brush by eye, press F over the model: a circle opens with its rim under the cursor, and moving toward or away from its centre resizes it. Click (or press Return) to keep the size, Esc to put it back. Shift+F does the same for Strength.

Options, in the brush bar once More is open, holds the settings that change how a brush lays the surface down rather than how hard. They belong to the brush you have on, so a set-up you like on Clay does not leak into Dam.

Tip

An alpha shape for the footprint — None, Square, Bar or one of the Stamp shapes. Every brush except Mask, Grab and Snake takes one. Fixed, Random or Follow sets how it turns (with an Angle° or Offset°), and Tiling repeats it up to 8× across the footprint.

Falloff curve

Draw a custom falloff opens a curve from the centre of the brush to its edge. Start from a preset — Smooth, Linear, Dome, Sharp, Plateau or Soft ring — then drag a point to move it, press on the graph to add one, and double-click to remove one.

Lazy mouse

Step holds the brush back until the cursor has travelled that far, so a crease comes out as a clean line rather than a wobble; Catch up on release finishes the line to where you let go. It works with the bar's Stabilizer — turn that up first.

Brush size follows

Model keeps the footprint a fixed size on the sculpt however you zoom; Screen keeps it a fixed size on screen, so zooming in gives you a finer brush.

Shift smooth

How strong the Shift-held smoothing is.

Smooth type

How Smooth, and Shift, relax the surface: Smooth is the strongest and rounds a little; Relax evens out the mesh without changing the shape; Volume removes bumps but keeps the form's volume; Valleys fills only the crevices; Peaks knocks down only the ridges.

Elastic drag

Elastic only — whether it grabs, twists or scales. See the move brushes.

This brush

Accumulate (Draw, Inflate, Layer and Stamp) keeps building on repeated passes over the same spot; Lock plane (Flatten, Scrape and hPolish) fixes the plane where the stroke starts.

Pen pressure has its own curves, in the View tab's Input & handedness — see tablet and phone.

1. 1
   Open Options — Press More in the brush bar, then Options.
2. 2
   Start from a preset curve — Press Draw a custom falloff and pick the preset nearest what you want — Plateau for a flat-topped brush, Soft ring for a rim.
3. 3
   Shape it — Drag the points, press on the graph to add one, double-click one to remove it. The bar's Falloff now reads Custom.
4. 4
   Keep it — Save the brush as a preset so the curve comes back with it.

Mold has 29 brushes. Pick them from the tool rail in Sculpt mode, or with their number and letter keys. Six essentials lead the rail — Draw, Clay, Smooth, Flatten, Crease and Grab. All brushes beneath them opens the other twenty, grouped by what they do; the mask, face-set and hide brushes live in Mask mode.

EssentialsDraw1Clay6Smooth3Flatten5Crease9Grab4

All brushes

BuildInflate2StampBLayerLBlobUBuildupC

ContourMorphOScrape7hPolishHTrimTPinch8DamEMagnifyIRakeRMalletQ

MoveNudgeNSnakeKTwist0ElasticGMove TopoJPoseP

Drag the panel sideways to see all of it.

A brush key works from any mode — it switches to Sculpt mode (or to Mask mode, for M, A and V) and picks the brush.

The four move brushes are worth telling apart, because each solves a different problem:

Grab (4)

Drags the region under the cursor as one piece.

Elastic (G)

Pulls like rubber: the drag fades smoothly with distance and keeps the volume, so a pulled cheek does not thin. Options ▸ Elastic drag switches it between Grab, Twist and Scale.

Move Topo (J)

Like Grab, but moves only surface connected to the cursor inside the brush — an upper lip without the lower one, one finger without its neighbour.

Pose (P)

Swings a limb about a joint it finds itself. With a mask, the joint is the mask's border, and a soft mask bends softly; without one, it bends everything within one brush radius along the surface.

If that list feels long, ignore most of it. Clay to build, Smooth to relax, Grab to move mass, Dam to cut a line, Pinch to sharpen it and Flatten to set a plane will produce a complete sculpt. Add the rest as you meet the problems they solve.

A preset is a whole brush saved under a name: the tool, its settings, its stamp tip and its stroke type. Loading one switches the tool too, so Skin Pores or Dam Fine behaves like a separate brush. The preset picker is the first control under More in the bottom bar.

Mold ships sixteen to start from: Clay Buildup, Clay Tubes, Form Block, Dam Fine, Crease Deep, Trim Hard, Polish Flat, Smooth Heavy, Pinch Sharp, Skin Pores, Scales, Rock Surface, Scratches, Noise Grit, Grab Soft and Inflate Puff.

1. 1
   Dial in the brush — Pick the tool and set its Size, Strength, Hardness, Falloff, stroke type and — for Stamp — its tip.
2. 2
   Save it — Open Presets and press Save current brush, then name it. It appears under Your brushes.
3. 3
   Keep it tidy — Rename, overwrite or delete your own presets from their row. Built-in presets cannot be changed directly — duplicate one to make it yours.

