For those who don’t know the site: BlenderKit is a built-in asset library for Blender. It loads materials, models, HDRIs, scenes and brushes straight into the viewport, no dragging, no file hunting, no tears.

Brush bonanza in Blender

The asset library BlenderKit has quietly added more than 1,000 free sculpting brushes to its growing database. The brushes target a wide range of 3D workflows, from organic modelling and creature detailing to hard-surface wear and tear. These free brushes are part of a total collection exceeding 5,000 sculpting presets now listed in BlenderKit. Free brushes include assets for wrinkles, pores, fabric seams, stone cracks, and mechanical surfaces. Most are licensed under CC0 or royalty-free commercial licences, allowing unrestricted use in paid work.

Everything inside Blender

BlenderKit runs directly inside Blender, so artists can browse and import models, materials, HDRIs, scenes and now brushes without leaving the application. The plugin’s tight integration means no external downloads or add-on juggling. The full BlenderKit library now contains more than 114,000 assets, with roughly 54,000 of them available for free. Paid plans unlock the remaining content, offer 2 GB of cloud storage and include optional extra add-ons. The plugin requires Blender 3.0 or later.

Free, legal, and plenty

All assets on BlenderKit’s free tier can be used commercially, provided the creator’s licence allows it. The site distinguishes between CC0 (public domain) and royalty-free assets. For users on budget-tight pipelines or smaller indie teams, this is one of the most extensive legally clean asset pools available directly inside a DCC.

The newly added sculpting brushes fit well with Blender’s growing use in creature and environment design for both games and film work. The convenience of in-viewport access saves a good amount of tme compared to manual brush setup and file import routines.

Try before you rely

As always, new tools should be tested before being used in production environments. Brush performance, texture resolution and stroke response vary depending on the sculpting engine version and system hardware.

https://www.blenderkit.com/

The post Over 1,000 free sculpting brushes land in BlenderKit first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The Blender Foundation is now developing a native Blender Ipad app for the iPad Pro—complete with Apple Pencil support and a multitouch interface aimed squarely at professional 3D artists. This will not be a “Blender Lite.” The project aims for the full desktop Blender experience, reworked for pen and touch workflows, while preserving the familiar Blender architecture.

The first iteration will cover sculpting and basic object manipulation, with features such as Grease Pencil, storyboarding, and animation scheduled for later releases. The Blender team made it clear: the goal is to maintain parity with the desktop version, just with a different input philosophy.

Interface Built for Touch, Without Dumbing Down

Designers at the Blender Foundation are rethinking the UI for a single-window workflow. There will be floating panels, context overlays, collapsed menus, and icon-driven sidebars—each tailored for pen and finger rather than mouse. Importantly, the UI is being built directly atop Blender’s core, not a mobile-only fork. This ensures compatibility and consistency, so desktop and tablet artists will share the same underlying toolset and development pipeline.

The project targets existing Blender users—no attempt to reinvent the app as an entry-level tool for hobbyists. The focus remains on enabling experienced artists to use familiar workflows with a different interface.

Roadmap and Timeline

No firm release date yet, but the Blender Foundation is planning a live tech demo for SIGGRAPH 2025 in Vancouver (August 10–14). Following that, Blender HQ in Amsterdam will host a design workshop to gather more community input, and additional sessions are on the agenda for Blender Conference 2025.

Once the Blender iPad Pro app is stable, the team plans to expand to other devices, including Microsoft Surface, Huawei MatePad, Wacom MovinkPad, and Android tablets. The goal is to address professional 3D workflows on the full spectrum of advanced tablets—eventually.

Feedback and Development Community Participation

The new “Beyond Mouse and Keyboard” branch on Blender’s developer forums is open for input, with the Foundation especially interested in designers experienced with multitouch and pen-based UIs. Add-ons are not on the priority list for initial builds, so plugin authors may have to wait until the core UI and workflows are stable.

What Tab-Specific Workflows Mean for Desktop Blender

UI improvements being developed for tablets—including a Quick Favorites editor, icon-driven sidebar, helper overlays, and wheel menus—are also planned for the desktop version of Blender 5.0. Touch-first R&D could soon benefit every Blender artist, regardless of platform.

