i’ve loved modeling ever since i started learning blender seven years ago. i model almost every day, for work and for fun. somewhere along the way i started wishing i could pick and choose the best parts of all the software and games i love, like blender, zbrush, animal crossing new horizons, flipnote studio’s paint, minecraft, and substance designer, and condense them down into one admittedly not-so-simple app.

i went looking for a touch-first low-poly modeler with the kind of creative constraints that make me feel artistically safe, while still having everything i’d need to actually finish a model for a game or a diorama. nothing felt right. i wished there was something like animal crossing, but a place where we could all share our designs and build our own little rooms and spaces and stories, like picking miniatures off a shelf and borrowing them for our dollhouses. and i kept thinking about how sometimes i just need to model and texture one small thing for a game, and wondered if i could do it without sitting at my desk opening and closing five programs.

i wanted something in between, mostly for myself, and figured other people probably wanted it too.

ünflat is a touch-first low-poly modeler. you start by dropping shapes (cubes, spheres, cylinders and a bunch more), and they snap together as you go. then you grab a ring around a part and nudge it wider or thinner to shape it, pull faces to grow new shapes out of it, slice and chop it, and paint it, by hand or with your own photos. when it’s done you can export a real .glb you can bring straight into blender, unity, godot, or unreal, or a sprite sheet, an .stl for 3d printing, or roblox clothes and accessories. it runs on tablets and phones (android and iOS), so the whole thing happens on the couch or in line at the DMV. the low-poly look is on purpose; high-res work on a screen this size just looks bad, and the chunky style is the point anyway.

the things you make are called figs. the name’s the pitch too. the umlaut makes Ü look like a word from a language you don’t speak, and then it clicks: un-flat. and everything you make gets rendered in one of four styles: handheld (a nintendo ds look), lofi (a psx look), flat (cartoon shading), and pixel, so your figs come out looking like toybox lofi instead of a flat grey blob.

it’s for people who want to make their own little diorama: model it, paint and texture it, and then not just share it, but pull other people’s figs into their own library and build whole scenes out of them, all in that same toybox style. there are design challenges and guided learn cards too, so you can see everyone’s take on the same prompt and add those figs to your library as well. and on the game dev side, it’s for people who want to handcraft simple low-poly models for their games and export a textured model straight into whatever engine they’re using.

what’s in it now

• modeling: drop shapes, shape them with rings, pull and push faces, slice, chop, and mirror
• paint mode: brushes, fill, patterns, glow, shiny and metal, and your own photos as textures
• the pattern studio, for making your own tiling patterns and photo textures
• scenes: hills, water, roads, buildings you draw on a map with doors, windows and roofs, scattered plants and rocks, skies, moods, and weather
• animate: rig a fig, then give it poses, emotes, and walk cycles, and send it walking along a route in a scene
• the camera: photos, gifs, videos, and little clips with music and words
• learn cards and design challenges, so you learn by making instead of reading
• the community: share, remix, applause, and stars
• exports: .glb, sprite sheets, .stl, AR, and roblox clothes and accessories
• the four looks: handheld, lofi, flat, and pixel

for roblox

• classic clothes: paint shirts, pants, and t-shirts right on roblox’s templates, try them on a 3d mannequin, and send them straight to your roblox account
• accessories: model a hat or a backpack (anything that fits a roblox attachment slot) and build it in studio with the free ünflat plugin
• game props: bring any fig into your game, with moves and poses players set off by walking up to it
• buildings: every building you draw in a scene can go into your game as its own walk-in model
• moving figs: figs with move sets (idle, walk, run) come into studio with every set
• and coming soon: the ünflat obby

what’s next

• the iOS and iPadOS launch (it’s in review; android is out now)
• more design challenges and kits