Nomad Sculpt, A Review

[TaleSpinner]

It has long been an aspiration of mine to find a method of more easily sculpting digital art on the go. The Cintiq I sculpt on has lots of cords and is rather unwieldy outside of my studio.  I've tried drawing tablets, but the disconnect makes sculpting on them hard.  I tried a Wacom One monitor, which is smaller, lighter, and has about half the cords; but still the setup and break down was cumbersome, and I still needed power. I wanted true mobility.

 

Then I heard about a new (2020) tool for the iPad called Nomad Sculpt.  After doing some research, I was not convinced that it could replace Z-Brush, but I was convinced that I could use it to make parts that I could export to Z-Brush, there-by giving me a mobile platform on which to do 1/2 the work and then put it all together in my studio.  It was also said to be good for doing jewelry sculpting which is typically more simple than minis.

 

Then 2 things happened that changed everything.  First, Apple released iOS 15, which removed the memory limiter that capped any given app at 5GB (or so).  Thus, Nomad could start using all the RAM of the iPad (that which the iOS itself wasn't using anyway).  Second, Apple released the new iPad Pro units with their new, screaming fast M2 chip.  The two largest of these, the 1TB and 2TB, have 16GB RAM!  That means that Nomad could now do sculpts in excess of 40-50 million points!  I think my biggest Z-Brush model ever was 32 million points, and that is a dragon with a rider (coming to Dark Sword next year).

I also spent hours watching YouTube commentary and tutorials on Nomad to ensure that it could do what I wanted it to.  The best out there are by a YouTuber called SouthernGFX.  Check him out if you really want to know more about this tool.  He convinced me that I could do about 80-90% of my work in Nomad, so when the new iPad came out 2 weeks ago, I pulled the trigger and bought the 2TB version and an Apple Pencil.

 

First, this iPad is freaking AMAZING!!! I am finding many other uses for it that I didn't even know I had. I absolutely love it. 😍

Back to Nomad, I bought it ($15; after the price of the iPad, that seemed ridiculously cheap) and started running through the SouthernGFX tutorials.  I didn't want to do the head in the tutorial or the typical skull everyone seems to do when learning, so I went another direction and pounded out an ant head (I have no idea why; it just sort of happened 😄).

 

 

Well, color me impressed.  That took me about 30 minutes, and I was still learning where everything was.  The interface is very well laid out and intuitive.  I am pretty sure the programmer must be a Z-Brush sculptor who decided to reprogram Z-Brush to put everything in in a way that actually makes sense.  Seriously, the learning curve on this software is nothing compared to what one goes through trying to figure out the menu morass that is Z-Brush.  

 

But that was just a simple head; time to see what it can really do, so I sculpted the rest of the ant (obviously, I wasn't concerned at all about casting this):

 

 

 

Each segment is a separate part (subtool in Z-Brush lingo).  Nomad allows you to set up relationship between parts easily in a hierarchy and establish pivot points using the gizmo.  This allows for amazingly easy posing as the parts will move together.

 

So I kept going, posing it, and adding a spear.  I was still only using 1.7 GB of the memory. 

 

 

So I added a basket to it's back and sculpted a ridiculously detailed weave (so much so that it won't fully print on my high-res printer at mini scale).  When all was said and done, it ended up at about 2.1 GB with 13 million vertices. Crazy!  I still had 13.3 GB memory I could have used.  At this point, I was convinced that it is a 90%+ replacement for Z-Brush, at least for the things I sculpt with the way I sculpt (more on that later).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well that was good and fine, but it was still locked into my iPad.  How about export?  Nomad can export to obj and stl (plus another one I hadn't heard of).  I exported it as an obj, and after some finagling and trying to remember passwords and such, got it on my OneDrive.  I imported it into Z-Brush.  It had lost all of the parts, merging everything together, but it was a whole and complete mesh. (In the future, I may export the parts separately; yes Nomad lets you choose and export any part!) 

 

I Dynameshed it and added some texture to the base (I don't have any Alphas setup in Nomad yet).  Then I decimated it as normal, brought it over to Lychee, supported it, and printed it last night.

 

This print's base is 25mm from corner to corner.  (Sorry about the support scars; I haven't sanded them off yet.)

 

 

Nomad Sculpt Pros and Cons:

Pros:
- Instant sculpting with complete freedom from cords, internet, etc...  Sculpt when and where you want, with an open speed of however fast you can open your iPad case (2 secs for me).  It takes me longer to put my art glove on than to start sculpting.

- Easy intuitive interface and good tutorials on YouTube

- Great part menu with part hierarchy and poseable structuring.

- Lots of features already in the tool with more added every year, including: symmetry, local part symmetry, radial symmetry, full masking, trims and splits, subdivision, voxel remeshing (think Dynamesh), decimation, individual part saving, customizable brushes, alphas, a full painting suite with configurable lighting, and so much more. It will honestly be easier to tell you what it can't do in Cons.

-I get MUCH more done.  Because it is so easy to use, anywhere, I am now sculpting at times and places where I used to surf FB or play a stupid game on my phone.  I've added about 10 hours of possible sculpting time to each week that would have been wasted before.

