Workflows
Shapelab can be incorporated in many workflows accross different industries from game design to filmmaking, from visual arts to healthcare, as virtual reality is beneficial for both professionals and beginners learning 3D design. Here are some examples of real Shapelab users and their experience.
Character creation for concept art
Peter Gregor is a 3D artist working in the Shapelab team. He usually starts sculpting in Shapelab from scratch, and he quickly creates blockouts with the move and the standard tool while easily navigating in 3D space. He sculpts with various brushes for intricate details and uses alphas to create patterns fast. He also paints his models inside Shapelab and exports it to Blender with texture, so he can add the final touches and create renders.
Why Shapelab?
Using VR in his daily work has given him a great advantage in bettering his 3D design skills and making his process much faster. Shapelab’s highly optimized engine and feature set supports traditional professional design workflows unlike other VR creative tools. Peter uses Shapelab in his daily work to create optimized 3D assets for applications and highly detailed renders.
3D printing
Simon Clark, aka ‘Topgunsi’, is an artist creating realistic 3D models, from insects – native to his homeland of New Zealand – to animals and, most importantly, dinosaurs. He creates amazing life-size 3D prints of his models. The most impressive is a life-size t-rex. What started as a hobby project turned into a massive 3D printing job, followed by many people online, who are excited and cheering for every new piece that comes out of the printers.
Why Shapelab?
An advantage of Shapelab he mentions is the simplicity of the UI, and the easy-to-use tools, which are especially helpful for users like Simon, who don’t have a background in 3D sculpting. He loves the regularize brush sets that give him the freedom of control over topology, allowing him to create models that can also be used for world-building and avatar-building in VRChat.
Visual Arts
Multidisciplinary artist Tom Aust, is a traditional sculptor first, but he came to appreciate creating in VR which provided him with a new medium and the ability to work without physical constraints. He sculpts the models in Shapelab and works out the finest details in VR, then uses Blender to create the sculpture-like renders.
Why Shapelab?
VR is a great medium to translate skills from a traditional handicraft background to the digital world, as it can be more accommodating and natural than working on a 2D screen with a mouse and keyboard. Tom also appreciates the topology manipulation options, such as dynamic tesselation. He uses Shapelab to sculpt beautiful art pieces with very fine details. His models often constitute millions of polygons, so the stability and performance of the application is also a must.
Scan processing and editing
Editing 3D scan data is cumbersome work, especially for people who have less routine with traditional desktop 3D software. Cleaning the heavy scan data requires a thorough inspection and takes a long time for users who are not used to navigating in 3D on a flat screen with a keyboard and a mouse. Modifying the mesh to create the final product also requires artistic abilities, precision, and a good grasp of perspective.
Why Shapelab?
With VR controllers, creators can manipulate complex 3D scan files in a more natural and intuitive way, and can view the scanned object from any angle. Additionally, VR tools can help remove any unwanted noise or artifacts from the scan data, and allow creators to apply textures and other modifications to the model. Thanks to the high-performing and robust engine, Shapelab can handle even complex and heavy 3D scan data.
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.”
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. When you susbcribe you get 14 days of free trial before the amount is charged to your account. If you don’t want a subscription you can get Shapelab for a one-time purchase on Steam, Viveport or Meta store.
No matter which option you choose, you will get the same version of Shapelab.
The 14-day trial period is only available if you choose a subscription plan. After you create a Shapelab account, choose a plan and then provide your payment information. You will then be able to download and start using Shapelab.
You will only be charged after the free trial period expires. Until then, you can cancel your subscription free of charge.
We recently launched a global education program with the aim of making Shapelab more accessible to educational institutions. If you’re interested in getting Shapelab for an educational institution, please visit: shapelabvr.com/education
The minimum requirements for Shapelab 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 supports HTC Vive, Valve index, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest/Quest 2/Quest Pro (with link cable) and Windows Mixed Reality devices.
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.
The primary function of Shapelab is organic modelling, and some features that would help cleaning up 3D scans are still missing, however it is possible to delete parts of the geometry with Boolean operations and fix surface errors with the sculpting tools.
While Shapelab may not be suitable for accurate retopology in its current form, it does offer several tools to modify the topology of your mesh. These include the Decimate tool, Voxel Remesh, Subdivide, and Regularize. Additionally, you can eliminate duplicate vertices using the Merge Vertices by Distance command, or alternatively, delete polygons altogether.