Bootcamp: Forger

Discover the sculpting application for the ipad that can create stunning sculpts to be used in 3D software

Create stunning sculpts on the go

The ipad is now ten years old, and in that time, it has occupied an awkward space in many people’s computing lives. While it is great for content consumption, it can be argued that as a creative tool, the ipad has had its limitations for all but 2D artists, who are well supported by applications such as Procreate.

3D artists now potentially have a breakout tool on the ipad. Forger is an app that has been around for years; it started out as a piece of software that was interesting but limited, and has been developed into a full-blown portable sculpting studio that for many artists could become the primary sculpting tool in their arsenal.

Forger has all the tools that a useful sculpting application should have, from an excellent array of sculpting brushes, layers, masks, alpha brush support, and a colour painting toolset.

It also has a Painting mode, but at present this is destructive and limited to meshes with UVS. A model cannot be remodelled once the Painting mode has been enabled, although this is a feature that the developers have said they will restore. There is also a full vertex painting toolset which can be applied to any mesh.

With the cheapest ipad now able to work with an Apple Pencil, Forger enables any artist to have a fully portable sculpting station for less than the cost of a Zbrush licence. For the best possible experience though, Forger is sublime on Apple’s ipad Pro, where it makes the most of the extra hardware acceleration and high screen refresh rate to enable silky-smooth sculpting, which is hard to replicate so well on even powerful workstations.

In a nutshell, if you own an ipad, and you are a 3D artist, Forger is an essential (and very cheap) purchase.

01 INSTALL THE APP

Forger is available on the Apple App Store. It only works on ipads, and as the app is pressure sensitive, the best drawing experience is with the Apple Pencil (although it can work with other styluses). All ipads from the base 10-inch model through to the 12inch ipad Pro can work with Forger and the Apple Pencil. There is an option to buy a texture painting toolset within Forger, but at the time of writing, this has been deprecated by the developer.

02 INITIAL SCULPTING

It’s very quick and easy to get started. Forger can import base meshes, with or without UVS, but if you’re starting from scratch there are a range of preset meshes available – a couple of which come with their own UVS. A cube or a sphere is a great place to start, and making sure symmetry is active, use the Move brush to push elements of the base mesh into a rough silhouette of the desired shape for the sculpt.

03 USE THE SCULPTING TOOLSET

Forger has a full sculpting toolset, including a clay brush with a smoothing command which can be accessed by one of the hotkeys down the side. Here you can also find an invert brush, which reverses the direction of the current brush. Masks are available, as well as a transform tool with gimbal controls. Images can also be brought in through the Resources menu for reference. For the small price you pay, there are a great range of features and tools available.

04 ADD OTHER OBJECTS

Forger can support multiple objects within a sculpt. For example, by adding a sphere and scaling it, an eye can be created. Using the Mirror tool, this eye can then be duplicated and moved into position. Adding a torus is a great way to add the mane to this lion. This stops individual meshes getting too heavy to be sculpted with and gives the artist more control, as each object can be shown or hidden as desired, along with lights and reference objects.

05 PAINT THE SCULPT WITH VERTEX COLOURS

While there is a painting toolset available for Forger, it is currently discouraged by the developers. However, a sculpt can be painted with vertex paints on a mesh. As with all vertex paint toolsets, the higher the density of the mesh, the better. Forger also supports the creation of alpha brushes for painting and sculpting. 2D ipad applications such as Procreate can be used to create Alpha brushes that can then be saved into Forger’s ‘stamps’ folder.

06 WORK WITH 3D DESKTOP APPLICATIONS

Meshes from Forger can be exported as OBJ, STL or even USD. Vertex paint textures can also be exported as image files that can be brought into traditional 3D applications. Forger can create UVS of meshes, but this can be problematic. Larger meshes need to be manually saved too. Even with these caveats, Forger is a stunning example of how a mobile app can condense the toolset of a larger desktop app into a professional, on-the-go tool for any 3D artist. •