Kanova

Foundry

Released: Apr 16, 2018
Platforms: Windows
Last updated: 04 Sep 2026, 16:07 GMT

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15 posts

24 Dec 2018Developer post
Kanova 1.0v1b8 is out!
Just in time for the holidays, here's a new and improved version of Kanova for you! This version introduces the new Copy To Clay feature which lets you convert a reference model into something you can sculpt. If you want to bring in a base model to start your sculpts from, this f
Just in time for the holidays, here's a new and improved version of Kanova for you!
This version introduces the new Copy To Clay feature which lets you convert a reference model into something you can sculpt. If you want to bring in a base model to start your sculpts from, this for you. You can also use it as a way to create custom brushes in other packages and bring them into Kanova.
The full release notes are below. Let us know what you think in the discussion forums. We hope you enjoy it!
New features
Copy to Clay

Convert a reference model into a sculptable layer.
Select a reference model layer, then click the Copy To Clay button in the Layers panel. You will see some options; once you’ve set those, press the Copy To Clay button again to start the process. The options are:

Size % How much of the sculpting area the converted model should occupy.
Resolution The maximum subdivision level for the converted model.
Coarseness How coarsely or finely details will be captured relative to the resolution.
Inside Threshold Threshold used by our inside/outside calculation to determine whether a sample point is inside or outside the model. Any value higher than 1.0 will work for a well-formed input mesh. If your input mesh has unclosed areas or self-intersections, setting this to a higher value may produce a more accurate result.
Shell Only If checked, generate a “shell” instead of a solid model. This produces clay only within a small radius of the input triangles, so your converted model will be hollow. It is faster than generating a solid model and doesn’t have any problems with unclosed areas or self-intersections.
Shell Thickness The distance from a triangle that we consider to be “inside” the shell. A low value will give output which looks very close to the original model but may have problems with thin areas, whereas a high value will make the output look inflated.
While copying to clay, you will see a progress bar. You can cancel the operation by clicking the Cancel button to the right of the progress bar, or by pressing the Esc key.
When copying to clay is complete, the original reference model will be hidden and the new clay copy of it will automatically be selected.
Change the resolution of an existing layer

Select a sculptable layer and click the “Change Res” button in the Layers panel. You’ll see some options; once you’ve set them, press the Change Res button again to start the process.
One of the options is a Resample check box. This only applies when you’re increasing the resolution. When you are, then if this button is checked Kanova will attempt to capture more detail by subdividing the model where necessary.
You can cancel this by either pressing the Esc key or clicking the Cancel button on the right hand side of the progress bar.
Other features

When loading a reference model, you can choose whether to put all the geometry onto a single layer or on a separate layer for each material/group.
Exit Kanova from VR
Removed features
You can no longer specify a file to load on the command line. This causing problems when running Kanova through some external validation tools. We don't think any of you were using that feature, but if you were and would like it back please let us know.
Changes

