This app is a dream come true
I work in prototyping and do a lot of CAD and I feel like this is the perfect middle ground tool to brainstorm and explain concepts to people without having to invest in making a full on parametric model, just in general I find this app is also really fun as someone who loves doing 3-D design. In terms of learning curves I feel like anyone who has decent experience with CAD will find this completely intuitive and I think this is actually the perfect way to go around a 3-D sketching app that doesn’t need to have dimensional precision.
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Really really cool
I really love this app, even though at first I had a hard time understanding the basics. Fortunately, the video tutorials helped me save time. I know this app is meant for making 3D models, but I hope the developers add some animation features, like frames. Also, I would love to see more variety of brushes and the ability to easily mix colors. I think there might already be a way to do it, I’m still not sure how it works.
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I want to like this
I usually don’t review stuff but this app is something I really want to work and if you would just fix or add some things it could be great. To be honest right now your UI is awful. It is extremely non intuitive and things I want to do just like fill a color is maybe possible but I shouldn’t have to watch a whole tutorial to figure out how to do it when I have used many many different software types and applications and not had this much trouble. I keep trying it off an on because I would like to use it I really like the idea behind it.
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Response from developer
Thank you for supporting the idea behind the app, and we're sorry it hasn't been as intuitive to use as you expected. We don't think documentation alone can solve the frustration of having to look up long tutorials for basic tasks. A fill tool isn't currently supported, but we're working on more convenient ways to apply color for a future update. Alongside improvements to the controls themselves, we're preparing a feature for the next update that will let you instantly display tooltips for all UI elements when needed and access related guidance. If you get stuck while using the app, please let us know at support@sketchsoft3d.com, and we'll help.
Cool and unique tool
I was apprehensive to give this tool a try due to some of the bad reviews listed. I definitely do not regret my decision. Lots of the complaints were around the lack of polish, however I believe that is an unfair complaint. There is definitely a steep learning curve, but the online tutorials for this app are fantastic at getting you started and learning. I had some background in 3d modeling but this tool is nothing like other softwares. Definitely would recommend giving it a try. Ignore some of the worse reviews about difficulty. All of those complaints are simply a skill issue.
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Frustrating
Every mechanic feels so clunky .. and everything is so delayed making the output super frustrating especially clicking through layers or selection/deselection tool.
Also gallery pieces preloaded on app like arrival is a HUGE environment . I am trying to create something not even of that scale and the app crashes itself , it’s very very very frustrating and why I’m making this review . Finally have gotten a grasp to make bigger immersive environments and I can’t even make them .. I understand it’s beta but don’t flex like I could do something big like that when YOUR application won’t let me .
Also gallery pieces preloaded on app like arrival is a HUGE environment . I am trying to create something not even of that scale and the app crashes itself , it’s very very very frustrating and why I’m making this review . Finally have gotten a grasp to make bigger immersive environments and I can’t even make them .. I understand it’s beta but don’t flex like I could do something big like that when YOUR application won’t let me .
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Response from developer
We're sorry that slow selection and group switching, along with app crashes, have prevented you from continuing the scene you wanted to create. We believe a tool shouldn't get in the way of what you want to express. Although we test on the various devices available to us, the example artworks haven't fully conveyed what the actual working experience can be like on each device. Please send your iPad model, app version, and details of when the problem occurs to support@sketchsoft3d.com, and we'll look into it and provide support.
Cool, but needs some work
This app is a great idea, but a lot of basic features need some upgrades. Coloring something in is way more frustrating than the tutorials make it look. Colors glitch through each other, and it seems like it’s impossible to layer paint? The eraser tool is also extremely difficult to use.
If I can be more picky, it also seems like there’s little options for stylistic variation outside the blocky shading style that’s used in a lot of the examples. It would be nice to have brushes with different textures and maybe even have a blend/smudge tool, but I’m not sure how difficult that would be to implement.
I think what Feather is trying to do is really awesome! I can see myself using it for small personal projects. But it seems pretty bare for now.
If I can be more picky, it also seems like there’s little options for stylistic variation outside the blocky shading style that’s used in a lot of the examples. It would be nice to have brushes with different textures and maybe even have a blend/smudge tool, but I’m not sure how difficult that would be to implement.
