Nomad Sculpt is a powerful digital clay modelling and painting studio optimised for Apple Pencil. Its extensive suite of tools enables you to create beautiful works – from fantastical creatures to hyper-realistic sculptures – that exist in 3D space.

What we love: The app is both a fully featured suite helping pro artists to craft without compromise, and a playful, accessible app for newbies to enjoy. Sculpting tools such as Clay, Smooth, Flatten and Mask offer lots of ways to shape and texture materials, and the plentiful paintbrush tools ensure your model shines. Thanks to real-time PBR (physically based rendering), realistic lighting, shadows and reflections react to every stroke. Versatile export tools enable wide compatibility with desktop platforms and help new characters to enter the physical realm via 3D printing – giving your next D&D campaign a major upgrade.

Quick tip: Tap the screen with four fingers to quickly remove all UI elements for an unobstructed view of your model.

Meet the creator: Nomad Sculpt is the handiwork of France-based independent developer Stéphane Ginier. Before building the app, Ginier created SculptGL – an open-source crafting environment that’s still available in web browsers.