Shapelab News

- Implemented fixes and optimizations to the sculpting engine, addressing the occasional crashes and errors that could occur during remeshing and boolean operations
- Ensuring that primitive shapes added to the scene are displayed with their short names in the document outline
- Ensure that at least one shape is consistently selected within the "Create Object" panel

Dear Shapelab community,

It has been an amazing journey for Shapelab so far! We went from an early-access software with a lot of bugs and a limited toolset handling only one object at a time, to a robust 3D modeling application with many powerful, essential and professional features. We are very grateful for you for sticking with us all this time, and today we are happy to announce a new update and Shapelab coming out of 'Early Access' with popular requested features:

• Set precise transform values and organize objects more accurately
  
• Gizmos and interactions
  

Check out the full update note here.

Watch a short trailer for the update: [previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Shapelab is coming out of the ‘Early Access’ stage today, but it doesn’t mean that there won’t be meaningful updates from now on. On the contrary, we will continue to implement new features and we will also expand our reach by offering Shapelab outside of Steam in a monthly and annual payment format. This has no effect on the Steam version you own, as both versions will be updated with the same features and we will continue offering our perpetual license on Steam. The goal is to make Shapelab accessible for a wider audience outside of Steam and lowering the entry barrier to try Shapelab. We will have more information on this in the coming weeks.

We hope you will enjoy the new features, and we are looking forward to your feedback! As usual, you can reach us via email at [email protected] or come chat on our Discord here.

Best,
Shapelab team

Dear Shapelab Community,

Over the past few days we have been reading your messages about the new account registration process. We would like to say thanks to anyone who reached out and voiced their concerns, and also to all of you who supported us despite the changes. Some of you have been with us for years now, and you are very valued by us, so we didn’t mean to cause disappointment and we apologize for the trouble.

We have decided to remove the mandatory account registration. When prompted to create an account, you can click on ‘skip login’ to use Shapelab without logging in. It will remain as an option, in case you want to receive emails from the Shapelab team about updates, helpful tutorials and other exciting content (if you opt in). We hope you will choose to stay in touch with us this way, as it makes direct communication easier.

For those of you who registered and don’t want to keep your Shapelab account, please send us an email to [email protected] and we will delete it. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Our aim is to provide the best customer support, and not to take advantage of any personal data! This is the main reason we introduced (a now optional) login and user account system. Up until now, we were not able to communicate with you about anything directly, including updates or personalized assistance, etc., and now we would like to improve in this regard. We understand that some of you have concerns and therefore we make it optional, rather than mandatory.

It is also important to highlight that we will not ask our legacy users to pay a monthly fee for a product that you have already acquired as a one-time purchase. Additionally, we have no plans to stop selling Shapelab under the current one-time payment model in the foreseeable future. We believe that introducing any new payment method should require a new product version.

As we previously mentioned, we do have exciting plans for future versions of Shapelab (such as business, education plans) and the launcher is needed for this as it allows for downloading, managing versions and providing a user-friendly interface for launching Shapelab in different versions. It will also include communication tools in the future, like built-in contact forms, notifications, and helpful links which make for a smoother user experience.

Please note that the launcher only pops-up once when launching the app and stays on your Windows tray. It should barely use any memory and should not have any effect on your PC’s performance. Should there be a performance issue with it, please reach out to us.

Although signing in is now an option, not a requirement, we still want to emphasize that data collection complies with international regulations and our privacy policy. The only non-anonymous data we have access to is the information you provide (with only the email being mandatory) and limited data on login dates. Our main focus remains anonymous in-app data related to monthly active users, median playtime, average playtime, and other relevant metrics across different timeframes.

We hope that those of you who felt uneasy with the changes will now be able to explore the new features in the update! Please let us know your thoughts and if you previously left a negative review, please reconsider it in case your concerns have been addressed.

Best,
Leopoly team

Here is a reminder of the exciting new features in the update:

https://youtu.be/b5ZdOEYx7VQ

Update (06/06/23):
Seeing the many negative reactions to the account system, we have decided to make account creation optional from now on! We didn’t intend to disappoint our users and we realise how important of a matter this is now. Please accept our apologies.
We just published a longer message about this on Steam here.
You can now access the newest version without creating an account, if you click on ‘skip login’ when opening the launcher.


Dear Shapelab community,

We would like to respond to all the concerns that were raised since the release of the May update. We realize now that the communication about this update was not clear and we apologize to anyone who feels uneasy about the changes. Please let us give you a more in-depth explanation of why we have implemented the account system and the launcher and what this means to our users.

Why we implemented a user account system and launcher

An application launcher and a simple user account system enables direct communication with our customers and keeps them informed about important updates. It is a key requirement for building an effective customer support system with personalized assistance and improved communication.

On why we need the launcher

We want to assure you that we won't charge legacy users a monthly fee for a product they already purchased as a one-time payment. However, we do have plans to make Shapelab available outside of Steam and introduce new versions like business and educational plans. The launcher will be the perfect platform for downloading, managing versions and providing a user-friendly interface for launching Shapelab in different versions.

The launcher will not only enable users to launch various versions of Shapelab but also includes helpful links. Additionally, it will manage notifications and, in the future, provide built-in contact forms and communication tools for users to utilize.

Please note that once you register, you don't really have to deal with the launcher if you check the 'Remember Me' checkbox. Once that checkbox is checked and you log in, you will only see the launcher if you look for it in the location where the hidden minimized items are located on the Windows tray.

Also, we have no intention of making a constant internet connection mandatory. Currently, the offline grace period is 30 days, meaning the app needs to go online at least once every 30 days. However, we are open to discussing the appropriate time frame for this requirement, as 30 days is considered more of an industry standard.

On data collection

The only non-anonymous data we have access to is the information you provide (with only the email being mandatory) and limited login dates. When it comes to Steam, we can only see download numbers and daily active users, which are not sufficient for building a sustainable business model. We primarily focus on anonymous data related to monthly active users, median playtime, average playtime, and other relevant metrics across different timeframes.

Neither the international legal environment, our privacy policy, nor our personal and human norms would allow us to sell your data. Furthermore, it would not make sense from a business perspective at all. You can find more information about how we use your data in our privacy policy.


We hope that our intentions are clearer with this explanation. We will also react to the individual comments and discussions that were not yet answered. Please let us know if you have any other concerns or questions.

Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused. We hope that you will consider giving the updated Shapelab a chance.

If you own Shapelab and you don’t want to use the latest update, please contact us via [email protected] and we can provide you permanent access to the previous version (February update). Please note that you will not need to log in to use the February version, but it also has less features and will not be updated with new ones.

Best,
Leopoly team