I think what Feather is trying to do is really awesome! I can see myself using it for small personal projects. But it seems pretty bare for now.
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This App is too premature in it's design and employment to receive any awards
I will list a few items.
1. Tutorial demonstrated functions, do not work in practice. When the pen is held stationary on the glass surface is supposed to; make lines straight, circles circular, rectangles have straight edges, etc. This rarely, or almost never occurs in practice. No adjustments or options are provided to improve this behavior.
2. The critical operation of the double tap, to square to the principle axis is clunky and often fails to work. No option is provided to use a simple method such as taping on an axis icon. We don't all have super fast tapping skills.
3. No tool tips or simple 'on screen' help is provided.
4. Development of the app is at a glacial pace.
5. Any assistance for Accessibility is ignored.
Why Apple thought this app should receive a design award is beyond me. The app may seem to have prmise, but it is way short of delivery.
1. Tutorial demonstrated functions, do not work in practice. When the pen is held stationary on the glass surface is supposed to; make lines straight, circles circular, rectangles have straight edges, etc. This rarely, or almost never occurs in practice. No adjustments or options are provided to improve this behavior.
2. The critical operation of the double tap, to square to the principle axis is clunky and often fails to work. No option is provided to use a simple method such as taping on an axis icon. We don't all have super fast tapping skills.
3. No tool tips or simple 'on screen' help is provided.
4. Development of the app is at a glacial pace.
5. Any assistance for Accessibility is ignored.
Why Apple thought this app should receive a design award is beyond me. The app may seem to have prmise, but it is way short of delivery.
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Complete joke
This is one of the most dissatisfying and disappointing app experiences I have ever had on the App Store. The ads made it seem like this was going to be easy to use but it is not. Almost everything about this app is frustrating and convoluted in areas that it doesn’t need to be. I’m convinced this app has never been tested and gotten actual feedback in areas it could have improved. A lot of useful tools are missing. The brush strokes are not accurate, the erase tool is a mess, and the approach to drawing on surfaces is novel but executed poorly. Do not waste your money and wait until they iron out this mess!!
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Response from developer
Hi Kurotoko, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Feather approaches 3D drawing differently from traditional 2D apps, and we understand that this can feel frustrating. The eraser removes only the center line of a curve, so with broader strokes it may seem like it’s not working unless the center is touched. You can also tap the Eraser again to switch to the Vacuum tool, which removes entire curves it touches and is useful for clearing larger areas quickly. We take your feedback about brush accuracy, missing tools, and overall usability seriously, and we’re continuing to refine and improve these areas.
Great App, Not So Great Business Practice
I love the app and its features, and I do hope that more are added in days to come. I would give this a higher score, but my biggest complaint is that I first downloaded the app 3 years ago while it was still free and one day I opened it to find that I no longer had any access to it and had to pay the $15 charge just to continue using the same features that I previously had full access to. There is no free version with limited features, I was just shut out of it completely and had to pay to keep what I had before and it leaves me wondering if the same thing could happen again with any potential future updates as it felt like the rug was completely pulled out from under me.
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Randomly closing
recently I’ve been having trouble progressing in my projects because the project will randomly close and lose the progress that I had done, for reference I have an iPad a16 and the application was working completely fine during the first couple months I’ve had it. Could my iPad now be outdated our is it a technical problem? I do absolutely love the app and I hope I can get this issue resolved!
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Touch issue
I really like the idea of Feather and how it works with Apple Pencil for 3D design. The tools are intuitive and the app has great potential. However, there is one major issue: whenever my hand touches the iPad screen while drawing, the canvas rotates and I can’t continue designing properly. This makes the workflow frustrating.
I hope the developers can fix this problem in the next updates, because with this improvement Feather could become one of the best 3D design apps on iPad.
I hope the developers can fix this problem in the next updates, because with this improvement Feather could become one of the best 3D design apps on iPad.
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Close but doesn’t hit
Tl;dr great concept, didn’t land for me. Feels more like a toy than a robust solution for 3d art. It’s cheap and no sub so if you have the cash it’s worth checking out for yourself.
I had hoped for something like grease pencil, but with a more intuitive interface. I like the ideas presented here but the execution falls short. The clearest example of course being fill. WHICH they’re working on to be clear. Right now, surfaces must be filled with a series of strokes, which at least appear to me like separate 3d objects. I have some difficulty wrapping my head around the “draw a guide and sketch” workflow, which I grant is user error (there are a plethora of tutorials on their official channel). But it leaves me frustrated and wishing for something closer to box modeling to create draw surfaces.
