Chisel

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 v4 (4.0.0)

Version 4 is about two things: bringing your own meshes into Chisel, and making heavy scenes feel light. Editing stays smooth because Chisel only recomputes the part of a shape you actually touched — and macOS finally gets every speed-up Windows and Linux have.

• Mesh to SDF — use any mesh object as an SDF shape. Chisel bakes it to a signed-distance grid and it composes with booleans, blends and modifiers like any native primitive
• Ngon primitive — an editable extruded polygon with viewport vertex dots: drag points, insert on edges, delete with X, and bevel each corner independently with all five profiles
• Oblong primitive — a box with bevel-rounded vertical edges and rounded caps, filling the gap between box, cylinder and sphere in one shape
• Bisect modifier — cut a shape with a plane from a custom location/normal, another object’s frame, or a polyline fence drawn straight in the viewport
• Tool modes — the Chisel tool’s LMB now switches between Select, Create and Bisect, with Blender’s own selection tools driving Select mode
• Files with mesh shapes open instantly — the baked result is saved inside the .blend, so reopening skips the wait
• Dragging no longer hitches — only the region you edited is recalculated, and it happens in the background
• Small details hold up inside big objects — fine features get extra resolution automatically, without paying for it everywhere
• Up to 30× faster on Apple Silicon — plus every editing speed-up Windows and Linux already had
• No more caps on shaping values — rounding, bevel, blend, smooth and thickness can go past where the sliders stop

For a complete list, see the changelog.

Where to start

• Getting Started — install Chisel, system requirements, first launch
• Primitives — every SDF shape and its parameters
• Modifiers — booleans, mirror, bisect, array, emboss, twist, bend, solidify
• Rounding & Blending — the five profiles and when to use each
• Materials — per-object color and the Chisel node editor
• Render Engine — viewport quality, matcap, proxy mesh, baking
• Interface — panels, pie menu, active tool, gizmos
• Operations — convert to mesh, rebuild, clean, veil