---
title: Chisel
order: 1
aliases:
  - index
---

Chisel turns Blender into a real-time SDF modeling studio. Carve with math, not meshes — every surface is mathematically smooth, every boolean blends like molten metal, and the ray-marched viewport shows the final result as you sculpt.

## First-run shader compilation

The first time you enable the Chisel render engine in a session, the GPU compiles the ray-marching pipelines on the fly. **Expect a noticeable pause on the first viewport frame** — typically a couple of seconds on Vulkan, longer on OpenGL. Compilation runs in parallel and is non-blocking, but the viewport will look empty until the first variant is ready.

A few things to know:

- **It's a one-time cost per session.** Subsequent renders use the cached pipeline. The compiled binaries are also persisted to disk, so warm starts after the first run are much faster.
- **Vulkan is dramatically faster than OpenGL.** If your status bar shows the OpenGL backend, switch to Vulkan in Blender's preferences (`Edit → Preferences → System → Backend`) for a 5–10× compile and runtime speedup.
- **The pie menu warns you.** When you press `Q` before shaders are ready, the menu shows *"Shaders not compiled, first run may take longer"* — and if you are on the OpenGL backend, *"OpenGL backend, Vulkan is much faster"*.

If you ever see flat shading, blank silhouettes, or stalls on the first interaction with a new feature (booleans, mirrors, curve primitives), it's almost always shader compilation finishing in the background. Wait a few seconds and the viewport will catch up.

## Why SDFs?

Traditional mesh modeling trades resolution for smoothness. SDFs don't trade — they compute. A sphere stays spherical at any scale, a blend stays blended through every boolean in the stack, and a rounded corner is a math constant, not a subdivision setting. Production-ready surfaces, no topology headaches.

## What's new in v3 (3.0.0)

- **GPU compute renderer** — tile binning, primitive culling and tape pruning all run as GPU compute passes; 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 background worker and lands when ready
- **Dynamic Resolution** — automatically scales navigation resolution to hold a target FPS (Performance panel)
- **F12 rendering** — render the SDF scene through the active camera straight 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
- **Exact depth curves** — the Curve primitive now hugs the drawn Bezier exactly: circles stay circular, 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
- **RMB menu overhaul** — Type picker, Swap Modifier, modal-adjust shortcuts, plus copy / duplicate / snap / parent / collection entries
- **`Ctrl + D` Chisel duplicate** — clone 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
- **Per-chain limits doubled** — 256 primitives and 512 instructions per chain
- **Apple Silicon native** — the new renderer runs on Metal via the arm64 build

For a complete list, see the [changelog](changelog.md).

## Where to start

- [Getting Started](getting-started/index.md) — install Chisel, system requirements, first launch
- [Primitives](primitives/index.md) — every SDF shape and its parameters
- [Modifiers](modifiers/index.md) — booleans, mirror, array, emboss, twist, bend, solidify
- [Rounding & Blending](rounding-and-blending/index.md) — the five profiles and when to use each
- [Materials](materials/index.md) — per-object color and the Chisel node editor
- [Render Engine](render-engine/index.md) — viewport quality, matcap, proxy mesh, baking
- [Interface](interface/index.md) — panels, pie menu, draw tool, gizmos
- [Operations](operations/index.md) — convert to mesh, rebuild, clean, veil