The post Blender on iPad Pro at Last—Without Losing Its Blender-ness first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Maxon has officially announced that the ZBrush Summit 2025 Virtual Edition will stream online from November 7 to 9. The event marks the 25th anniversary of Pixologic’s ZBrush and promises a slate of live presentations, tutorials, artist features, and a high‑energy sculpt‑off

Join us November 7-9 for a historic ZBrush Summit 2025 as we celebrate 25 years of ZBrush!
Virtual & global — 3 days of live demos, artist spotlights, and insider workflows.
Whether pro or just starting out, you don’t want to miss this!
More info at https://t.co/DqY0XL3Xar pic.twitter.com/bP7XW2mtZd

— Maxon ZBrush (@maxonzbrush) July 9, 2025

What’s on the Sculpting Slate

Maxon positions the summit as “an immersive, interactive experience like never before.” The agenda includes live demos, beta‑feature previews, and spotlight sessions with working artists. A highlight will be the sculpt‑off—a live competition showing real‑time sculpting workflows . This format caters to artists at every skill level, promising educational insights and practical techniques.

Beta Features Unveiled

Attendees will gain early access to unreleased ZBrush beta features. Maxon’s Teaser only specifies “cutting‑edge tools,” without detailing the functions. This isn’t unusual, but professionals should reserve judgment until they can test them on real shots.

The post Maxon Invites Artists to Attend the ZBrush Summit 2025 Virtual Edition first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Maxon has now nailed the Forger coffin shut, confirming that the iPad sculpting app will enter “limited maintenance mode” and vanish from the App Store on September 10, 2025. The company’s newly published FAQ leaves little room for ambiguity: after the cutoff, no new updates, no fresh bug fixes, and definitely no new subscriptions.

Forger, acquired by Maxon in 2021 after a long solo run since 2011, brought polygon modeling, non-destructive layers, and a surprisingly ambitious toolset to the iPad. But since 2023, it’s seen nothing more than bug fix bandages. Now, even those are running out.

What “Limited Maintenance Mode” Means—No Surprises Here

From September 10, 2025, Forger is gone from the App Store. You can’t buy, download, or subscribe. Current users can keep the app as long as their subscription is active and can re-download, but there will be no new updates or bug fixes. Technical support remains, but only until your subscription runs out or Forger vanishes entirely.

Migration: GoZ

If you want your work to survive, use GoZ to transfer projects to ZBrush (desktop or iPad). Forger’s native file format is not supported anywhere else—not even in Cinema 4D. Plan accordingly. Layers, mesh data, and certain effects may not transfer cleanly, especially for complex projects. The official advice: test your asset pipeline now, not after September.

Forger Out, ZBrush for iPad In

Maxon’s recommended replacement is ZBrush for iPad, which debuted in September 2024. It supports 200+ brushes, DynaMesh, Sculptris Pro, and other ZBrush staples. It’s free to try, but full functionality costs $9.99/month or $89.99/year—substantially more than Forger’s old $1.99/month or $14.99/year. There is no migration discount. The Forger and ZBrush for iPad teams are being merged, so features should converge (in theory, and with enough patience).

Reality Check: Test Before You Migrate

Every workflow, export, and pipeline step should be validated with actual production assets before committing to ZBrush for iPad or any replacement. Maxon’s FAQ and support documentation make no secret of Forger’s quirks—neither should your team.

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Maxon official FAQ: End of Support // Forger End of Service FAQ

The post Maxon Sunsets Forger: iPad Sculptors Get the (Maintenance) Axe first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Nomad Sculpt, the touch-friendly sculpting app known from the iPad, is now available as a public beta for Windows, macOS and Linux. The desktop edition includes all current features of the iPad version and is free during the beta phase. How long that will last? Unknown. But it’s free now, so no complaints.

The desktop edition is available directly from the official Nomad Sculpt website, where the beta builds can be downloaded for all three major platforms.

Same Tools, New Platforms

If you’ve used Nomad on iPad, you’ll feel right at home. The desktop beta includes all current features of the iPad version, Nomad Sculpt offers a comprehensive suite of features tailored for digital sculpting and painting. Its extensive toolset includes brushes such as Clay, Crease, Trim, Smooth, and Mask, with customizable strokes featuring falloff, alpha, and other options. Rendering capabilities encompass both Matcap and Physically Based Rendering (PBR), while vertex painting tools provide control over roughness and metalness properties.

