Sculpt like never before
Explore a new dimension of 3D modeling
Life-like sculpting experience
See your creations in life-size or bigger, like they were phisically in front of you.
Speed and efficiency
Quickly create concepts, blockout characters, add details, and instantly test your work in life-size.
All-in-one
3D modeling workflow
Experience flexibility like never before – create in VR or on your desktop, and with your digital pen!
Seamless integration
Use your work in other 3D creative apps, in game engines and for 3D printing.
Shapelab is a fantastic and feature-packed VR poly-sculpting solution. It has a very solid and stable foundation and the recent release brought some real quality of life and workflow improvements. If you love sculpting, but haven’t experienced sculpting in VR, then I can’t recommend Shapelab highly enough.
Danny McGrath
3D artist in Game art, Hard-surface, Organic Sculpting
Key features
Dual Engine Modeling
Combine the power of polygon sculpting with the speed of voxel-based sketching. Shapelab’s hybrid engine lets you block out ideas in voxels, then refine them with production-ready polygon tools—all in one workflow.
VR and Desktop
Dual Mode
Run Shapelab on your PC in desktop mode or use a VR headset tethered to your PC for an immersive VR experience. Switch seamlessly between modes while working on your projects.
Industry-grade Sculpting Tools
Access industry-standard sculpting tools with extensive configuration options. Brushes include Clay, Standard, Mask, Crease, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Snakehook, Flatten, Trim, Regularize, and 3D Stamp.
Multiresolution Sculpting
Subdivide your mesh to create multiple levels of detail. Easily switch between them to optimize your workflow.
Dynamic Topology Sculpting (optional)
Enable real-time tessellation to dynamically adjust mesh detail based on your needs. Alternatively, lock your brush resolution to a specific value by sampling directly from your model for precise sculpting control.
Remeshing Tools
Use remeshing tools such as voxel remesh, subdivide, decimate, and regularize meshes.
Perform operations like mirroring, welding, flipping, and filling holes. Merge vertices and quad remesh for cleaner topology. Transfer intricate details from high-resolution, unorganized meshes to cleaner, quad-based models.
What the industry says about Shapelab
BoroCG
“The most exciting part in Shapelab for me is how stable, reliable and innovative the remeshing algorithm is. You can create very precise detail with roughness and color and it takes care of all the topology at the same time. Incredible!”
Grant Abbitt
“I’ve become a VR convert now after trying out this sculpting program. It’s very intuitive, easy-to-use and makes sculpting really fun!”
Danny Mac 3D
“As I started to get the hang of it, I started to better appreciate just how much better it is to be able to see and manipulate the sculpt right there in front of you. It’s like it’s physically in front of you.”
Use Shapelab to
Create digital assets
Create detailed organic shapes, such as digital props, 3D characters and other assets for applications, games and virtual worlds with Shapelab.Create detailed organic shapes, such as digital props, 3D characters and other assets for applications, games and virtual worlds with Shapelab.
Design concept art
Easily navigate in virtual reality within Shapelab to design concepts for 3D art, as well as 2D assets, such as illustrations and storyboards.
Edit 3D scans and 3D print
Import and export in common file formats: import 3D scans to inspect and manipulate them in a more natural and intuitive way in VR. Export your designs and 3D print them to create physical objects.
Release your creativity
Put on your VR headset and learn how to scukpt in a relaxing and fun atmosphere with Shapelab. Work on personal projects and create innovative digital art in virtual reality.
Using Shapelab you simply can put your head inside a model and see complex geometric issues, and it feels like being 4-dimensional where no spike or non-manifold geometry can escape your sight.
Fedir Boitsov
Photogrammetry expert
Gallery
FAQ
Shapelab is a VR-only 3D design application primarily for organic modeling. The robust polygon-based engine and feature set allows for creating high-quality props, characters, and concepts for applications, games, and virtual worlds, as well as digital concept art and storyboards, and for 3D printing.
- For beginner 3D artists and aspiring creatives, VR has the potential to shorten the learning curve and open doors to solve complex design problems needed to digitize and improve their traditional workflows and processes.
- For 3D designers, VR can be a helpful addition to the workflow – for quickly creating concepts or blocking out characters that can then be imported to other programs for additional work. Moreover, VR can be extremely helpful when inspecting and cleaning up large 3D scan data.
We want to provide the subscription option for those who don’t want to buy the software upfront for the full price. If you don’t want a subscription you can get Shapelab for a one-time purchase on our website, Steam, or Meta store.
No matter which option you choose, you will get the same version of Shapelab.
We offer education discounts for those affiliated with an educational institution. To learn more please visit: shapelabvr.com/education
The minimum requirements for Shapelab PCVR are:
- OS: Windows™ 10 or later
- Processor: Intel™ Core™ i5-4590 or AMD FX™ 8350, equivalent or better
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce™ GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon™ RX 480, equivalent or better
- Storage: approximately 800 MB available space
Shapelab PCVR supports HTC Vive, Valve index, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest headsets (with link cable) and Windows Mixed Reality devices.
Please see all system requirements here.
Although all the officially supported headsets are listed above, any headset should be compatible with Shapelab that can run SteamVR.
For the best performance, make sure to tether your headset to your PC via cable. Air Link connection can sometimes result in performance issues.
You can find our user manual here.
You can import and export in FBX, OBJ, GLB and STL. You can also save your projects as SL3D (Shapelab project file) to keep the settings of your scene.
Yes, you can export your designs in STL, OBJ and GLB formats, which are supported by almost every slicer software.
Tip: Take care of your creations’ topology in order to get a printable result. Use the smooth tool often, consider voxel remeshing and you can also automatically close holes on the objects.
Yes, you can export your work in FBX, OBJ, GLB and STL and use them in other programs, such as Blender, Substance Painter, Unity, etc.
Many VR design applications such as Adobe Medium have a voxel based engine, which is absolutely suitable for 3D modelling. However, for characters, mobs and digital props, mesh based sculpting is usually more optimal than voxel sculpting if you would like to avoid blocky, rasterized designs. Realistic voxel models require a higher number of voxels than a polygonal model would need in vertexes.
Using voxel technology also means that you are dealing with not only the surface, but every internal “3D pixels/blocks” as well. This takes a lot of RAM and forces designers to treat the design as a solid object, which means a higher possibility of human errors. Such unwanted errors can be small inner holes or stray material blocks hovering in the holes, which can cause difficulties when you are trying to 3D print the object or use it in 3rd party game engines. Since mesh modeling just deals with the surface, it takes less RAM and there are no “inner space” pixels you have to worry about.
Our technology also makes it possible to vary the polygon density and detail in the same mesh. For example, you can design a character with a very detailed face and a less detailed body. This kind of polygon control is crucial when it comes to 3D asset creation for animations, games and other apps.