Export and Import… at the foot of the picker move your presets between browsers, or to someone else, as a file.

The Stamp brush (B) presses a shape — an alpha — into the surface. With Stamp active, an alpha picker appears in the bottom bar, sorted into your own, shapes and tips, surface-detail maps such as pores and scales, and vector-displacement tips. The shapes double as tips for the other brushes.

• Import alpha… turns any greyscale image into a tip. Hold Alt and click one of your own tips to remove it.
• Capture from mask lifts a tip off the model itself (the same action is Capture in Mask mode).
• Save tip as alpha… writes the selected tip out as a 16-bit PNG for Blender or ZBrush.
• Alpha, in the Export menu, saves the current view of your sculpt as a brush alpha.

1. 1
   Sculpt one patch of detail — Scales, pores, a knot of wood — sculpt a small patch you are happy with.
2. 2
   Mask it — Switch to Mask mode and paint a mask over the patch.
3. 3
   Capture it — Press Capture on the rail, or Capture from mask in the Stamp picker. The patch becomes a tip under Yours.
4. 4
   Stamp it across the form — Press B and stamp. A captured tip never presses quite the same arrangement twice, so the detail spreads without visible repeats.

An ordinary alpha can only push the surface straight out or in. A vector-displacement tip stores a full 3D offset for every point, so one press can raise a horn that curls back, an ear with an overhang or a hooked finger — shapes a height map cannot hold. They sit at the bottom of the Stamp picker, under Vector (VDM); picking one switches to the Stamp brush.

• Seven starters — Horn, Ear, Scale, Rivet, Bolt, Nose and Finger curl.
• From mask captures the masked patch of your own sculpt as a new tip.
• Under cursor arms a capture: your next press on the model takes the surface under the brush.
• Import VDM… reads an EXR or a 16-bit PNG. Export VDM saves the selected tip as a 32-bit EXR — Alt-click for a 16-bit PNG — for ZBrush, Blender or another Mold.

At Strength 50% a tip presses exactly as it was captured; above or below that scales it.

1. 1
   Sculpt the feature once — Sculpt one horn, rivet or ear on a fairly flat patch of surface.
2. 2
   Mask it — In Mask mode, mask the feature and a little of the surface round it.
3. 3
   Capture it — Open the Stamp picker and press From mask under Vector (VDM). The new tip is selected.
4. 4
   Press it on — Set the stroke type to Drag and press on the model wherever you want another one — the drag sizes and turns each copy.

Stroke modifiers change what a stroke does rather than which brush makes it. They are the four switches in the Stroke section of the Object tab, in Sculpt mode.

Curve

The next stroke becomes a tube: draw along the model and, on release, a tube follows your path, as thick as the brush Size. Tube sides and End size (down to a Point) shape it, and the last tube stays editable — Start, End, Sides — until you Fuse it into the model or Keep separate; drawing the next tube fuses it. The quick way to lay a cord, a vein, a strap or a strand of hair.

Cloth

Strokes fold the surface like fabric, bunching it into creases rather than pushing it.

Dyntopo

Adds and removes triangles under the brush as you work, with a Detail setting. See dynamic topology.

Stencil

Projects an image across the viewport and carves it in wherever you sculpt. Pick a pattern or import your own; Move stencil drags it into place (the wheel scales it) and Stencil opacity sets how strongly it shows.

Layers let you sculpt detail you can change your mind about. They live in the Layers section of the Object tab in Sculpt mode. Each layer has an Amount from −100% to 100% — below zero it plays inverted, so bumps become dents — and can be hidden or deleted.

1. 1
   Add a layer — Press + on the Layers section. New strokes now go into that layer rather than into the model.
2. 2
   Sculpt the uncertain pass — Wrinkles, a scar, a weathering pass — whatever you are least sure of.
3. 3
   Judge it at half strength — Drag Amount down, or hide the layer, to compare with and without.
4. 4
   Keep or discard — Bake sets the layer into the surface at its current amount, Merge down folds it into the layer below, and the bin deletes it without touching the form underneath. Click Base to sculpt straight onto the mesh again.

Erase, in the section header, turns any brush into an eraser for the active layer: strokes blend it back to zero where you paint. Layers come through remeshing, decimating, booleans, trims, Close holes, Mirror & weld and dynamic topology.

A morph target is a stored copy of the surface you can brush back toward. The Morph targets section of the Object tab, in Sculpt mode, keeps several, each named — a neutral face and an expression, say, or the sculpt before and after a risky pass.

1. 1
   Store a target — Press + in Morph targets. It stores the surface as it is now, as Morph 1.
2. 2
   Name it — Double-click the row and type a name.
3. 3
   Keep sculpting — Change whatever you like — the target stays as it was.
4. 4
   Brush back — Click the target's row to choose it, pick the Morph brush (O) and brush over a region to fade it toward the target.