For topology management, Nomad Sculpt supports multiresolution sculpting, voxel uniform remeshing with subtractive boolean operations, dynamic topology for localized mesh refinement, and robust layers that accommodate topology changes. The interface is intuitively designed for mobile devices, supporting pressure sensitivity with Apple Pencil and Samsung S Pen. Additionally, the application facilitates import and export in OBJ, STL, and glTF formats. (nomadsculpt.com)

Licensing: Undecided

As of now, the desktop version of Nomad is free to use in its beta phase. Whether a permanent free version will exist or if a pricing model will follow is still undecided. The iPad version is currently priced at €18.99 on the App Store, but this doesn’t necessarily indicate future desktop pricing.

Still in Beta: Use With Caution

As a beta release, Nomad Sculpt for desktop should be considered not yet production-ready. Bugs, crashes or missing features may occur. Testing is encouraged, but integrating the tool into production pipelines should wait until stability and long-term support are clarified.

For now, Nomad offers a remarkably full-featured, responsive sculpting tool on desktop – assuming you don’t mind being a beta-tester with a Wacom.

The post Nomad: Sculpting on Desktop first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

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In the latest contribution to Blender’s thriving open-source ecosystem, Blender Studio has released a set of free brushstroke tools designed for digital sculpting and painting. These tools aim to streamline creative workflows by adding brush-based control for artists working in Blender. Blender users now have access to tools that may enhance the precision of painting and sculpting tasks without the need for additional plugins or paid add-ons.

What’s Included in the Brushstroke Tools

The brushstroke toolset includes several customizable brushes tailored for digital production artists. Developed specifically with Blender’s unique capabilities in mind, these tools integrate seamlessly into existing workflows and can be accessed without complex setup. They provide real-time feedback for brushstroke effects, potentially useful for VFX, game development, and post-production work that requires intricate detail and control in sculpting and painting.

The newly released brushstroke toolset offers two main types of 3D brushstroke layers—Fill and Draw—providing versatile options for creating and managing brush effects. The Fill layer floods a mesh surface with procedural brushstrokes, which can be customized using the Shape panel to adjust flow, direction, and boundaries. For added control, users can influence stroke direction by drawing curves or defining edges and faces to ignore using Ctrl+Alt+F. The Draw layer, on the other hand, allows artists to draw brushstrokes as curve geometry directly onto a surface mesh, with adjustable settings like color and additional procedural effects, making it ideal for precise, surface-specific details.

Brushstroke layers can also be customized with a range of material settings within the addon interface. Material control is divided into Properties, Brush Style, and Effects. The Properties section provides a PBR (physically based rendering) setup for base material adjustments, while Brush Style allows for the selection and customization of textures based on real-life scans. Effects offer masking and texture adjustment options, giving artists an additional level of control over how each brushstroke layer looks in the final render. For those looking to dive deeper, Blender Studio provides a guided workshop and example file as well as extensive documentation.

Practical Applications for VFX and Game Development

The newly released brushes have a specific focus on supporting digital artists who require precise and stable tools for production-level work. Whether used in character design, environmental sculpting, or high-detail texturing, the brushes aim to simplify detailed modeling tasks often required in VFX production and game asset creation.

For VFX supervisors, compositors, and game designers, these tools allow a direct application of brushstroke techniques within Blender’s sculpting and texturing environments. Given their open-source nature, they also lend themselves to further customization, an appealing feature for technical directors looking to tailor tools to unique production pipelines.

Where to Download

These brushstroke tools are available for free download directly from Blender Studio’s website, providing instant access for any Blender user interested in expanding their sculpting and painting capabilities.

Price and Considerations

Cost is straightforward—completely free. However, as with any new tools, it’s recommended that artists test these brushes within non-critical projects first. Given the rapidly evolving nature of digital production software, a cautious approach ensures that any integration issues or minor bugs are resolved without impacting production schedules.

The post Free Brushstroke Tools Now Available for Blender from Blender Studio first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In nuce: Software developer Maxon has announced the release of ZBrush 2023, the latest version of the popular 3D sculpting programme. This is according to an announcement on 3dvf.com, which was published on 12 January this year.