The “lights follow camera” option is now on by default.
Bug fixes

Fixed a crash when changing layers after undoing. Fixed a case where Kanova could get stuck continually switching back and forth between layers, especially on larger models.
The “reset layer” button wasn’t working correctly for reference model & reference image layers.
If Kanova is launched from the command prompt, don’t automatically close the command prompt window.
By the way, if you're wondering what happened to the 1.0v1b7 release: there never was one. We were so excited about this release we incremented the version number twice! :-)
Original post
07 Sep 2018Developer post
Kanova 1.0v1b6 released!
We have a brand new early access version of Kanova for you to play with this weekend with loads of features and improvements including the beginning of our kitbashing feature-set. The changes are as follows below: New features Custom brushes! You can copy a layer that you’ve scul
We have a brand new early access version of Kanova for you to play with this weekend with loads of features and improvements including the beginning of our kitbashing feature-set.
The changes are as follows below:
New features
Custom brushes!
You can copy a layer that you’ve sculpted to use as a brush right now.
You can save a layer as a brush file.
There is a new custom brush browser:
On the desktop, go to the View > Panels menu and choose Brushes to show it. Double click on a brush icon to activate it or a folder icon to change into that folder.
In VR this is on a new Brushes tab. Single click on a brush icon to activate it or a folder icon to change into that folder.
Saved brushes have the extension .kbrush
You can add a new brush to your collection by copying the .kbrush file into your Documents/Kanova/Brushes folder.
Custom brushes are suitable for stamping at the moment but performance is not yet good enough to use them for a continuous stroke.
The default location for all per-user Kanova content is now your Documents/Kanova directory.
tunables.ini now lives in this folder. If you had a custom tunables.ini file before, you must move it into Documents/Kanova or it will be ignored.
There are separate subdirectories for sculpts, brushes, reference models, reference images, shaders, etc.
You can add custom shaders by dropping them into Documents/Kanova/Shaders. If you had any custom shaders before, you must move them into Documents/Kanova or they will not be detected.
You can add custom brushes by dropping a .kbrush file into Documents/Kanova/Brushes.
Thumbnail image for your scene
You can capture a thumbnail image for your scene. Go to the Edit menu and choose Capture Thumbnail.
When you save your scene after capturing a thumbnail, the thumbnail will be embedded in the .dfm file.
The file browsers have been modified to display these thumbnails when available.
You can enter a hex value for a color:
Click on the label which shows the hex value of the current color & it will change into an editable field. Type in a value then press Enter or Return to accept it; press Esc or move input focus out of the field to cancel.
You can type in hex values of the form #rgb, #rrggbb, #rrrgggbbb, #rrrrggggbbbb. Hex values must always start with a ‘#’.
You can also type in color names, like “white”, “cyan”, “silver”, “red”, etc. The full list of accepted names is here: https://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/types.html#ColorKeywords Color names and hex values are case-insensitive.
ADF cleanup improvements:
Cleanup now runs automatically during idle time; you can interrupt it at any time to start a new stroke or perform some other action.
Just-in-time cleanup is done automatically where necessary during a stroke.
Idle-time cleanup and just-in-time cleanup are both disabled by default for now because we’re still working on some performance issues. They can be enabled under the debug menu.
Removed the old options for different cleanup types (Manual, Postprocess or Just-In-Time).
Removed functionality
You can no longer save in older versions of Kanova’s file format.
You can now only save in v8 of the file format, which is the latest at time of writing. This uses a lot less disk space than earlier versions and supports all of Kanova’s current features.
You can still load files in older versions of the file format. You will not lose any of your sculpts!
If you re-save an older file, it will be saved in the latest version of the file format - and it will almost certainly get a lot smaller as a result.
Bug fixes
ADF cleanup works with all meshing algorithms now; previously it only worked with DF3DMesh.
More accurate tracking of whether the file has been modified or not:
Previously, undoing back to the last point where the file was saved would still show the file as modified.
The current file would sometimes be shown as modified even if it hadn’t been changed since it was loaded or created.
Kanova wasn’t exiting cleanly from SteamVR
After exiting, Steam still showed Kanova as running. You had to exit from SteamVR as well before you could restart Kanova.
If you used a keyboard shortcut involving the Ctrl key which popped up a dialog (e.g. Ctrl+O to open a file), it would toggle the Erase modifier.
If you used a keyboard shortcut involving the Shift key which popped up a dialog (e.g. Ctrl+Shift+A for “save as…”), your current brush would be switched to the Smooth tool.
Crash when loading an OBJ file as a reference model if the OBJ file doesn’t contain vertex normals and at least one of vertex colors or UVs.
If the filename entered into a save dialog did not have an extension, no default extension was being added. This affected saving a Kanova scene, exporting a scene and saving a screenshot.
Known bugs
Some older files no longer load correctly, they appear to have chunks missing. You should not resave over any files where you notice this problem. Any files created with 1.0v1b3 or later should be unaffected.
Original post
06 Sep 2018Developer post
Kanova Live Stream #7 Turtle pt. 2 and Kitbashing Preview!
Kanova has been developing beautifully over the past few weeks and Foundry has some big updates to share. Join us Friday, September 7th at 12:00 PM PST for the second half of the “Alligator Snapping Turtle” timelapse, a kitbashing feature-preview"woohoo!" and a short QA session w
20 Aug 2018Developer post
Foundry's Kanova | Live Stream 6, 'Alligator Snapping Turtle and Siggraph Wrapup'
Kanova is improving by leaps and bounds! Last week Foundry released improvements to B5 including the following: Join us at 12:00 PM PST for a timelapse of the latest development sculpt, an alligator snapping turtle and a discussion of all the great stuff we saw at Siggraph 2018.
03 Aug 2018Developer post
Kanova 1.0v1b5
Kanova 1.0v1b5 is now live! The big change in this version is a dockable UI for desktop. The tabs we had in previous versions are now all separately dockable panels (in fact some of them have been split into several dockable panels). The main advantage to this is that you can kee
Kanova 1.0v1b5 is now live!
The big change in this version is a dockable UI for desktop. The tabs we had in previous versions are now all separately dockable panels (in fact some of them have been split into several dockable panels). The main advantage to this is that you can keep several of the panels visible at once so that you don't need to keep tabbing back and forth while sculpting. It gives you a lot of freedom to find a layout you're comfortable with; and however you arrange the panels, Kanova will remember the layout next time you start it up.
Besides that there's another big memory saving when loading files that were created in older versions of Kanova (b2 and earlier); and some improvements to do with vertex-colored models. There are also some bug fixes. The full release notes are below.
We're looking forward to hearing what you think!
New features