Each row shows the subdivision level it was stored on (L1, L2 …) and dims when you are on another level, because a target applies only at its own level. The save icon re-stores it from the current surface, and the bin deletes it. Targets are saved with the sculpt.

A sculpt needs triangles to hold detail — you cannot carve a pore into a surface with a hundred vertices. Divide, in the Object tab's Subdivision section, splits every triangle into four; D does the same. The arrows beside the level, or the comma and full-stop keys, step between levels.

• Levels escalate fast. The starting sphere has about 5,000 triangles, and each Divide multiplies that by four — five take it past five million.
• Your device sets the ceiling. Mold refuses a Divide that would pass what the device can hold — 6 million triangles on a desktop with 8 GB or more of memory, 4 million on other desktops, 1.5 million on an iPad or tablet and 1 million on a phone — and says so. Six divisions is the hard limit; there the button reads Max detail.
• Big divides run in the background. A progress bar shows while the new level is built, and the rest of the interface keeps working.
• Smooth decides how Divide shapes the new triangles. On, each division rounds the form; off, it adds triangles and keeps the current shape exactly — the choice when dividing under detail you want left alone.

Mold keeps every level, and changes at a low level carry up to the detail you have already carved. That is the most useful behaviour in sculpting: a proportion mistake found late is not fatal. Drop to level two, move the jaw, come back up, and the pores are still there.

Rebuild levels

Turns a dense mesh — a scan, an import, a sculpt made with dynamic topology — back into a multiresolution sculpt: a light base cage with levels above it that hold the detail, to within about 0.01% of the model's size.

Delete higher

Drops every level above the one you are on — to lighten a sculpt, or to re-divide differently.

Delete lower

Makes the level you are on the new base.

Dynamic topology adds triangles under the brush as you work, only where you are actually sculpting. Uniform subdivision gives every part the same density, which is wasteful — a smooth cheek does not need the resolution an eyelid does.

This is what makes it possible to pull a horn out of a sphere. With fixed topology, stretching that far smears the triangles into slivers; with dynamic topology, new geometry fills the gap as the form extends. Any time you are inventing shape rather than refining it, this is the mode you want.

Turn it on with the Dyntopo switch in Sculpt mode's Stroke section. Every stroke then adds triangles where the brush needs detail and removes them where they have become too small — live, while you drag. Detail sets how fine they are, measured one of three ways:

Constant

One triangle size for the whole model, however you zoom — shown as a percentage of the model's size.

Brush

The size follows the brush: a big brush makes big triangles, a small one fine ones. The default.

Screen px

The size in screen pixels, so zooming in gives finer detail.

Detail flood fill remeshes the whole object to the current detail in one undo step — the way to even out a sculpt before refining it. Masked areas keep their triangles. The sharpening brushes (Crease, Dam, Pinch, Blob, Magnify, Mallet) only add triangles, and Grab-style brushes and Morph leave the topology alone.

It only works on a single-level sculpt — before the first Divide, or after a remesh. Once you have divided, the switch is greyed out, and Divide waits while Dyntopo is on. The trade-off is uneven, triangular geometry with no subdivision levels: sculpt freely with it, then remesh into something clean, or Rebuild levels, once the shape settles. What is dynamic topology goes further into the idea.

Mesh mode throws away tangled topology and builds new topology in its place, which lets a sculpt keep going when the geometry underneath has become a mess. The rebuilds sit under Rebuild on the tool rail and run the moment you click them; the big ones run in the background, with a progress chip and Cancel at the start of the bottom bar. The bar holds the settings they read.

Remesh

Rebuilds the whole surface as uniform topology at the bar's Resolution (24–384) — what ZBrush calls DynaMesh. The reset button for a stretched or self-intersecting sculpt, and what makes a mesh watertight for printing.

Quad

A field-aligned quad remesh, in the spirit of ZRemesher: all quads, with edge loops that follow the form, aiming at the bar's Quad faces (200–100,000; type 12k for 12,000). Face-set borders and sharp creases are kept, and Sym X builds one half and mirrors it. The quads survive every Divide and export to OBJ and FBX.

ZRemesh

Adaptive retopology into triangles: even, flowing topology, denser where the form is detailed, at the bar's Resolution.

Project

Snaps a freshly remeshed surface back onto detail — from the pre-remesh version (Last remesh), or from any other object you pick in Project from.

Decimate

Cuts the triangle count while keeping the silhouette; Keep (5–95%) sets how much survives. Use it to get an export down to a sane size.

Levels

Rebuild levels — see subdivision.

1. 1
   Remesh — In Mesh mode, set Resolution and click Remesh (or ZRemesh). The topology is clean, but fine detail has softened.
2. 2
   Divide — Press D once or twice so the new mesh has the density to hold detail again.
3. 3
   Project — Click Project. The surface snaps back onto the detail you had before the remesh — new clean topology, old fine detail.

