For organic modeling
Smooth blends
A Blended group joins its parts with rounded seams. The group switches from mesh booleans to a signed-distance field, so every place two shapes meet gets a fillet-like transition at once.
Use it for organic forms, handles, fillets you'd otherwise model by hand, and characters where the limbs should flow into the body. It's a per-group setting, so you can flip the same parts between crisp and smooth with one dropdown.
How to use it
Group the parts
Build and the parts you want to blend. Blending is a group property, so they have to be grouped first.
Open the Combine section
Select the group and open the Combine section of the Properties panel.
Set Style to Blended
Set the Style dropdown to Blended. (The default is Sharp; a Loft option also appears here when the group qualifies.)
Raise the blend size
Drag the Blend size (mm) slider up from 0. This is the rounding radius where shapes touch. 0 means no rounding, and bigger numbers melt the shapes together more.
Keep flush faces flat
Turn on Blend only on overlap if flush faces should stay flat. The switch shows up once Blend size is above 0.
Tune the detail
Adjust the Detail (mm) slider if the surface looks too coarse or rebuilds too slowly. Smaller is sharper but slower.
Tips
- There is no standalone smooth command. Two parts only blend when they're in the same group set to Blended.
- Blend only on overlap rounds only where shapes actually overlap, so parts that just touch face to face stay flat. With it off, every seam is rounded and a small ridge can appear where flush faces meet.
- Blended mode is fastest with math-defined primitives (Box, Sphere, Cylinder and friends). If the group warns that some shapes "have no math formula", rebuilds will be slower. Swap those for basic shapes if you can.
- Multicolor works in Blended mode too.