Shapelab News

We really appreciate all the support and feedback we have received so far from our growing community. This gave us extra motivation to make more improvements and release another set of updates! Here is what you can expect on your next sculpting session in ShapeLab:

Performance improvements

• Faster polygon manipulation
  
• Faster undo/redo
  
• More polygons can be manipulated without slowdowns
  

New brush

• The old “inflate/deflate” brush became the “standard” brush
  
• New inflate/deflate brush has been introduced
  

Mirror plane update

• Three axis of symmetry can be used at a time
  

Falloff update

• Falloff has been improved and works much better with most of the brushes, especially with the “move” brush
  

New brush modifiers

• Check “Edit connected surfaces only” to manipulate areas independently that form a continuous surface with the polygon that is closest to the center of your sphere cursor.
  
• Check “Edit front faces only” to only manipulate the surfaces that are facing your controller.
  

Updated “Global decimate”

• Global decimation considers polygon density and tries to keep the details while reducing the number of faces
  

STL and GLB import/export added

• You can choose to export your creations in OBJ, STL and GLB formats
  
• You can import OBJ, STL and GLB files
  

Others

• Slight cursor smoothing effect added to reduce the negative effects of shaky hands
  
• “Refresh” button added to the file browser
  
• UI position on Oculus controllers has been adjusted
  
• Minor bug fixes and UX improvements
  

Shapelab was not compatible with certain types of older CPU architectures (before Intel Haswell or AMD Excavator). After this update, you should be able to launch and run Shapelab even on these types of CPUs.

Thank you for everyone who reported the issue.
We really appreciate your help and patience.

PS: Pssst.. From now on, you can also invert your brush by double pressing the context menu button on your primary controller.

Optimizations/Improvements/Fixes

• Clay buildup/Carve brush optimization
  
• Move brush optimization
  
• Minor performance improvements
  
• Bug fixes
  

New

• Partial Windows Mixed Reality support (Export can be done by using "Quick Save". Will be fixed soon.)
  
• Use alt-brush (secondary brush): Keep pulling the Secondary Controller Trigger to activate your alternate brush.
  
• Configure alt-brush (secondary brus): Keep pulling the Secondary Controller Trigger while selecting another brush from the brush palette
  
• Global Regularize tool: To change mesh resolution, regularize and even out topology globally by subdividing and decimating the surface.
  
• Brush modifier configurations are applied to each brush separately
  
• Brush alphas are visualized on surface
  
• Cursor indicates brush falloff
  
• Open/close brush modifier UI with the “Secondary Controller Down” button/stick
  

Fixes

• No more crashes!!!

Updates and Improvements

• Updated and reorganized controller-attached UI
  
• New file browser UI
  
• Improved sculpt brush behaviors
  
• New Oculus Rift and HTC Vive controller designs
  
• New VR work environments (including plane and simple scenes)
  
• Plenty of new materials that you can now choose from (including matcap)
  
• New base models/templates to start with

New features Brand new sculpt brushes

• Clay buildup/Carve brush with alphas
  
• Trim brush
  
• Improved “Move brush”
  
• Regularize brush for topology and polygon density manipulation

Access to new brush modifiers

• Brush size (set value on slider or use controller buttons)
  
• Brush strength (set value on slider or use the pressure sensitive trigger)
  
• Brush falloff
  
• Brush resolution (set tessellation value or turn tessellation on/off)

Others

• Turn mirror plane on/off
  
• Add reference image to scene
  
• Use model decimation and subdivision

Changes Object context menu accommodates the following features:

• Model context menu: Decimate, Subdivide, Change material
  
• Image context menu: Lock, Unlock, Delete

Controller-attached Options menu accommodates the following features currently

• User preferences: Hand dominance, Show polygon wireframe, Show mirror plane
  
• Environment: Choose from a wide variety of VR environments
  
• Screenshot: Take a screenshot of your creation (Location: Documents/ShapeLab/ScreenShots)

Controller-attached File menu accommodates the following features currently

• New (discard current project and start new creation)
  
• Quick Save (Location: Documents/ShapeLab/QuickSaves)
  
• Import Model (import OBJ files)
  
• Add Image (add reference image to scene)
  
• Export (export in OBJ)
  
• Exit

Temporarily removed features

• Painting tool
  
• “Draw in the air” sculpt brush
  
• STL export/import
  
• Windows Mixed Realiy Support (coming in mid November)

Plans

• The next update can be expected before the Holiday Season, which will include further optimizations, performance improvements, UX/UI fine-tunings and a few additional features.
  
• We are planning to release a big update at the end of Q1 2021. Stay tuned for more exciting information.

We will be continuously improving Shapelab and we appreciate your feedback at every step of the development process. Contact us via email ([email protected]) if you...

• would like to use the previous version of ShapeLab
  
• would like to become a tester or to share your thoughts and ideas on the current update.