What is remeshing goes further into when each kind of rebuild is the right one.

The rest of the Rebuild rail, and three sections in Mesh mode's Object tab, make and fix geometry rather than sculpt it.

Close (Close holes)

Caps every open boundary so the mesh is a closed solid again — after a Split, or on an open import. Also under the Objects list.

Symmetrize (Mirror & weld)

Keeps one side of the symmetry axis, mirrors it over and welds the seam into one shell — the repair for a sculpt whose two halves have drifted. Repair & symmetry sets the axis, which side to keep and the Weld distance.

Plane cut

Cuts straight across the model on an axis at a Position: Trim throws one side away, Slice splits it into two objects.

Lathe

Spins a profile into a new object — a vase, a column, a bottle, a turned leg. Pick a preset or drag the profile's points (click to add one, double-click to remove one), set Segments, and press Add lathe.

1. 1
   Pick the side to keep — In Mesh mode, open Repair & symmetry and choose the axis and the side that is right.
2. 2
   Mirror & weld — Press Mirror & weld. The other side is replaced by a mirror of the one you kept, joined into one shell.
3. 3
   Keep them matched — Turn symmetry on across the same axis, so every stroke from here lands on both halves.

Retopology is building new, deliberately clean geometry over a finished sculpt. Sculpting produces enormous, uneven meshes made for holding detail. Almost everything downstream — animation, game engines, UV unwrapping — wants a light mesh with orderly edge flow.

You need retopology when the model has to deform. A character that will be rigged and animated needs edge loops that follow the mouth and eyes, or the face creases in the wrong places. A model that is only rendered still, or 3D printed, often does not need it at all — a decimated sculpt is fine.

Mold covers the automatic half with the field-aligned Quad remesh and ZRemesh, which is enough for stills, printing, background assets and many game props. Hand-drawn retopology for a hero animated character is still a job for a dedicated tool. What is retopology covers the rest.

A mask marks part of the model as protected: brushes, transposes and deforms leave masked areas alone. You lay one down in Mask mode (Shift 2), or with the mask brush (M). It is the mechanism behind most controlled sculpting.

• Paint brushes a mask on. Hold Ctrl or ⌘ to erase, or set the bar to Erase; Strength reads Opacity here. Hold Shift to smooth the mask's edge where you brush.
• Lasso and Box mask whatever you drag around. Switch them to Unmask to take it off again.
• Clear and Invert reset or flip the whole mask.
• Grow, Shrink, Blur and Sharpen reshape its edge.
• Mask by Cavity masks the crevices automatically; ⌘K adds Mask by peaks, its opposite.
• Capture turns the masked detail into a stamp tip — see stamps.
• Sets, Hide and Hide box on the same rail are the face-set and hiding tools.

1. 1
   Mask what should stay — Switch to Mask mode and paint or lasso over everything you want to keep — the head, say.
2. 2
   Check the edge — Blur the mask once for a soft transition, or Sharpen it for a hard one.
3. 3
   Change the rest — Use a whole-object operation — Inflate in Deform mode, a Transpose — and only the unmasked body moves.
4. 4
   Clear when done — Press Clear, or the next brush strokes stay protected where you forgot.

A mask is also the selection for Split, Extract and Extrude in the Objects list, and for capturing a stamp tip.

A face set is a named region of the surface — what ZBrush calls a polygroup. All the ways to make one are in Mask mode:

• The Face sets brush (A, or Sets on the rail) paints a new set with each stroke; hold Ctrl to grow the set under the cursor instead.
• New set from mask, in the Object tab's Face Sets section, turns the current mask into a set.
• Auto sets splits the whole model by Normals (at a Crease angle), into loose Parts, or by UVs islands.
• Face set from visible, in the Visibility section, makes one set of whatever is showing.

Switch the section's Show control from Mask to Sets to see them as colours. Click a set to isolate it: everything else is hidden and untouchable until Show all, so you can sculpt inside a mouth or behind an ear without reaching the rest. While one is isolated, Mask set and Mask rest turn it, or everything else, into a mask.

Face sets come through a remesh, and the Quad remesh lays its edge loops along their borders. They leave Mold with the model too: GLB, FBX and OBJ exports carry them as vertex colours (OBJ as named groups too), so another application can select the same regions.

A hidden part disappears and cannot be sculpted, which is the cleanest way to reach inside a mouth, behind an ear or between fingers. The Visibility section in Mask mode says how much is hidden and holds the tools:

• The Hide brush (V, or Hide on the rail) paints parts hidden; hold Ctrl to paint them back.
• Hide lasso and Hide box hide whatever you drag around — switch to Reveal to bring it back. Hide box is on the rail too.
• Hide masked and Hide unmasked hide by the mask, and each face set's button hides or shows that set.
• Invert swaps what is hidden and what is shown; Show all brings everything back.