Dockable widgets for the desktop!

Each of our old tabs is now a separately dockable panel (in some cases, e.g. the Scene tab, it’s been split into several separate panels). The panels can be freely docked along any edge of the screen, popped up in a separate window, or - if you like - grouped together as tabs.
For example you can have the sculpting tools, layers and material panes all visible at the same time so there’s no need to switch back and forth between them while sculpting.
The View menu lists the panels and lets you toggle them on or off, so you can easily hide the things you don’t use regularly.
The position, size and hidden/shown state of each panel is saved on exit, so they’ll come back exactly where you left them next time you launch Kanova.
Remove unnecessary data at load time

Sculpts done with versions of Kanova prior to b3 could end up keeping a lot of data in memory (and on disk) for empty regions of space. We now detect and remove this unnecessary data at load time.
For sculpts created in Kanova 1.0v1b2 and earlier, this can potentially give a very large memory saving (in one test model, it reduced the memory usage by 3 GB!!), however it won’t have any effect on sculpts created with Kanova 1.0v1b3 and later.
Support for reference models with vertex colors

Previously we only supported reference models with UVs and a single diffuse texture. Now we have per-vertex colors as an alternative to that.
You can load OBJ files with vertex colors (the same format as we export).
As a result you can now load an exported OBJ back in as a reference model, whether or not it has vertex colors.
Reference model layers with vertex colors can be saved as part of your Kanova .dfm file too.
The OBJ exporter writes proper layer names to the file instead of auto-generated unique names.
Progress bars for long running operations, including:

Exporting to any of the supported file formats (STL and both OBJ variants).
Loading a reference model.
Bug fixes

Autosaves use the latest version of the file format (currently v8) rather than an outdated version (v5).
The “OBJ with vertex colors” exporter was not writing out vertex normals.
Pressing Ctrl+Z on a new scene removed the default sphere.
Known bugs

Drawing a stroke, undoing, then switching layers can sometimes cause a crash.

