Open a new sculpt and this is what you're looking at:
The viewport
The big space in the middle is where you sculpt. The counters in the top-left corner show the live vertex and triangle count of your mesh, and how close the project is to your plan's limit (12.5 million triangles on Free, 80 million on Pro). The count turns amber when the next subdivision would pass the limit and red when it is almost reached; on Free, clicking the limit says what Pro gives. The compass in the top-right corner is the navigation gizmo — it shows which way you're facing, names the current view (Front, Right…), and shows whether you're in Perspective or Ortho projection. View ▸ Grid shows a floor plane under the model (on by default) and can add the coloured world axis lines through the origin (X red, Y green, Z blue), which are off until you turn them on.
The left tool rail
Top to bottom:
- Brush — the sculpting mode. Right-click the button (or click the big brush preview at the top of the right panel) to open the brush picker. The Options switches — Invert, Accumulate, Smooth, the Stabilize steadier, Backface (strokes stay on the side facing you) and Colour (sculpt and paint in one stroke) — sit under the sliders. Symmetry has a section of its own.
- Paint — paint colour and material onto the surface instead of moving it. Right-click to pick a paint brush.
- Blockout — draw strokes of volume that melt together, edit them as curves, then Finish them into a mesh. See Blockout.
- Reflow — lays clean quads that follow the shape onto a new layer. See Reflow.
- Move / Rotate / Scale — object transform tools. They show a gizmo for moving whole layers rather than sculpting the surface. See Grab & transforms.
The options bar
The thin row of square icons under the menus holds the view settings and symmetry: Home (the front view, fitted to every layer), then one group with Persp / Ortho, Refs (reference images; right-click for their window), the six views under one View button and Fit (the current layer only), then the viewport aids (Grid, Floor, Axes), the shading mode (Matcap, Unlit, Lit), the Silhouette switch, Wire (the wireframe), the Smooth-shading switch, Focus and Fade for working among layers, Symmetry (right-click for the X / Y / Z mirrors, Radial and the origin controls), Mesh Sets (tints the model by set) and Timeline (opens the Timeline slider). While a transform tool is active the bar also shows the gizmo's controls: Local / World axes, the origin lock and Reset. When the window is narrow the buttons show their icons only. Undo / Redo sit at the top right of the header, next to the fullscreen button. Hover any icon for its name. A pop-out opened from the bar closes when you press anywhere outside it, or on another button. Every button is the same control as in the View menu or the panel, so changing one changes the other. Brush settings and Layers stay in the panel on the right.
The menu bar
- File — New… (the primitives) and Open… (your saved projects and the autosaves), Save and Save as… (to your account), Save local… and Open local… (a .clay file on your computer, Pro), the Import and Export submenus (OBJ, STL, GLB, FBX), Re:Link…, and Share…, which publishes the sculpt as a link anyone can open in a browser, with My shares… and Submit to gallery… beside it. See Share a sculpt.
- Edit — Undo, Redo, and Preferences (Ctrl+,): a dialog with General, Input, Viewport, Graphics, Sculpting, Rendering, Keyboard and Account pages. Graphics holds anti-aliasing, the render resolution and the frame-rate limit; General holds the language, the theme, appearance and Interface size. Keyboard is where shortcuts are changed — see Keyboard shortcuts. Input is where mouse buttons, scroll zoom, pen pressure, palm rejection and the touch layout live.
- View — projection toggle, the six axis views, the Gizmo, Grid and Reference pop-outs (handle axes and Fit view; the measurement grid, floor and axis guide; reference images), Matcaps (the material window), smooth shading, wireframe, Focus and Fade, the FPS counter, the GPU / CPU engine switch, fullscreen, and a few performance toggles.
- Render — Render image, Render turntable, Preview window, Record timelapse and Export timelapse, for presentation-quality output.
- Tools — whole-layer tools, each in a small window: Decimate, Array, Reshape, Surface noise, Inflate and Polish, Boolean, and for 3D printing Print check and Hollow. Each window opens in the middle of the viewport; drag its title to move it, drag its bottom-right corner to resize it, and close it with the cross.
- Account — your email, your plan (manage or upgrade), the Terms and Privacy documents, and Sign out.
- Help — these guides, the controls reference, the FAQ, About, and Report a problem: describe what went wrong and send it straight from the app. The dialog shows exactly what is sent with your message — the app version, your browser and graphics card, the mesh size, the active brush, your last action and any recent errors — before you send it.
The right panel
Every setting lives here, in collapsible sections (click a title to fold it):
- Brush — the active brush, stroke type, and the Size / Strength / Falloff / Spacing / Jitter sliders, plus the brush alpha slot.
- Paint — colours, wet mix, roughness and metalness; visible while a paint brush is active.
- Mask — the mask tools (Invert, Clear, Sharpen, Blur, Grow, Shrink, Delete masked, Extract and more), whatever brush you hold.
- Options — Invert, Accumulate, Smooth, Stabilize, Backface and Colour.
- Symmetry — the X / Y / Z mirrors, Radial, and the origin controls (Axes, Origin, Reset origin).
- Topology — Subdivide up and down, and the current level.
- Mesh Sets — tag parts of the surface as sets, show them, mask by them.
- Remesh — rebuild even topology over the current shape, with Resolution, Smoothing, Sharpness and Fill holes.
- Passes — sculpt passes on the active layer, just above Layers. See Passes.
- Layers — the layer stack: add, duplicate, mirror, merge, split loose.
The viewport settings that used to sit here — Gizmo (Fit view; the handle axes, the origin lock and Reset origin are in the Symmetry section), Grid (the Ortho measurement grid, the Perspective floor, the axis guide) and Reference (reference images) — now live in the View menu as pop-outs, and shading, materials and lighting on the options bar (Matcap / Unlit / Lit, with the Matcaps window and the Lit lighting behind a right-click), so the panel stays about the brush and the model.
The brush picker
Right-click the Brush tool (or click the brush preview card) and the picker opens, organised into ten groups, each a row, in two columns: Build, Surface, Planes, Sharp and Detail on the left; Move, Mask, Mesh Sets, Clip and Mesh (the Mesh brush and the Macro brush) on the right — with the Paint group in their place when the Paint tool is active. My brushes sits at the bottom, with Save brush, Import and Export on its row. The Macro brush's macros, and Record macro, are in the brush panel when it is picked. Type in Find a brush at the top to show only the brushes whose name matches; Esc clears it. Hover any brush for a plain-language description of what it does.
The status bar
The strip along the bottom shows the app version, what the active brush does, and the full mouse-and-keyboard cheat sheet: left-drag sculpts, Shift smooths, Ctrl inverts, right-drag orbits, middle-drag pans, the wheel zooms, Ctrl+Z undoes. The complete list lives in the controls reference.
Next: navigate the viewport.