What is hidden is saved with the sculpt, so it is still hidden when you come back to it — if part of a model seems to have vanished, Show all is the first thing to try.

Symmetry repeats every stroke across one or more planes, or around an axis. It starts switched on, across X. Press X to toggle it; the Symmetry section of the Object tab, there in every mode, sets the rest.

For anything bilateral — faces, creatures, most characters — leave it on for the whole blocking stage. It halves the work and keeps the two sides genuinely matched, which the eye is far better at auditing than the hand is at reproducing.

Mirror

Reflects each stroke across the Planes you switch on — X alone for a face, X and Z for a four-legged table, all three for a die.

Radial

Repeats each stroke evenly around the X axis, Y axis or Z axis, 2 to 12 times (Count) — the tool for a flower, a column capital, a starfish. Mirror too reflects the copies across planes as well.

Anchor

Where the planes sit. Auto uses the world origin where it crosses the object, and the object's centre otherwise; Object always uses the object's centre; World always uses the world origin.

Plane offset

Slides the planes along X, Y or Z, for a model whose centre line is not where the anchor puts it.

Every brush mirrors exactly, so the two sides stay a true match. An imported mesh is centred on its bounding box, so if it is not symmetrical as a whole, the plane can miss its true centre line — set Plane offset, or see troubleshooting.

Transpose mode moves, rotates or scales whatever is not masked, with a gizmo. It is how you reposition a limb, lengthen a nose or rotate a jaw without re-sculpting it. The bar along the bottom always says what the gizmo will move.

Reach for it earlier than instinct suggests. A proportion problem is usually a transpose problem, and fixing it by adding material turns a five-second correction into an hour. Transpose moves part of one mesh; to move a whole object, use the object gizmo instead.

1. 1
   Mask what stays — Mask the body up to the shoulder. With nothing masked, the gizmo moves the whole object — the bar says so, and Mask first takes you to Mask mode.
2. 2
   Place the pivot — Pick Pivot and drag the handle to the joint (nothing deforms while you place it), or press Snap to joint to drop it on the mask border.
3. 3
   Swing the limb — Pick Rotate and turn the gizmo. Move, Rotate and Scale all work from your pivot until you press Reset pivot.
4. 4
   Clean the joint — Clear the mask and smooth over the seam where the arm meets the shoulder.

Deform mode reshapes the entire object at once. Set the values in the bottom bar, then click a verb on the rail — each click is one undoable step. On a phone, tapping a verb shows only the settings it reads, and Apply runs it.

Bend, Twist, Taper, Stretch

Work along the bar's Axis by its Amount. A negative amount reverses the direction.

Inflate, Deflate

Puff or shrink the whole surface, at the bar's Strength.

Smooth, Sharpen

Relax everything, or crisp detail globally, at the same Strength.

Noise

Lays fractal surface texture over the model, with its own Amount and Scale.

Fit

Reshapes the model to match a reference image.

These respect masks, which makes them precise rather than blunt. Mask the head, twist the torso; mask everything but a cloak, add noise for cloth texture. Done at a low subdivision level, the finer detail rides along.

Add and Cut, under Add & cut in Mesh mode, fuse a sphere or a box into the model or carve one out of it. The result is watertight. It is the fastest route to hard-surface elements on an organic sculpt — sockets, bolt holes, a flat seat for an armour plate.

1. 1
   Choose the shape — In Mesh mode, set Shape in the bottom bar to Sphere or Box.
2. 2
   Arm the boolean — Click Add or Cut on the rail. A banner says what is waiting for your click.
3. 3
   Size it — Set Size in the bar — it appears while a boolean is armed.
4. 4
   Place it — Click the model where the shape should go.

Trim cuts away whatever falls inside a shape you drag over the model — a lasso for freehand silhouettes, a box (Trim □) for straight cuts. Line cuts along a straight line you drag and Curve along a stroke you draw, removing everything to the right of the direction you dragged; Slice splits the model into two objects along a line. Use them to slice a flat base, chop a limb to re-sculpt it, or crop parts of a blockout you have decided against.

1. 1
   Select the object to keep — Click it in the Objects list — this is the one that gets rebuilt.
2. 2
   Choose the operation — Press Boolean under the list and pick Subtract, Intersect or Union.
3. 3
   Pick the other object — Click its name in the chips that appear, and choose whether to hide the cutter, delete it or leave it.
4. 4
   Apply — Press Apply. The result is a watertight solid.

Like the rebuilds, booleans and trims reset the subdivision levels; the layers come through. To join every visible object without cutting, merge them — ⌘K offers a merge into one watertight solid.

Insert Mesh drags a ready-made part onto the surface — a horn, an ear, a bolt — lined up with the surface where you press and sized by how far you drag. The parts are in the Insert section of Mesh mode's Object tab:

Primitives

Sphere, Box, Cylinder, Cone, Torus and Capsule.

