Valence 3D: A New 3D Modeling App That’s Off to a Promising Start

Finally a proper 3D modeling app for the iPad!

A few months ago, software developer Hi-Rez, Inc. launched Valence (a new 3D modeling app for the iPad and iPhone) on the App Store.  Valence is one of the first feature-rich 3D modeling-focused apps to come to the iPad.  We’ve had very good 3D sculpting apps like Nomad Sculpt on the iPad for years, but nobody seemed to deliver a similarly great 3D modeling focused experience to the iPad (that wasn’t a CAD app like Shapr3D).  When I first began my adventures in 3D modeling and sculpting, I started with Nomad Sculpt.  For sculpting this is great, and I highly recommend Nomad Sculpt as an amazing 3D sculpting app for a very good value.  But for modeling, it took several tedious workarounds to get the functionality out of it that I wanted.  Nomad Sculpt is very clearly a sculpting focused app (it’s literally in the name), but I found the workarounds and extra effort required to be worth it, if for nothing else, to consolidate my workflow on my iPad, and to avoid the complexity of desktop modeling apps that were far more daunting to master.  What I really wanted was a 3D modeling app that would provide the functionality I wanted, on the device I wanted, and with an intuitive UI design like Nomad Sculpt’s.  Valence mostly delivers all of those things.

Below I will share my experience and thoughts about using this app, and I will also share some insights I received from the owner/operator of Hi-Rez, Inc Reza Ali, and some of his vision and plans for the future of Valence 3D.