Saving, opening & autosave

Interchange formats flatten your work into a mesh. A saved project is the opposite: a snapshot of the whole session — every layer with its name and order, paint, masks and mesh sets, your per-brush settings, reference images with their placement, and your viewport setup. Open it later, on any device you sign in to, and you're back exactly where you stopped.

Saving

• File ▸ Save — saves the project with your account. The first time it asks for a name; after that it saves over the same project.
• File ▸ Save as… — saves a new project under a new name and leaves the old one as it was.

A percentage shows while a big project uploads. Each plan keeps a number of saved projects, each up to a size: Free keeps 5 of up to 150 MB, Pro keeps 50 of up to 512 MB. A project at the very top of the triangle budget can pass its plan's size — step down one subdivision level and save again. Saving over an open project never counts against the number.

Saved projects are stored with your account in Firebase Cloud Storage (a Google service), readable only by your signed-in account. The privacy policy has the details.

Is my work saved?

The status bar at the bottom of the studio says, beside the version: Saving… while a save runs, Saved ✓ 2 min ago when your account holds every change, Autosaved ✓ 2 min ago when this browser's autosave holds every change but your account does not yet, and Not saved when there are changes nothing holds yet. A sculpt you have just opened or started, and not touched, shows nothing.

A project file on your computer

• File ▸ Save local… — writes the open project to your computer as a .clay file: the same file Save keeps, with every layer, subdivision level, paint, mask, Mesh Set and reference image. It is a copy; your saved projects are not changed, and a download does not count as a save.
• File ▸ Open local… — opens a .clay file from your computer as a new sculpt. If the open project has unsaved work, Re:Form asks first, with a button to save it before the file opens. The opened project is not in your account until you press File ▸ Save.

Both are Pro (since 0.8.9). On Free they stay in the File menu with a PRO badge, and choosing one says what Pro gives and the price; saving to and opening from your account (File ▸ Save and Open…) stay on every plan. Use them to keep your own backups, move a project between accounts, or send a project to someone else.

Timeline

Every save also keeps the sculpt's history beside the project, in its own file, so Timeline can go back through the steps. It is never inside the project file: a downloaded .clay holds the sculpt as it is, not how it was made.

Opening

File ▸ Open… opens your saved projects and the autosaves; File ▸ New… opens the primitives. The start screen shows the same three sheets — New sculpt, Open and Autosaves — each one row of big previews that scrolls sideways:

• New sculpt — start over from a Sphere, Cube, Cylinder, Cone, Capsule, Torus or Plane, the Head or Ear base mesh, or Blockout (an empty scene in the Blockout tool). File ▸ New… also has the Egg, Teardrop, Pebble and Rounded cube. Starting over replaces the current sculpt — save first.
• Open (Saved projects in the File ▸ New… and File ▸ Open… window) — each tile shows a thumbnail, the name, the date it was saved and its size. Click one to open it; hover and press the × to delete it (one confirmation, no undo). A sculpt opened this way saves back to the same project.
• Autosaves — the dated snapshots below.

Autosave

While you work, Re:Form keeps rotating snapshots in the browser's own storage — up to ten dated slots, each with a thumbnail, newest replacing oldest. Closed the tab mid-session? Browser crashed? Open the app again and the autosaves section has your recent state waiting. Autosaves made since version 0.8.8 are shown only to the account that made them.

If the studio closed unexpectedly — the tab crashed, the browser or the graphics driver gave out, the power went — the next launch says so: Open latest autosave picks up from the newest snapshot, Send report opens Help ▸ Report a problem with a few facts about the lost session added to what it shows you (graphics adapter, browser, triangle count, subdivision level, tool, the last errors — never your sculpt), and nothing is sent until you press Send there. Dismiss just carries on. Closing the tab, reloading or signing out normally never brings the notice up.

A sculpt that came from a saved project, or has been saved as one, is also autosaved to that project: every few minutes, while you pause, the same snapshot goes to your account, and a small "Autosaved to …" note confirms it. A sculpt that has never been saved has no project to go to — give it one with File ▸ Save.

Two habits keep autosave in its proper place:

1. Autosave is the safety net, not the archive. It lives in this browser on this machine, and browsers can clear their own storage. Anything you care about gets a real File ▸ Save.
2. Save before destructive milestones — before a big remesh, before merging layers, before "just trying something". Undo is deep, but a named file is certainty.