Parts

Seven starters: Horn, Ear, Scale, Rivet, Bolt, Nose and Finger.

Yours

Anything you have saved with Save object as part, which stores the selected object. The × on a part removes it.

1. 1
   Pick the part — Click a part in the Insert section. That arms Insert, and its button reads Inserting — Esc to stop.
2. 2
   Choose where it goes — New object adds it as an object of its own; Fuse melts it into the selected body, which has to be a closed solid.
3. 3
   Drag it on — Press on the model and drag. The distance sets the size and Shift turns it toward the drag; a click without a drag uses the brush size. With symmetry on, the mirrored copies land too.
4. 4
   Stop — Press Esc when you are done.

Insert on the Mesh rail and in ⌘K does the same. Saving a sculpted horn as a part, then dragging copies of it on, is the quick way to a row of spines or a set of matching ears.

The object gizmo moves, rotates and scales a whole object — unlike Transpose, which moves the unmasked part of one. It lives in the Placement section of Mesh mode's Object tab, and as Gizmo on the Mesh rail.

Gizmo

Shows the gizmo on the selected object; the button reads Gizmo on while it is up.

Move, Rotate, Scale

What dragging the gizmo does.

Pivot

Where it turns and scales from: the object's Centre, Base or Corner, or the crosshair, which waits for you to click a point on the surface.

Exact

Type a move (↔X ↔Y ↔Z, in world units), a turn (⟳X ⟳Y ⟳Z, in degrees) and a Scale, then press Apply — one undo step.

Snapping

Hold Shift while you drag to turn in 15° steps, move in grid steps and scale in 10% steps.

It works at every subdivision level, and the finer levels move with the object exactly. The gizmo hides while Ray or the turntable is running.

1. 1
   Select the object — Click it in the viewport or the Objects list.
2. 2
   Turn the gizmo on — In Mesh mode, press Gizmo in Placement (or on the rail).
3. 3
   Set the pivot — Pick Base so it turns and scales about its foot, or the crosshair and click the point it should swing from.
4. 4
   Place it — Drag the handles, holding Shift to snap — or type the values under Exact and press Apply.

A repeater shows live copies of the selected object: sculpt the original and every copy follows. Add one from the Repeat section of Mesh mode's Object tab — Repeat on the Mesh rail adds an array.

Array

Copies stepped along a line: a Count, a Step on X, Y and Z, a Turn for each copy and a Grow factor — for a spine of plates or a row of teeth.

Radial

Copies spun evenly round an axis — petals, the points of a crown, the teeth of a gear.

Mirror

One reflected copy across a plane.

World / Object

Whether Radial and Mirror work about the world origin or the object's own centre.

Each repeater has its own row with an eye to hide it. Bake turns its copies into real objects you can sculpt one by one. Until then they still export as real geometry in every format, and they are saved with the sculpt.

The Lights section of the View tab lights the lit look and Ray renders. A matcap brings its own lighting, so with one on, the section says so — tap the note to switch to the lit look.

• + adds a light, up to four. Each is a Sun, Spot or Point, with a colour, an Intensity, a direction (Around and Height) and, for Spot and Point, a Distance.
• Follow view keeps a light fixed to the camera as you orbit, like a lamp on your shoulder. Shadow lets a Sun or Spot cast shadows.
• Shadows turns shadows on for the scene, Grid draws a ruler grid under the model, and Reset goes back to the default key and fill.

A low, raking light is the sculptor's oldest check: it picks out every bump the matcap smooths over. Lights are saved with the sculpt once you change them.

1. 1
   Leave the matcap — Tap the note at the top of Lights to switch to the lit look, so the lights take effect.
2. 2
   Set a key light — Turn the first Sun's Height down and swing Around until the light grazes the surface.
3. 3
   Add a fill — Press +, place the new light on the opposite side and keep its Intensity low.
4. 4
   Ground it — Turn on Shadows, and Grid if you want a sense of scale under the model.

Ray, in the top bar, path-traces the viewport for a finished look, with your lights, materials and shadows. The Render section of the View tab turns it into an image file.

1. 1
   Frame the shot — Set the camera, material and lights first — and Ortho, if you want an elevation.
2. 2
   Pick a size — View renders at the viewport's size; HD, QHD and 4K render 1920, 2560 or 3840 pixels along the long edge.
3. 3
   Start Ray — Press Start Ray and watch the image clear as samples build up.
4. 4
   Save it — When it looks clean, press Save still — the button counts the samples so far.

The head is the sculpt everybody wants to make and the one that punishes shortcuts most, because everyone is an expert at reading faces. The order below works, and every step is about resisting the urge to sculpt features too early.