This was present in b4 was well.
"Cleanup Layer" only works when you have DF3DMesh selected as your meshing algorithm.
Original post
26 Jul 2018Developer post
Kanova 1.0v1b4 Stream
This week, Foundry released a new beta update to the VR/desktop sculpting tool Kanova, 1.0v1b4. Loads of tool and performance improvements have been added. Take a look here for the full list of changes. Join us on July 27th at 12 pm PST for a discussion about these new updates an
23 Jul 2018Developer post
Kanova 1.0v1b4
Hey everyone, We've released a new Kanova early access beta, b4 out in the wild. As you can see below there's been a lot of improvements in the last few weeks. We are super eager to hear your thoughts on these improvements as we are extremely excited by Kanova's rapid progression
Hey everyone,
We've released a new Kanova early access beta, b4 out in the wild. As you can see below there's been a lot of improvements in the last few weeks. We are super eager to hear your thoughts on these improvements as we are extremely excited by Kanova's rapid progression. Give it a try and give us your thoughts! We'll be covering these improvements in a webinar on Friday, July 27th. More info to come on that later today. Cheers!
New features:
The Dual Contouring mesher now supports interactive remeshing.
Control the height of the brush above the surface
Added a height slider, below the radius and strength sliders.
You can toggle pressure sensitivity on and off for it.
It has a LUT which is read from tunables.ini and can be overridden if desired.
When Follow Surface is on the stroke will be displaced along the surface normal. When Follow Surface is off, the stroke will be displaced back towards the camera.
In VR the height slider only operates when Follow Surface is on (it’s too confusing otherwise!).
Lazy strokes for desktop and VR
The stroke catches up with your mouse/controller movements over time, making it easier to draw straight lines and smooth curves.
There is a modifier button which toggles this on and off
There is a slider which controls the rate that the stroke catches up with your input.
Undo and redo support for copying and moving layers.
Undo and redo support for adding reference models & reference images.
New default material: greenish-grey color and slightly smoother than before.
Bug fixes
Playback of a recorded stroke on a layer other than the selected one was very slow & sometimes produced corrupted results.
Fix for a rare crash when we receive a Tracked Device Disconnected event from SteamVR for a device that either doesn’t exist or has already been disconnected.
When shift is held down, use the radius/strength/height/etc. settings from the smooth tool instead of from the current tool.
Original post
11 Jul 2018Developer post
Kanova 1.0v1b3 released!
We're excited to announce our latest release with loads of improvements. Check out our last Kanova webinar to see many of them in action: New features: Two new meshing algorithms: The two new algorithms are Enhanced Surface Nets and Dual Contouring. The original meshing algorithm
We're excited to announce our latest release with loads of improvements. Check out our last Kanova webinar to see many of them in action:
https://youtu.be/SYXeqEOAHKk
New features:

Two new meshing algorithms:

The two new algorithms are Enhanced Surface Nets and Dual Contouring.
The original meshing algorithm is called DF3DMesh.
DF3DMesh is the slowest and uses the most memory, but gives the best quality mesh.
Enhanced Surface Nets is significantly faster than DF3DMesh and uses less memory, but can occasionally create a mesh with a small number of triangles missing.
Dual Contouring is the fastest of our algorithms and uses the least memory. Quality is better than Enhanced Surface Nets (it never misses triangles!) but not as good as DF3DMesh.
Both new meshing algorithms generate fewer triangles for the same model than DF3DMesh does, however both also produce rougher-looking edges.
Dual Contouring is still under development: it doesn’t support interactive remeshing yet, so shouldn’t be used while sculpting.
You can choose the meshing algorithm under the Edit > Meshing Algorithm submenu.
Improvements to the sculpting algorithm:

More effective at skipping empty space
Faster & uses less memory.
More memory savings
Over 1 gigabyte on some models!
Further file size reductions
A new version of the file format, v7, cuts file sizes in half!
Undo & redo support for layer operations:

Create layer
Remove layer
Keyboard shortcuts for enabling & disabling the wireframe:

Press W to enable the wireframe
Press Shift + W to disable the wireframe
Option for lights to follow the camera:

Go to the Scene tab and press the “Follow Camera” button to toggle this on and off.
Can be done separate for desktop and for VR.

