How Shapeaway clay works

Most sculpting apps move the corners of a polygon mesh. Shapeaway doesn’t have a mesh to move. Its clay is a grid of distances: every point in the grid knows how far it is from the surface, and whether it’s inside or outside the clay.

A brush changes those distances, and Shapeaway draws the surface where they cross zero. So:

• Holes, splits and merges are free. Carve through a part and you get a hole; push two lumps together and they become one.
• The surface can’t tear, stretch or fold inside out, however far you pull it.
• Every export is watertight, because the surface is always the closed boundary of a solid.

Detail levels

The grid’s spacing is the clay’s detail level. Finer spacing holds finer detail and needs more memory.

Level	Detail	Good for
Draft	2.1 mm	Quick blocking
Standard	1.6 mm	Most props and first sculpts
Fine	1.0 mm	Figures and faces
Ultra	0.8 mm	Detailed busts; best with 16 GB
Studio	0.4 mm	Miniatures, jewellery, faces; best with 32 GB

Each object has its own level. For detail finer than Studio (pores, fine scales), add a detail mesh.

Memory follows the surface

The clay is only stored near its surface, in blocks, so a big simple shape costs less than a small intricate one, and the clay can grow in any direction up to the sculpt’s build limit. Paint and mask are only stored where they’re used.

Undo stores only what changed

Each undo step keeps only the blocks a stroke touched, so a typical step is tens of kilobytes. One history covers every object in the sculpt.

Sizes are real

One unit in Shapeaway is a real millimetre when you export. The status bar always shows the model’s size, so what you see is what your slicer gets.