Post by @cwebber@social.coop

Years ago @aeva introduced me to Signed Distance Fields (SDF) as an interesting direction for making 3d art more accessible. Her Tangerine project remains super inspiring to me, and I appreciate Aeva as the kind of friend who is "helpfully dissatisfied" and wants to push tech in interesting directions

But I hadn't seen much in SDF land for some time, but recently @metin has been doing interesting explorations and tracking them in this mega thread: https://blenderartists.org/t/the-big-sdf-thread/1293075/2119

The big contenders seem to be the Chisel add-on to Blender, but it's proprietary :(
But Speedsculpt is getting SDF tools now too, and that looks promising, so maybe there will be a libre add-on I'll feel comfortable using (I don't mind paying for it, as long as it's FOSS). And there was something on the Blender roadmap recently about maybe possibly exploring builtin SDF tools to replace metaballs etc.

I dunno, seems cool and exciting.

Blender Artists Community

The big SDF thread

I’m currently beta-testing the new non-destructive, live-primitive SDF functionality in @pitiwazou’s Speedsculpt add-on, and all I can say is: it is very impressive! I’m not exaggerating when I say it is rapidly becoming my new go-to SDF tool, and right inside Blender. Here’s a little screenshot compilation. These are all pure SDF shapes that can be smoothly blended with other shapes. 👌

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GNU/Knoppers

@gnuplusknoppers@troet.cafe 1 hr. ago

@cwebber @aeva @metin Chisel is paid but not proprietary. You can see on the Superhive store page that they list the license as GPL.
Because of Blenders GPL, public add-ons have to be either GPL or more permissive.

Metin Seven

@metin@graphics.social 1 hr. ago

@cwebber @aeva Thanks for the mention, appreciated. Chisel and the upcoming version of Speedsculpt are indeed the most powerful SDF modeling Blender add-ons. Outside of Blender there’s the user-friendly free SDF Modeler.

The Blender devs did shortly mention SDF plans during the BCon 2025, but I haven’t heard anything about that since then. Blender’s Geometry Nodes have some SDF functionality, but it’s live-meshed and therefore slower than ray-marched SDF.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 1 hr. ago

@metin @aeva It's been cool to see you trying out all the tools!

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 1 hr. ago

@metin @aeva BTW I recommend you take a look at Ursula's Stop Motion tool. It's kind of brilliantly simple, making new copies of the mesh that you can do *anything* to, with a little bit of python code to set things up and provide a UI and a little bit of Geometry Nodes to keep things working even if you don't have the plugin installed. I did a little demo which I shared here: https://social.coop/@cwebber/117428478844871316

It's kinda liberating to be able to animate by making any wild amounts of transformations to the underlying geometry. I've considered that if the tool were extended to support metaballs, even one of Blender's oldest and most ignored / looked down upon tools would actually suddenly become pretty good for claymation style animation, accessible to newcomers

Metin Seven

@metin@graphics.social 1 hr. ago

@cwebber @aeva Thanks! I will check it out. 👍

1 more reply

Metin Seven

@metin@graphics.social 1 hr. ago

@cwebber @aeva Thank you! I’m very much in love with the freedom and flexibility of SDF modeling ever since the first version of MagicaCSG was released, which is still the most powerful stand-alone SDF modeling editor. I’m on Mac these days though, and MagicaCSG is only available for Windows. 🥲

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 1 hr. ago

On top of all this, I'm also very excited about Clay Pencil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ7SVSwaAVk

I've played with Clay Pencil before, it was a lot of fun.

I also recently have been playing with Ursula Kurdali's Stop Motion animation plugin and I had a ton of fun with that! https://social.coop/@cwebber/117428478844871316

3d is hard for people to get into, and it requires a lot of up front work to do basic things. It's so much fun though. I'd like to lower the barrier to entry without people having genAI do all the work for them, and SDF stuff, Clay Pencil, etc all seem like promising directions to make 3d art more participatory (and stuff I want to use also!)

Grandma Z: Clay Pencil Animation, an Official Blender Lab Project — BCON26

YouTube

TripTilt /// tt

@TripTilt@mastoart.social 1 hr. ago

@cwebber
thanks for all the boosts! hope to see more b3d posts from you (not using the hashtag here to not clutter it up)

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 1 hr. ago

@TripTilt Thank you! I've been doing Blender stuff! Though I usually forget to use the tags

https://social.coop/@cwebber/117428478844871316
https://social.coop/@cwebber/117445395181746998
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88JUfWLJJ5g
and even some animations like the one on https://spritely.institute/news/spritely-goblins-v0-17-0-persistence-is-better-than-ever.html

It's not what I'm known for, and certainly something I never feel like I have a mastery over (despite recent jokes to the contrary), but it's something that brings me a lot of joy

In Unexpected Places #Blender #GreasePencil #MusicVideo

YouTube

Spritely Goblins v0.17.0: Persistence is better than ever! — Spritely Institute