Valence 3D

So it's about six months since I paid £30 GBP for this app. And I still think the overall interface design is very nice for use on an iPad. And I still think it's not of any significant use for anything more than beginner CAD learning and lightweight designs, which for £30 I think isn't very good value. I made it clear in my original review that the problem is mostly about being able to do simple things like unions (i.e. join meshes *without* leaving internal geometry) and differences (e.g. making holes in an object). So you can make some really good looking models that'll impress your granny, but try putting a hole through a cube that pierces two faces and you'll find how limited it is for proper use by engineers. And the previous response to my review from the developer, that I should therefore ask for a refund, shows I may have to wait a long time before my £30 becomes a useful investment.

I really like the app and what you are trying to achieve with it. Being able to 3d model on an ipad is something that I always wanted to do for some game dev on the go, or just for laying down on the couch instead of sitting on a screen with mouse and keyboard. The app it still far from being complete as a software like blender, but I am sure it will get there, and I look forward for it. Please keep going and great work :) PS: is there a link where we can follow the app development and report bugs, wanted features etc?

Edit 1 July: There was another quality-of-life update today, but still no fix/solution for orphaned verts. You can’t model quads when you end up with extra verts all over your model. I really get the feeling that the developer wants to make a great 3D modelling app, but doesn’t recognise which features are important and which can wait. Sadly I’m going to give up on this app and get a refund. I wish the developer the best of luck, and I thank him for his efforts. Edit 26 May: I don’t want to say anything bad about this app because the person making it has done a great job. But the problem with orphaned verts is a real dealbreaker for me. Instead of fixes for core modelling features like this we’re getting interface updates. I really want to see this developer and his app succeed, but honestly it’s starting to look like one of those apps that will always be ‘improved’ but never fixed. Old review: I’ve had Valence for a few weeks now and held off writing a review because I expected the updates to come thick and fast. But the few updates have been focused on an iCloud problem, while some fundamental modelling problems remain untouched. For me, the stray verts should be a priority fix. As soon as you dissolve any edges, you’ll have stray verts left behind which ruins the quadding of your geometry. You can’t even delete/dissolve the verts manually because doing that deletes the edges! There will be a great 3D modelling app here, and I’m aware that it’s being developed by one person. But for a £30 iPad app I’d like to see faster iteration with core functionality being fixed.

I love this app!! I’ve really wanted to get into polygonal modelling for a while and have tried and failed Blender many times. For someone starting off Valence’s interface is very user friendly and not overwhelming. I have run into several glitches as others have noted and already see the need for a boolean and knife tool. That being said, as someone new to polygonal modelling I’m really excited to see how Valence grows and becomes a great app to use.

I love that this is available but I'm yearning for some key features Lots of Must Haves currently missing (or maybe hard to find?) Extrude along global rather than local (normal). There seems to be button for this but it doesn't seem to work as a toggle. Booleans desperately needed for this format. Gizmo prone to disappearing Bevels need to be more configurable in terms of segments. Where is the lighting control? Sorry if I've missed it. A great use case here would be for blocking, and export into procreate for paint over but without control over lighting (?) ...

I really want this app to work but it still seems very buggy often failing to save or export models with out constantly crashing. I hoped to use the app as a sub d / CAD based modelling app that offers something that nomad sculpt does not. I wish the developer the best of luck and hope to see another great 3D app for the iPad. ;-)

This it’s a pretty solid program and I look forward to see its progress. Right now it’s not “fun” to use and I find myself wanting to quit the program due to frustration. It’s clunky in a way that you cannot customize the interface. I am constantly selecting tools from all over, especially the ones I use the most. I would like to move tools around to better fit my work flow or alter the tool bar to a tool window which would have multiple short rows of tools instead of one long one that you have to scroll up to access all the tools. I feel that it takes me longer to model something low poly than it should. Right now I know a big part of it is the learning curve, but the other part is the limitations of the program. I find the gizmo gets in my way when trying to select vertexes. The orbital rotation feels off not sure if it’s reversed or just user error. All in all not bad and can’t wait for future updates.

Keyboard shortcuts for Bluetooth keyboards for iPad/iPhone. (probably should just copy blenders shortcuts.) I'm having problems joining Verts and faces missing a edge or two. I do enjoy the app.

Very good UI, ships with its own renderer similar to Cycles. I’m extremely impressed with just the few minutes I’ve spent with it. Once this app supports booleans and reference images, it will rock for hard-surface blockouts and ideation. Tested a small model and exported to Blender just fine—needed 10x scale and rotate X.

Overall it’s a promising start but the app is plagued with bugs and has plenty of quirks as well as seemingly missing features. I’ve been using Maya and Blender for years and while my expectations were set pretty low, the bar ended up being below them. The good: The interface is clean and as an experienced user of 3D modeling software I did not need to watch any tutorials to figure it out. Most of the basic modeling functions such as extrude, edge cut and mirroring are present. Flipping normals is something I was pleasantly surprised by. Yes you can model on the go and you may even do somewhat complex hard surface pieces with it. A flat fee of 30$ is a good price for when this suite works. The bad: The app crashes on my iPad fairly frequently causing loss of progress and while the auto save feature somewhat helps as each time I lose minutes of progress it eventually adds up. Selecting individual verts with a pencil is incredibly fussy, with a finger, almost impossible. Selecting multiple adjacent verts is unreliable and time consuming. Continuous edge select is incredibly unreliable as it seems to select and deselect on a whim. There doesn’t seem to be any vert welding as far as I could tell and a google search didn’t yield any results. Similarly I was unable to find a way to delete an edge along with the verts on it. I can either delete the edge and the verts, leaving a hole behind, collapse the geo, or delete edge only and then have to perform manual vert cleanup. This wastes time and makes The ugly: The meshes occasionally get corrupted with geo becoming impossible to select and revert. Mesh repair worked once but in most cases it’s a lost cause. Get ready for some frustration and lost work. All in all. This is barebones and I am rather bewildered by the amount of 5 star reviews talking about the app’s potential. Yeah the potential is there but at its current state, this is not a 5 star product. It is also not a 4 star product given how prone it is to corruption and crashes.