More than anything, it seems useful for annotations and sketches. Load a model in and then create floating notations nearby for example. And there are plenty of architectural doodles I’ve seen with the software. If you want more than that, you’ll be frustrated I think.
Short wishlist of features, in no particular order, and understanding the huge lift some or all of these might be: fill finite surfaces, rigging and animation, simplified box modeling for surface creation, custom shaders, optional shrink wrapping the planar brushes to the draw surfaces, textured planar brushes (not going back and applying a shader to a stroke you’ve already laid)
I had hoped for something like grease pencil, but with a more intuitive interface. I like the ideas presented here but the execution falls short. The clearest example of course being fill. WHICH they’re working on to be clear. Right now, surfaces must be filled with a series of strokes, which at least appear to me like separate 3d objects. I have some difficulty wrapping my head around the “draw a guide and sketch” workflow, which I grant is user error (there are a plethora of tutorials on their official channel). But it leaves me frustrated and wishing for something closer to box modeling to create draw surfaces.
More than anything, it seems useful for annotations and sketches. Load a model in and then create floating notations nearby for example. And there are plenty of architectural doodles I’ve seen with the software. If you want more than that, you’ll be frustrated I think.
Short wishlist of features, in no particular order, and understanding the huge lift some or all of these might be: fill finite surfaces, rigging and animation, simplified box modeling for surface creation, custom shaders, optional shrink wrapping the planar brushes to the draw surfaces, textured planar brushes (not going back and applying a shader to a stroke you’ve already laid)
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I feel like I’m breaking all the rules of 3D art design… but it all makes sense!
I still feel wrong for using this app like I would my normal 2D art programs - Filling in shapes and sketching lines with thin strokes feels almost counterintuitive to every thing I’ve learned about 3D rendering, but you know what? Somehow, this actually all clicks for me! If you’re frustrated with Blender and software like that, but you know how to do so much as a simple sketch, then all you really need is about an hour to learn the basics of using the Apple Pencil (or a trackpad, mouse, or finger!) with this app, and then you can quickly be off to the races. My only complaint is that I wish there was a more intuitive way to learn about how to properly use 3D guides and brushes - the documentation and tutorials help, but for newcomers, myself included, it can take a bit of fiddling before you get a grasp on how you’re supposed to make things. Otherwise, Great app, 10/10, and it’s a one-time flat fee, to boot!
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I think the learning curve(?) is a bit much
Like, don’t get me wrong. Beautiful app with lots of potential, relatively intuitive to understand. And ohmygod its a one time purchase not a subscription, you guys need an award for that. HOWEVER… I just wish there were more time saving tricks like a fill tool or some meshes, like a default plane would be nice 🥲 and a ruler too, as much as the auto correct tool is nice, what if i just wanted some perfect shapes? It’s just been really time consuming for me, and maybe that’s just because i’m bad 😭 because i’ve seem the stuff people do om this app and it’s jaw dropping beautiful and inspirational but my wobbly hand just can’t come close to recreating it the way they do. Plus, filling with the paintbrush has been really wonky. Lots of potential here, and i have fully belief in the capabilities and vision for the developer, and thank you so much for creating this app. Just… maybe add a few features to help beginners out? 😝🥹
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Solid 4, not 5
Feather is a very cool app, and people should give it a try but… Seriously, did anybody at Apple actually use it before giving it the design award, or did they jut get wowed by a demo? Feather has a lot of rough edges when you actually try to use it; it really feels like a beta. For starters, there’s no way to flip the interface for left-handers and that really seems like a gimme. For all you right-handers out there… There’s no 2 finger tap to undo (or indeed any way to undo except tapping the arrow). The interface is obscure; the iconography isn’t great and there’s NO TOOLTIPS. I thought Apple cared about good, clear interfaces? They give enough talks about it. The lack of tooltips is my biggest gripe with Valence 3d. Even worse, some of the modes work well only in demos, like the mechanism for drawing straight lines, which is only ever activated at the same time as curve-prettification. So you draw a line and pause, waiting for the line to become straight, and then you can move the end—pint where you want it? Nope! The system decides to keep the lovely curves and allow you merely to slightly adjust the curvature… but no way are you going to move that endpoint. This is annoying while drawing a line, but it’s a disaster when using the fat highlighting pen, because the endpoints become hideous pie-with-a-slice-out things. Feather picks curve-prettification 95% of the time when I want straight lines, and there’s hardly any way to change that. Worse, they said they’d have to revamp the whole engine to change that… so while they hope sometime soon to have left-hander mode and tap-to-undo, straight lines are a pipe dream. None of which is to say Feather is a bad app. It’s very cool. But it feels like a beta. It’s kind of scary to find myself wondering if Apple is handing out awards based on presentations and demos, rather than people inside the company actually using the app in any real way.