1. 1
   Start with a mass, not a face — Take a sphere, keep symmetry on (it starts on; X toggles it), and Grab it into an egg — wider at the cranium, narrower at the chin. Getting this volume right does more for the likeness than any amount of nose work.
2. 2
   Find the skull landmarks — With a big Clay brush, establish the brow ridge, the cheekbones, the jaw line and the temples. These are bone; everything soft hangs off them.
3. 3
   Cut the eye sockets — Push the sockets in before you make any eyes. Beginner heads look wrong most often because the eyes sit on the surface rather than in a socket.
4. 4
   Block the nose and mouth as wedges — A nose is a wedge before it is a nose; a mouth is a cylinder wrapped around the teeth. Get the volumes and their placement right, then refine.
5. 5
   Subdivide, then refine features — Press D and refine the eyelids, lips, nostrils and ears. Now the finer brushes earn their keep: Dam (E) for the lid crease and lip line, Pinch (8) to sharpen.
6. 6
   Break the symmetry — Turn X off and add asymmetry — one eye slightly higher, the mouth a little off-centre, uneven skin. This is the step that turns a mannequin into a person.

A model for a printer has requirements a render never has. They are easy to meet if you know them in advance and painful to retrofit:

• Watertight. One closed surface with no holes, gaps or self-overlapping faces, so the slicer can tell inside from outside. This is the most common reason a sculpt fails to print, and a voxel Remesh fixes it.
• Printable detail. Work finer than roughly 0.4 mm at final scale will not resolve on a filament printer. Resin printers hold much finer detail, which is why miniatures are printed on them.
• No fragile spikes. A sword blade, a whisker or an outstretched finger that looks fragile on screen will snap in your hand. Undercuts and thin spikes also need support material.

Mold's 3D print panel walks those requirements in order — its subtitle is “Size it, check it, hollow it, export it.” Open it from ☰ ▸ Export ▸ 3D print…, or Print on the Mesh rail.

1. 1
   Finish the sculpt — Get the form and detail where you want them. Print preparation is the last step.
2. 2
   Size it — Pick mm, cm or in, type the size under Scale to, choose what it measures — Longest, W, H or D — and press Scale.
3. 3
   Check it — Set Min wall to what your printer can hold and press Check for printing. Each object reports its volume, or what is wrong: holes, non-manifold edges, flipped winding, inside-out shells, self-intersections and walls thinner than the minimum. Close holes and Voxel remesh (watertight) fix most of it in one click.
4. 4
   Thicken the thin parts — Turn on Thickness map: red is thinner than the minimum, yellow under twice it. Inflate or Clay anything red — fingers, blades, antennae, tails.
5. 5
   Hollow it for resin — Set Wall and Drains (none, one or two, and their diameter) and press Hollow the selected object. Mold reports how much volume it saved.
6. 6
   Export — 3MF or STL in your unit with Z up, the way slicers expect, or OBJ. STL fuses every visible object into one solid. How to make an STL file covers the slicer side.

Slicers do not need millions of triangles. If the file is huge, Decimate in Mesh mode keeps the silhouette while dropping the count.

Save with ⌘S (Ctrl+S) or the save button beside the sculpt's name. The first save asks for a name, and the sculpt goes into your Sculpts library, which syncs to your account.

Mold also keeps a working copy on your device as you go, so a reload or a crash picks up where you left off. That copy is not a saved sculpt — the chip beside the ☰ tells you which state you are in, and clicking it saves:

Unsaved

Changes since the last save. Click the chip, or press ⌘S.

Backing up

Saved on this device and on its way to your account.

This device

Saved in this browser only — it has not reached your account yet.

Saved

Saved to your Sculpts library.

• Save as new sculpt… (⇧⌘S), in the ☰ Sculpt menu, branches a copy.
• Open sculpt… (⌘O) opens the Sculpts tab of your dashboard.
• New sculpt starts over from any primitive. The sculpt you were on is kept in the library first, so nothing is lost.

Undo and redo are ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z, or the arrows at the top right. History beside them (⌘Y) lists every step and how many are remembered; click a row to jump back to that point.

A save keeps the whole scene, not just the meshes: objects and groups, layers and morph targets, face sets, what is hidden, repeaters, lights and reference images all come back when you open it.

To share a saved sculpt, search ⌘K for Share (on a phone, ☰ ▸ File ▸ Share…). Invite someone by email, or set what anyone with the link can do and copy it.

A sculpt is shape and nothing else. Colour, roughness and metal are texture, and in Mixos they are Paint's job. Send to Paint, at the far right of the top bar, unwraps the sculpt with fresh UVs and opens it in Paint, the layer-based PBR painter.

A sculpt with subdivision levels goes across as its light base mesh, with the finer detail baked into a normal-map layer named Sculpted detail. It is quick to paint and still reads as fully detailed. Once a sculpt has been sent, the button reads Update in Paint.

Sending an updated sculpt back after working on the detail levels keeps the paint work already done. Changing the base mesh forces a rebuild. A badge beside the sculpt's name says which case you are in:

Paint-safe

Updating Paint keeps the existing texturing.

