FORGER

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

- Mike Griggs

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.