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Requirements

• Browser: WebGPU, so the latest Chrome or Edge, or Safari 26 and later. On a browser without WebGPU the app says so instead of starting.
• Desktop: 64-bit Windows today, macOS to follow; on Linux, build from source (download).
• Input: a mouse works. A pen tablet is better: pen pressure sets the strength and the size of each stroke.

Getting started

Open app.splatstudy.com. The app starts with a clay sphere in the sculpt view on the left. Drag on the clay to sculpt; help › getting started shows the essentials.

To try it with a model right away, open one of the three plaster casts that come with the app: Brutus, the Venus de Milo or the Head of David. SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark, scanned them from its Royal Cast Collection and released them into the public domain (CC0).

The app follows your browser's language (Japanese, English or French); change it in the language menu. In the browser, your work is saved as you go and comes back after a reload.

The screen

• Menu bar: file, edit, object, view, timelapse, navigation, language, window, help.
• Sculpt (left view): your clay. Its toolbar holds the tool selector, the lighting and the view's aids.
• Reference (right view): the model you study, with its own toolbar.
• Panels on the sides, in groups that fold away: tool settings, subdivision, remeshing on the left; reference, alignment, crop, credit on the right. The window menu chooses which groups show.
• Tab hides the panels, Shift Tab the reference view too. W swaps the sides.

Sculpting

Drag on the clay with the left button or the pen. A drag on the clay always sculpts, whatever the navigation style. Pick a tool on the sculpt view's toolbar, with its key, or hold Space over the clay for a pie menu of the tools.

Try them here. Pick a tool or press its key, then drag on the clay. Hold Alt, Ctrl or Shift while you drag.

Modifiers

• Hold Alt for the opposite action, as in the last column. In Blender and Maya style, where Alt moves the view, it's Ctrl.
• Hold Shift to smooth with any tool.
• In ZBrush style, hold Ctrl to paint the mask with any tool, Ctrl Alt to take it away. Ctrl + click on the background inverts the mask, Ctrl + drag on the background clears it (Cmd on a Mac). Masked clay shows darker.

Tool settings

• size and strength: [ and ] change the size, Shift [ ] the strength.
• Pen pressure scales both the strength and the size.
• falloff (smooth, flat or sharp), for each tool, with its curve drawn under the choices. build-up: per stroke or accumulate.
• stabiliser: the brush follows the pointer on a string, for steady lines.
• symmetry x mirrors every stroke across the middle (left–right). It starts off: a study from a reference is rarely symmetric. When it's on, the mirrored brush shows on the clay in grey.

Levels and remeshing

• The clay starts as a sphere with subdivision levels built in. Sculpt the broad forms on a low level and detail on a high one: Shift D goes down a level, D up, Shift U subdivides. The detail you added stays when you change a lower level.
• voxel remesh (Shift R) rebuilds the clay as an even mesh, at the resolution you choose. quad remesh (Shift Q) rebuilds it as quads that follow its shape, from 1,000 to 20,000.
• mesh from reference turns the cropped reference into a rough block of clay to refine — a block-in, not a copy.
• mirror sculpt copies one side onto the other, either way. add chalk dusts the clay light blue; sculpting wipes it, so you see where you've worked.
• Undo Ctrl Z, redo Ctrl Shift Z or Ctrl Y. new sphere starts again.

Moving the view

Choose a style in the navigation menu, so you can keep the hands you learned in other software. The default, ZBrush style, works with only a pen.

In ZBrush style, hold Shift while turning to snap to the front, a side or the top. In ZBrush and Maya style a zoom drag works sideways too. In every style the mouse wheel zooms the view under the pointer.

Switch styles and try each drag below. The line under the view says what the press does.

Brutus, plaster cast after Michelangelo (KAS105) — SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, The Royal Cast Collection — CC0 1.0. Simplified for the web.

Viewpoints

• view › viewpoints, or the numeric keypad: 5 front (again: back), 4 left, 6 right, 8 top, 2 bottom; three-quarter from the menu.
• F frames the sculpt, Home resets the view, in the view under the pointer.
• link cameras (L): the sculpt and the reference turn together.
• Perspective or orthographic, from the view's toolbar.

Blender, Maya and ZBrush are trademarks of their respective owners. Their names only describe the navigation styles.

References

The right view holds the model you study. Drop a file on the window, or use file › import reference….

• Gaussian splats: .ply (3DGS), .splat, .spz. Turn on view-dependent colour for splats that change colour with the side they're seen from.
• Meshes and 3D scans: OBJ, PLY, STL, with their vertex colours
• Images: pan and zoom, double-click to fit

A reference is centred and scaled when it opens, ignoring stray bits around it. In the reference panel, alignment sets its up axis and turns it, crop cuts away the floor and the background of a scan, and credit keeps its title, author, licence and source. The credit shows under the reference view and in every export that shows the reference.

Use references you have the right to use. The three plaster casts that come with SplatStudy are CC0.

Study aids

Each view has its own aids, switched on its toolbar or with a key; Shift + click on a toolbar button switches it in both views.

view › pose timer times sessions and rounds, with a clock at the top right.

Timelapse

Every stroke is recorded with its time. timelapse › watch timelapse shows the sculpture grow from the first sphere.

• Play and pause, speeds ×10, ×60 and ×300, and a scrubber. Pauses longer than two seconds are shortened.
• The replay rebuilds the clay exactly, bit for bit. You can't sculpt while it plays: back to sculpting returns to your clay.
• export › timelapse video…: side by side, stacked or the sculpt alone; 16:9, 1:1 or 9:16; a speed or a length of 15, 30 or 60 seconds; a fixed view or a slow turntable; the elapsed time, a title and a turn at the end if you like. In the browser it's an MP4 video (or PNG images in a zip where the browser can't encode video); the desktop app saves PNG images into a folder.

Scenes and files

• A scene holds the clay, its levels, its whole timelapse, the reference with its alignment and credit, the cameras and the study aids. Save with Ctrl S, open with Ctrl O. A copy without the timelapse is smaller to share.
• file › import mesh… starts the sculpt from a mesh. export writes OBJ (with quads where the clay has them) or STL.
• export › screenshot (Ctrl P) saves both views side by side as a PNG: as on screen, or 16:9, 1:1 or 9:16.

Keyboard shortcuts

The keys with the default ZBrush style. The app lists them in help › keyboard shortcuts, for the style you chose.

On a Mac, Cmd takes the place of Ctrl.