Rebuild on send

Mold takes a backup, then rebuilds the Paint project.

The trip runs the other way too. Paint's Sculpt in Mold opens a textured model here to reshape, and Texture in the top bar — or Paint texture at the top of the Material section — shows its painting on the sculpt, so you can put a crease exactly where a seam is painted.

If texturing is new to you, how to texture a 3D model is the companion to this manual, and the full Mixos manual covers Paint the way this one covers Mold.

Send to Studio, in the ☰ Sculpt menu and in ⌘K, hands the sculpt to Mixos Studio to place in a scene. Sending changes nothing in Mold, so coming back resumes exactly what was on screen.

A sculpt that came from Studio — through Studio's Send object to Mold — goes back as an update to that same object, keeping its position, name and material, and the row reads Update in Studio. Where the object arrived with a UV layout, detail sculpted above the base level travels as a normal map on its material. Anything else arrives in Studio as a new object.

The Studio manual covers the other side.

Export is in the ☰ Sculpt menu (on a phone, ☰ ▸ File ▸ Export), and ⌘K lists GLB, FBX, OBJ and STL too. Every export comes from the finest subdivision level and covers every visible object — hiding an object is how you leave it out — and repeaters go out as real geometry.

GLB

Objects stay separate and named, face sets travel as vertex colours, and a rigged sculpt exports skinned — geometry at rest, pose on the bones.

FBX

Separate, named objects and face sets for Blender or Maya; after a Quad remesh, all-quad faces at whatever level you divided to. Geometry only: Mold tells you if you export a rigged sculpt this way.

OBJ

Universal, and fine at several million triangles. Separate named objects, face sets as vertex colours and named groups; after a Quad remesh, all-quad faces at any level.

STL

Fuses everything into one solid, in millimetres with Z up — exactly right for printing, wrong for anything else.

3MF

The newer printing format: millimetres, Z up, read by current slicers.

USDZ

The format Apple's AR viewer opens. In the desktop Export menu.

Maps

A normal map (PNG) and a 32-bit displacement map (EXR) of everything sculpted above the selected object's base level, so the light base mesh can rebuild the full sculpt elsewhere. Needs at least one Divide.

Alpha

Saves the current view as a brush alpha PNG.

3D print…

Opens the 3D print panel — size, check and hollow, then export STL, 3MF or OBJ in your unit.

1. 1
   Hide what should stay behind — Hide reference blocks, the base, anything you do not want in the file.
2. 2
   Check the size — If the count on the Objects list is huge, run Decimate in Mesh mode, or plan to export Maps with the base mesh instead.
3. 3
   Pick the format — ☰ ▸ Export ▸ GLB for most 3D apps and engines, FBX for Blender or Maya, STL or 3MF for printing.
4. 4
   Open it — The file downloads under your sculpt's name. On an iPad or phone, the share sheet opens instead — Save to Files, AirDrop or straight into another app. 3D file formats explained compares the formats.

Sculpting and saving are free; downloading the mesh or its baked maps needs a paid plan or the one-time licence, and Export wears a Pro badge on a free account. Brush alphas, the turntable video, View in AR and sending to Paint or Studio are all free, so the whole authoring path costs nothing until you want the file itself.

Rig mode builds a skeleton inside the sculpt, binds it to the mesh and poses it. The rail runs in that order — Skeleton, Bind, Pose — and a tool whose stage you have not reached stays greyed out, with the reason in its tooltip. The bar along the bottom always says where the rig is and what to do next.

1. 1
   Place the joints — With Place active, tap the model to drop joints; each tap extends the chain, and joints land inside the mesh. End chain finishes one limb so the next tap starts another, and Mirror copies the bones across the symmetry axis.
2. 2
   Bind — Press Bind to work out the skin weights for every visible object. Smooth relaxes them where the deformation pinches.
3. 3
   Pose — Pick Pose, tap a bone and turn the gizmo.
4. 4
   Fix the weights — Weights paints the selected bone's influence, shown as a blue-to-red tint, with Size, Strength and Hardness in the bar. Hold Ctrl or ⌘ to erase.
5. 5
   Leave the pose — Rest returns every bone to where it was bound and gives the sculpt back exactly. Keep pose makes the current pose the new rest shape, so you can sculpt on top of it.

Sculpting pauses while the model is posed. The Object tab lists every bone, where you can select one or delete it along with everything below it; Clear removes the whole rig.

The usual reason to pose a sculpt is presentation: a T-pose reads as a work in progress, while the same sculpt with weight on one leg reads as finished. The rigging tour — search ⌘K for "tour" — walks the pipeline in the app, and what is 3D rigging explains the ideas.

Most problems in Mold have a cause the app already tells you about in a message at the bottom of the screen. These are the ones people run into most, and what to do about each.

Press ? in Mold to see these on screen.