Chisel

Version history for Chisel.

3.0.0

The viewport renderer is rebuilt from the ground up. Per-frame tile building, primitive culling, and tape pruning now run as GPU compute passes; navigation and refinement are decoupled; and the per-chain limits double. Also new: F12 rendering, Mirror Object, an exact depth-curve primitive, and a big round of modifier and menu UX.

New

  • F12 rendering — render the SDF scene through the active camera to the Render Result
  • Mirror Object — mirror a shape across any other object, not just its own origin; moving the mirror object updates the result live
  • Mirror across the active object — mirror all selected shapes across the active one in a single step
  • Depth curves rebuilt — the Curve primitive hugs the drawn Bezier exactly: circles are exact, sharp corners stay sharp, concave spans stay smooth
  • Pinned modifiers — pin a modifier to keep it at the bottom of the stack; new modifiers insert above the pins
  • Boolean / Displace target picker — a native object search field for picking the target
  • Ctrl + D Chisel duplicate — duplicates a shape together with its modifier graph (group cuts stay group cuts)
  • Apply Modifiers — convert to mesh and clean up the source shapes in one click
  • Cycle hotkeys[ / ] cycle the primitive type, ; / ' cycle the modifier operation (Chisel tool only)
  • RMB context menu overhaul — Type picker, Swap Modifier, modal-adjust shortcuts, plus copy / duplicate / snap / parent / collection entries
  • Pie menu dual buttons — click adds a primitive or modifier, Shift + click swaps it on everything selected
  • Show Bounds for non-rendered SDF helpers, plus a Bounds outline mode
  • Render flag decoupled from viewport display — hide a shape from the render without hiding it in the viewport
  • Debug preferences — diagnostics report, pipeline-cache tools, and a Verbose Logging toggle (console is quiet by default now)
  • Tool tooltip shows the addon version and the full hotkey list

Performance

  • GPU compute pipeline — tile binning, per-tile primitive masks, interval pruning, and tape compaction all happen on the GPU; the CPU no longer touches per-tile work
  • Two-state render loop — navigation draws synchronously at adaptive resolution while the full-quality frame settles on a worker and lands when ready
  • Dynamic Resolution — automatically scales navigation resolution to hold a target FPS (Performance panel)
  • Per-chain limits doubled — 256 primitives and 512 instructions per chain
  • Per-chain occupancy grids skip empty space (replaces the scene-wide grid)
  • Clean-frame caching — camera-only frames reuse tiles, tapes, and materials; edits invalidate just the touched object or material instead of the whole scene
  • Coalesced per-primitive GPU loads in the chain interpreter (~10% faster march)
  • Front-to-back tile ordering and per-chain step budgets tiered by primitive count
  • Apple Silicon — the new renderer runs natively on Metal

Fixed

  • Convert cutting flat faces through chamfered booleans
  • Convert clipping chamfer-smooth blends at the mesh boundary; converted normals now match the rendered surface
  • Bake producing all-black maps for boolean objects; standalone bakes rendering the wrong output map
  • Twist / Bend mismatch between the viewport and the converted mesh
  • Boolean-seam noise and black glitches on multi-chain scenes, especially at a distance
  • Curve clipping when rotated or far from the origin, blend gaps, navigation holes, and broken normals
  • Crash on Ctrl + D duplicate (two separate causes, both fixed)
  • Crash on undo from a stale handler reference
  • Veil no longer hides the objects you currently have selected
  • The Q pie menu only opens inside the Chisel tool; Alt + Q still works everywhere
  • Convert to Mesh from the RMB menu now opens its options dialog
  • Cone / Trapezoid proxy mesh not updating on cap changes or type switches

Compatibility

  • Blender 4.5.7+ and 5.x — wheels for Python 3.11 and 3.13, on Windows, Linux, and macOS (Apple Silicon)
  • Existing 2.x scenes load unchanged
  • Depth curves pick up the rebuilt SDF automatically — shapes now follow the drawn curve exactly, so loosely-drawn curves may fill out slightly at the corners
  • Addon / wheel mismatch is now detected by a build-hash handshake — a stale wheel shows a “rebuild wheels” notice instead of failing silently

1.2.0

New

  • Array modifier — repeat shapes along an offset, with smooth blending between copies
  • Circle Array modifier — repeat radially around X / Y / Z
  • Curve Tube primitive — 3D Bezier sweep with per-point radius (Alt + S)
  • Curve Revolve primitive — sweep a 2D profile around an axis
  • N-sided prism (3, 5, 6, 8) with independent bevel and cap rounding
  • Trapezoid with independent bevel and cap rounding
  • Five rounding / blending profiles — Round, Sharp, Soft, Tight, Chamfer
  • Mirror Smooth modal in the pie menu
  • SDF custom normals option in the convert-to-mesh operator
  • Auto-expand bounding box — replaces the old manual-padding setting
  • Built-in matcaps with color tint
  • Custom primitive icons in the pie and add menus
  • Modifier panel toolbar — add, remove, and reorder modifiers without leaving the panel
  • Viewport render resolution setting
  • Progressive settled rendering — sharper frames once the viewport stops moving
  • Blender 4.5 / EEVEE Next compatibility

Performance

  • Faster camera orbit and panning
  • Smoother viewport rotation across dense scenes
  • Static-frame matrix caching to avoid redundant work

Fixed

  • Clean operator works on any SDF object, not just parented children
  • Curve boolean rendering and cache refreshes correctly
  • Curve Revolve profile no longer creates negative-radius artifacts when crossing the axis
  • Bake no longer produces black images on certain GPU drivers
  • Pie menu modifier rows no longer overlap
  • Prism bevel and cap match between viewport and mesh converter
  • Prism chamfer blends and ray-march overshoot corrections
  • First-frame rotation stutter and undo-related crashes
  • Zero-rounding shapes render cleanly; cylinder rim normals are smooth
  • Torus rebuilds correctly after editing minor radius
  • Adaptive mesh refinement no longer leaves holes
  • Flat shading after hide/unhide / undo is gone
  • Broken chains are skipped instead of flat-shaded
  • Gamma correction in the bake system is version-aware
  • macOS / Metal compatibility

1.0.3

Fixed

  • macOS / Metal backend compatibility

1.0.2

Fixed

  • Orthographic rendering — hit condition, depth mapping, and LOD

1.0.1

New

  • Progressive shader initialization with UI status warnings

Fixed

  • OpenGL compatibility for boolean chain rendering

1.0.0

  • Initial release
  • 9 SDF primitives: Sphere, Box, Cylinder, Cone, Torus, Capsule, Prism, Trapezoid, Curve
  • Boolean operations: Difference, Union, Intersect with 3 blend profiles
  • Solidify and Mirror modifiers
  • Edge rounding with Sphere, Smooth, and Linear profiles
  • Ray-marching render engine with matcap shading
  • Adaptive quality and BVH acceleration
  • Mesh conversion: Dual Contouring, Marching Cubes
  • Map baking: Normal, Height, Mask
  • Pie menu for quick access to all operations