 

Cons:

- Expensive setup: 2TB iPad Pro and Pencil cost me about $2600.  I could have gotten the 1TB version for about $1900, but that extra TB of HD space was too important.  If you go with the 512GB version it is a lot cheaper, but your RAM drops to 8GB and that is not widely advertised by Apple.

- Z-Brush features I use that it doesn't have...yet: Z-modeler and IMM brushes.  I also don't know if it can do the whole simplify, repose, and re-project thing.  I don't use that much.  I would think you could T-sculpt in Nomad then export it into Z-Brush if that workflow is important to you. Personally, I am really missing the IMM brushes.  I hope the developer is working on that.

- It doesn't come with any Alphas, you will have to make them or obtain them.  They are easy to make in Procreate on the iPad (SouthernGFX has a tutorial).

 

Well, that is it.  Great tool and well worth the cost IMHO.  I will easily pay for its cost in the upcoming year in the extra sculpts I get done during my lunches at work or when talking to my wife as she gets ready for bed at night.

 

[chaosscorpion]

Talespinner,

 

Wow!  What great info to have if I sculpted I would probably be placing an order right now.

 

 

[TaleSpinner]

The upside is that if you have a 3D printer and an iPad or Android Tablet. you can now make stuff for $15, without spending $900 for Z-Brush.  Even a regular iPad or tablet will make small things and parts.  

[TaleSpinner]

Or, more to the point, you can import an STL that you bought and make alterations/customizations and then export it to your printer.

 

[MojoBob]

I'm not an Apple kind of guy, but I'm glad to know that an affordable, capable tool like this is out there.

I've tinkered with Z-Brush (and its ancestors) but have always been too frustrated with the weird UI decisions the designers made, and nowadays I stick pretty much exclusively with Blender.

[Ratmaster2000]

Sorry I am late to the discussion, just found out this exists from Uncle Jessy on Youtube. I just have a Apple iPad 10.2 in. 128GB with Wi-Fi (7th Gen) and apple pencil, do you think this would be good enough? I already have procreate and it runs pretty well. I have seen comments (on nomads forum in fact) that the newest version is killing battery power and heating up ipads, have you experienced that @TaleSpinner. For $15 bucks I guess I can't go wrong:)

 

[TaleSpinner]

19 hours ago, Ratmaster2000 said:

Sorry I am late to the discussion, just found out this exists from Uncle Jessy on Youtube. I just have a Apple iPad 10.2 in. 128GB with Wi-Fi (7th Gen) and apple pencil, do you think this would be good enough? I already have procreate and it runs pretty well. I have seen comments (on nomads forum in fact) that the newest version is killing battery power and heating up ipads, have you experienced that @TaleSpinner. For $15 bucks I guess I can't go wrong:)

 

 

Looks like you have 3 GB RAM on that iPad.  It will run Nomad, but you will be limited to more simple. or smaller sculpts and you will have to watch your vertices counts closer.

I have not upgraded to the new version yet.  I always wait a few months to see what pain others have before I upgrade.  Because I use it for client work, I can't afford to be taken down by a bad release.

[PaganMegan]

A year later, how are you liking it?

[TaleSpinner]

On 9/6/2023 at 10:21 PM, PaganMegan said:

A year later, how are you liking it?

Well, I just taught a class on it at ReaperCon, so I'd say I like it very much. 😁  I have moved all of my sculpting to it now, save for a few minor things that I do in ZBrush at the end of a sculpt (I could do these in Nomad, but need to use the PC anyway to print the models, so I might as well do the decimation with the routines I have set up in ZB). 
 

It was great using it at my artist station at ReaperCon.  I used to need to carry and setup my laptop, Cintiq, display monitor, keypad, and all the cords.  This took up most of my allotted space.  This year, I just had my iPad and a portable monitor (so others could see what I was doing).  That's it.  And I could also easily take the iPad with me when I wasn't there, simply by disconnecting the monitor/charge cord from it.  Absolute heaven!

 

I have now learned how to make most of the brushes I was missing, with the exception of the rotational, multi model IMM brush that I use for pebbled scales.  That's it, everything else in my tool box is now there and I am doing everything in Nomad. 

 

I might have to get a game or something so my poor Alienware doesn't get lonely in the basement by itself.

[Cygnwulf]

So, I found the issue that I was having with the mask last week in the class. In the gesture settings for Nomad, there's a toggle setting for 'One Tap Shortcuts' under the mask settings, I turned that on and now the tap shortcuts you showed for the mask are working 

 

[TaleSpinner]

Great!

 

I still have so much to learn about this program.  I just figured out some stuff about the tool settings and tweaked my Sharp Crease tool into something that acts almost exactly like Orb Crack in ZBrush.  I'm super pumped about that.

[TaleSpinner]

I just found something amazing in Nomad; it may not sound like much, unless you've sculpted in ZB a lot.  In Nomad you can join a bunch of parts and they become one part for the sake of sculpting on them, moving them, sizing, etc...   Then, you can separate them and they go back to being their original parts. They only truly join together when you Voxel Merge them into a unified mesh.  This has always been a PITA in ZBrush; in Nomad is is a simple couple of clicks.  The workflow implications are astounding.  I'm still thinking of new and exciting ways I can use this in my processes.  

[chaosscorpion]

Love you enthusiasm Andy!