Overview
What PaintClay does
Each brush stroke lays down a trail of small shapes, called SubGeo: spheres, boxes, tori or tets. Every stroke is also an editable Bezier spline, and moving the spline moves its shapes, so a form stays easy to reshape long after you painted it.
Meshing is a separate step you can re-run at any time: show dots while you work, the shapes themselves, or a smooth blob mesh built with OpenVDB.
- What it is
- Geometry object (Create > Geometry > Machine3D)
- 3ds Max
- 3ds Max 2025 and 2027
- Works with
- Nothing extra. OpenVDB is built in.
- License
- One seat per workstation. Render nodes free.
Features
Features
Paint SubGeo
Brush shapes: Sphere, Box, Torus and Tet.
Strokes are splines
Edit at SubGeo, Vertex, Segment or Spline level, just like an Editable Spline.
Snap and align
Snap stroke ends onto existing SubGeo and align SubGeo to the spline.
Build-up
New strokes sit on the surface of earlier ones, so forms grow outward.
Three mesh modes
Dots, Shapes, or Blob Mesh (VDB).
Soft Selection
Move groups of SubGeo with a smooth falloff.
Per-shape control
Set Shape, rotate and scale individual SubGeo.
Presets
User and Studio Settings presets.
PaintClay is coming soon
Want to know when it launches? Drop us a line.
Plugins and tools for 3ds Max, built and used in production.
Free tools
© 2026 Machine3D. All rights reserved. 3ds Max is a trademark of Autodesk, Inc.