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Well done Feather, solid app from the get go, with tons of potential for improvement
This app is awesome! I use it to sketch CAD designs all the time, and it works incredibly well! I’d love to see features like a 3D ruler to measure and straighten lines, and something like a paint bucket fill tool to make filling in hard surfaces more efficient. I have a few ideas on how those could be implemented, but I don’t need to share them unless you’re actually interested. Keep up the great work!
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Truly Amazing!
This app definitely offers a unique and amazing way to make 3D art. Seems a bit experimental at first blush, but after using it more often, it definitely has its advantages compared to other 3d software. In a way, it gives off some 3D pen vibes.
I would love to see further development for Feather3D, most notably a paint bucket fill feature, some grid and object snapping, and folder creation for the group layers. It might help to add a scaling feature for measurement, like a ruler.
Would absolutely recommend.
I would love to see further development for Feather3D, most notably a paint bucket fill feature, some grid and object snapping, and folder creation for the group layers. It might help to add a scaling feature for measurement, like a ruler.
Would absolutely recommend.
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Simply Blown Away
I’m shocked that this doesn’t have more reviews, because this program is truly amazing. Creating a 3D model/drawing/visualization has never been easier, and the controls are easy to learn and intuitive. There are features I’d love to see added such as a fill tool, I’d also love to see a double tap to undo and triple tap to redo feature. Regardless, as it stands now this is a solid program. I definitely see myself using this all the time as an architecture student. Fantastic app, absolutely recommend.
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It’s not working…
Hello, I’ve purchased and downloaded Feather 3D yesterday and every time I click on + for a new project or an existing one. A loading page pops up and never goes away. I updated my iPad and launched the app many times restarted my iPad and the issue still persist.. I tried googling for a solution to the same problem I have but nothing came up, I went to your website (feather support) and click on (contact us) that led me straight to mail/gmail, I sent an email but it didn’t go through saying the domain does not exist or I’ve misspelled the email (I didn’t).
Also followed some of the tips here, but also didn’t help..
I would appreciate your help to fixing this as I look forward to using your app. Thank you.
Also followed some of the tips here, but also didn’t help..
I would appreciate your help to fixing this as I look forward to using your app. Thank you.
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Response from developer
Hello, Susssaaaaaa. We’re really sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for taking the time to leave a review. We’re currently investigating the issue and doing our best to fix it as soon as possible. In the meantime, we’d greatly appreciate it if you could send us an email at [support@sketchsoft3d.com], including your iPad model and iPadOS version. Apologies again for the trouble — we promise to work quickly to resolve this. Thank you for your patience and understanding. We truly appreciate it. Updated Apr 7, 2025 : After repeated testing under the same conditions, we’ve found that the issue occurs consistently when Lockdown Mode is enabled. While this mode provides strong web browsing security, it can interfere with certain functions in web-based apps like Feather. Would you be able to try turning off Lockdown Mode and launching the app again? If the issue persists even after this step, we’re happy to offer a refund and will do our best to help you safely export your data.
Brilliant! I absolutely love the tool...
A few days ago I purchased the app to test how intuitive it would be to create 3D sketch designs that I will ultimately export as OBJ files to work in other tools. It took a little time to understand how to use the drawing guides as the first step, but once I got the hang of it I felt the workflow process of sketching in a 3D space is incredibly intuitive. Very smooth experience and I love it! And the OBJ files I've exported and imported into other software works great as well. Thanks so much for creating such an innovate piece of software for sketching in 3D for iPad....it really is next level in terms of what can be created in an efficient workflow process.
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