Clayable

What it is

Clayable is a 3D sculpting studio in a browser tab: a pale pink sphere of clay in a dark room, six tools down the left (push, pull, smooth, pick, inflate, paint), color swatches on the right, and sliders for brush radius and intensity along the bottom. A counter in the corner tells you how many vertices and faces the lump has.

How to play

A welcome card explains the controls. On a desktop you hold shift and drag on the clay to sculpt, drag on the background to turn it, and scroll to zoom. On a phone you drag directly on the clay. The first shift-drag raises a bump at once, and undo, redo and a replay button sit in the same bottom bar. The menu bar has file (new clay, share link, export .obj and .stl), material, environment, base, camera and effects, help and tutorials. A feed button opens a dashboard of other people's sculpts.

What makes it different

Most browser clay toys stop at smearing a blob around. This one behaves like a cut-down desktop sculpting app: the mesh has real resolution, the site says pressing f refines it further, and the file menu exports formats a 3D printer can read. The site also lists a magic wand that molds clay from a picture, jiggle physics you can toggle, and materials like wood, glass and gold. A saved indicator lights after your first stroke, and the file menu has export and import for ownership keys.

Why it is on Bored

Ten minutes of pulling noses out of a sphere is a complete activity, and the export menu means the nose can leave the browser as a file a 3D printer can read. Where most browser clay toys stop at smearing a blob around, this one gives your cursor a third dimension and behaves like a cut-down desktop sculpting app, with real mesh resolution, undo, redo and a replay. It is for anyone who has wanted to sculpt without clearing a table first.

Tips

• Rotate first, then sculpt, so you can see the side you are pushing
• Radius down for detail, intensity down for control
• Smooth is the eraser, use it more than feels natural
• Export .obj before you reset if you like what you made

FAQ