Saturday, August 8th, 2020 Posted by Jim Thacker

Check out Nomad: a neat new iOS and Android sculpting app

Nomad in action, in a demo video recorded by digital sculptor and creature artist Glen Southern. The new app makes it possible to sculpt, remesh and paint organic models on iOS and Android tablets.


Former Sketchfab developer Stéphane Ginier has released Nomad, a promising new digital sculpting app for iPads and Android tablets.

The $13.99 app enables artists to sculpt and paint organic characters on the move, then export the results in OBJ or glTF format to refine in other DCC software.

A rounded set of digital sculpting, 3D painting and remeshing features
Nomad includes a rounded set of sculpting features, adapted for use on a touchscreen, or with the iPad’s Apple Pencil stylus.

That includes a basic set of brushes, including Clay, Crease, Move, Flatten and Smooth, with support for falloff, standard control parameters, alphas and masking; plus line and curve cutting tools.

The app has a dynamic tessellation system similar to those of desktop tools like ZBrush or Mudbox, automatically changing the resolution of the part of the mesh being sculpted to accommodate new details.

Users can also perform a voxel remesh of the sculpt to generate a uniform level of detail, as with ZBrush’s DynaMesh toolset; or switch manually between different levels of resolution.

Nomad also features a vertex paint system, making it possible to rough out surface colours; and supports PBR rendering, including the option to light a sculpt with a custom HDR environment.

Both sculpting and painting are layer-based, making it possible to work non-destructively.

Completed sculpts can be exported to other DCC appliations in OBJ or glTF format, although only glTF preserves paint and layer information.

An alternative to Forger for sculpting on the move
In his video overview (embedded above) leading digital sculptor and creature artist Glen Southern describes Nomad as an “amazing fully featured package” and a serious alternative to Javier Edo’s Forger.

One of the earliest iPad sculpting apps, Forger remains many artists’ mobile sculpting tool of choice nearly nine years after its original release.

In the comments, Southern notes that it is “too early to say which is best”, and that both are “amazing” apps.

However, one advantage that Nomad has over Forger is that it it isn’t limited to the iPad: it also works on Android tablets like Samsung’s Galaxy range.

Pricing and system requirements
Nomad is available for iOS 9.1+ and Android 4.4+. It costs $13.99.

Read more about Nomad on the product website