Bug fixes

Steam screenshots now work reliably.
Can still run Kanova when Steam is in offline mode.
Fix for a crash when undoing a stroke on a layer other than the selected layer.
Make the wireframe overlay more subtle, less distracting.
Debug > Mesh Style > Blocky Mesh now shows the correct mesh colors.
Wireframe shows in VR now too.
Fix for a crash when sculpting, after changing the mesh style under the Debug menu.
Fix for a crash when you try to delete the root layer or the work plane.
Original post
06 Jul 2018Developer post
Kanova Update Webinar, 1.0V1b3
This week we are releasing a new update for Kanova with a wide variety of enhancements to tools, behavior, and stability. Specifically, Improved meshing algorithm that uses less triangles and reduces memory usage Improved sculpting algorithm improving performance and memory usage
02 Jun 2018Developer post
Foundry's Kanova Mixed Reality Streams, 6/1/2018 "Alice's Adventures"
For our latest stream we've begun a series focusing on creating the caterpillar scene from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." This will span many streams and grow in complexity. In this introductory stream we focus on creating a mushroom. Tune in next week as we continue to refi
22 May 2018Developer post
Kanova Live Stream Friday, 5/25/18
We’re excited to announce our second Kanova mixed reality live stream on Friday, 5/25/2018 at 12PM PST! VR sculpting is amazing. It completely changes the way you look at your model and how you approach form creation. However, it’s still not a replacement for the level of control
22 May 2018Developer post
Kanova 1.0v1b2 released: Windows MR fixes, smaller save files and more!
Kanova 1.0v1b2 is out now, with working Windows MR support and some big improvements to both file size and memory usage. There's also an important fix for those of you using the beta version SteamVR. Here what's new in more detail: You can now use Windows MR equipment to sculpt w
Kanova 1.0v1b2 is out now, with working Windows MR support and some big improvements to both file size and memory usage. There's also an important fix for those of you using the beta version SteamVR. Here what's new in more detail:

You can now use Windows MR equipment to sculpt with Kanova. We fixed a crash on startup that was preventing this in the previous build.
Save files are a lot smaller now. We have a new version of the Kanova file format which is much more compact, but older versions of the file format benefit too: if you load an older save file and re-save it, it'll get a lot smaller.
Using less memory after loading a file.
Added a "Reset Camera" button in VR. This is at the bottom of the Layers tab, but only appears in VR. It resets the reference position, orientation and scale for the VR camera to the starting values.
Added a "Recolor Whole Layer" button. This is on the Material tab. It sets everything in the current layer to the selected color.
The latest beta of SteamVR accidentally broke Kanova's VR controller support: buttons on the controllers would simply do nothing. This was specific to the beta version of SteamVR; Kanova had no problem with the release version of SteamVR. Kanova 1.0v1b2 has a workaround for the issue, so it can be used with either version of SteamVR.
We hope you like it! Let us know what you think in the discussion forums.
Original post
04 May 2018Developer post
Kanova Live Streams
This week we were very excited to push out our first of many updates to come. That means it's time to start up our twice-monthly webinars! Starting next week, 5/9/2018 at 2 PM Central Time we will be hosting a series of webinars discussing Kanova, VR, hybrid sculpting techniques
01 May 2018Developer post
Kanova's first update, 1.0v1b1
Good news! We've released a new version with some excellent feature and performance enhancements. The updates are listed below. One feature I want to emphasize is experimental support for WindowsMR. This is our first implementation so expect some bugs. We'd love some testing from
01 May 2018Developer post
Kanova Broad Priorities Survey
We've posted a survey regarding priorities for Kanova. For those of you who already filled out the survey, thank you! This really helps us determine our priorities based on your needs. If you have not filled out the survey yet, we'd greatly appreciate your feedback.

Updates & announcements

New features

Removed features

Changes

Bug fixes

Kanova 1.0v1b5 is now live!

New features

Bug fixes

Known bugs