In toto: The feature-length product presentation right here below, hosted by Paul Gaboury, 3D Product Development Manager at Pixologic, takes you through in detail the innovations that will be introduced with ZBrush 2023. Below are three of the most important points associated with the release.

Special ZBrush Presentation

• Integration with renderer Redshift: As Digital Production already reported on 13 January 2023 as part of the news on the innovations in the Maxon One product line, the new ZBrush now also includes the renderer Redshift – which is intended to enable the rendering of high-resolution images using subsurface scattering and emissive light generation. The announcement on 3dvf.com also states that ZBrush 2023 supports standard, MatCap and Redshift materials with regard to Redshift.
• New, supported materials: Materials that can be used to generate metal surfaces or caustics for glass are also supported.
• Support for powerful processors: The new ZBrush utilises the processor architecture of the Apple M1 and M2 processors.

Click further: For an in-depth look at the new features of ZBrush 2023, click through to the official announcement – published on zbrushcentral.com by ZBrush customer support representative Mathew Yetter. On 16 December 2021, Digital Production reported when Pixologic was acquired by Maxon – and the 3D sculpting program ZBrush became part of the Cinema 4D product family. The lead image of this news item, which can be seen in the cut, comes from the creative portfolio of freelance character artist Piotr Rusnarczyk.

Sources: 3dvf.com ( message from web editor Shadows), zbrushcentral.com ( publication note from 11.01.2023)

The post Maxon releases ZBrush 2023! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: As a follow-up to this year’s Siggraph, where Maxon was present with its The 3D and Motion Design Show, the associated live recordings have now been released as YouTube videos – among the prominent personnel is Justin Fields, who is represented with two videos on sculpting in ZBrush.

Justin Fields @ The 3D and Motion Design Show Siggraph 2022, Day 1

In toto: In the first video, which lasts just over three quarters of an hour, Justin demonstrates that he is not known for building assets and characters in ZBrush at lightning speed for nothing. Justin sculpts an alien, which the audience christens Globo. In the second, almost hour-long video, Justin shows some of his work samples (for the Disney Plus film Prey, for which Justin designed the inside of the Predator mask, for example). See the second video from minute 3:50, or the corresponding Artstation posting. But Justin was also active for the sci-fi series Star Trek Discovery, which can be marvelled at from minute 4:50 of the second video).

Justin Fields @ The 3D and Motion Design Show Siggraph 2022, Day 2

Who is Justin Fields? Justin is a professional 3D sculptor who has also worked as a creative director and concept artist at visual development studio Sanctum Studios for over three years. Recently, Sanctum Studios collaborated with special effects company ADI (Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc.) to create some of the designs for the fifth Predator film, Prey (Digital Production reported on MPC’s VFX breakdown for the film on 25 October this year ).

The post How does Speed Sculpting work in ZBrush? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Every week we present you with the best tutorials that will help you polish your workflows with the hottest digital content creation tools in the world!

Airbrush Tool: This time we’re bringing you a tutorial from Christoph Werner of 3DCoat, who shows you how to expertly use the Airbrush Tool in 3DCoat. The video is only three and a half minutes long, so it fits perfectly into your lunch break.

What can the tutorial do? In the tutorial, Christoph explains that although the Airbrush Tool is very similar to the Brush Tool, the two brush tools differ from each other in a number of key ways. In order to clearly emphasise the differences between the two tools, Christoph uses the same settings for both brushes – you can then see from the work results how the airbrush and brush diverge in their creative effect. But click on the video below to see for yourself. Christoph demonstrates the tools using a (pre-)neolithic-looking axe.

What is 3DCoat? It is an application for digital sculpting, UVs, PBR texturing, painting, rendering and low-poly modelling.

Click further: For more high-quality content about 3DCoat, click on the associated online presences – on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. We last reported on the release of version 2021.53 of 3DCoat on 05.10.2021 . On 03/06/2021 we told you about a tutorial series (with Rhinoceros) on 3DCoat that is worth following. If you like big five pachyderms, you should book this desktop safari.

Airbrush tool

The post Airbrush Tool | Tutorial Tuesday first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.