A creature created with Nomad by Glen Southern. The new desktop edition of the formerly mobile-only digital sculpting app is now available in free public beta.

Hexanomad – aka developer Stéphane Ginier – has released the new desktop edition of Nomad, its popular digital sculpting app for iPads and Android tablets, in free public beta.

Beta builds are currently available for Windows and macOS, although they currently only include a limited range of tools from the mobile edition.

First released in 2020, Nomad – also often known as Nomad Sculpt – is a popular digital sculpting app for iPads and Android tablets.

It has a familiar set of sculpting brushes, including Clay, Crease, Move, Flatten and Smooth, with support for falloff, alphas and masking.

A dynamic tessellation system, similar to those of desktop tools like ZBrush, automatically changes 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, or switch manually between different levels of resolution.

Nomad features a PBR vertex paint system, making it possible to rough out surface colours; and built-in lighting and post-processing options for viewing models in context.

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

Completed sculpts can be exported in FBX, OBJ, glTF/GLB, PLY and STL format.

Nomad already has a web demo version, which makes it possible to test the app inside a web browser, but the new beta answers long-standing user requests for a native desktop version.

It’s still very early in development, so it only features a limited range of tools from the mobile edition – the initial release was limited to the Clay and Move tools – and has known issues with graphics tablets, but new builds are being released regularly.

Ginier has stated that his aim is to make the desktop edition “identical to the mobile versions”.

The desktop version should also support Quad Remesher, Exoside’s auto retopology system, which is available as an in-app purchase inside the iPad edition.

You can follow development in the -beta-desktop channel of the Nomad Sculpt Discord server.

The desktop edition of Nomad is currently in free public beta for Windows 10+ and macOS 12.0+. Beta builds do not expire. Stéphane Ginier hasn’t announced a final release date or price yet.

The mobile edition of Nomad is available for iOS/iPadOS 15.0+ and Android 6.0+. It costs $19.99.

Read more about Nomad on the product website

Follow the progress of the desktop edition on the Discord server

Download the latest beta builds of the desktop edition of Nomad

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