01Getting started
Serwus3D is a poly and hard-surface modelling app for iPad. Download it for free and model without limits; saving projects and exporting need the one-time full-version purchase.
- First launch - a welcome card offers the Academy. You can skip it and open it later from Settings → Help → Academy, or Files → Academy….
- Academy - nine short chapters, like levels in a game: Moving around, Objects, Your first model: a house, Modifiers, Curves, UV, Retopo, Materials, Out of the app. A card says what to do, a ring pulses around the key to touch, and each step completes itself when you actually do it. Chapters play on your own scene and never replace it.
- Help - the
?in the top bar opens every gesture and keyboard shortcut, at any time.
Everything in the app works in the free version. Only what takes work out of the app - saving a project, exporting, a turntable without the watermark - asks for the purchase, and after buying, the save or export you started carries on by itself.
02The screen
| Area | What it does |
|---|---|
| Top bar | Undo and redo, + (add object), Files (save, import, export), Shading, Modifiers, Materials, Panel, Settings and ? (help). |
| Departments | Object, Model, UV and Retopo - four pills that switch what the rail and the pad offer. |
| Rail | The tools of the current department, grouped in sections. Scrolls when it is longer than the screen. |
| Pad and ring | A one-thumb control on the side: the ring turns the camera or the value of what is in hand, the keys above it switch Camera, Value and Snap. |
| Panel | An inspector for the selected object: name, Transform with Snap, the object's modifiers, its material, UV, shading and operations - each a card that folds away. |
| View sphere | In the corner. Tap a coloured ball to look straight down that axis; tap the same axis again to look from the other side; drag to orbit. |
| Focus | Above the departments: puts the camera on whatever is picked - an object, a component, a curve point. |
03Camera and Pencil gestures
The rule is simple: fingers move the camera, the Pencil edits. A resting palm is ignored.
Fingers - the camera
| Gesture | Result |
|---|---|
| One finger drag | Orbit |
| Two fingers drag | Pan |
| Two fingers pinch | Zoom |
| Three fingers tap or swipe left | Undo |
| Three fingers swipe right | Redo |
| Finger held still + Pencil draws | Lasso select |
Pencil - the tools
| Gesture | Result |
|---|---|
| Tap | Select what is under the tip |
| Tap with MULTI on | Add to or remove from the selection |
| Double tap an edge | Select the edge loop |
| Double tap empty space | Clear the selection |
| Press and hold, then lift | Select connected (the whole island) |
| Press and hold on nothing, then drag | Sweep everything the tip crosses |
| Press and hold a component, then drag | Join it to what you drop it on |
| Drag on the gizmo | Transform, snapped if snapping is on |
| Drag with MULTI on | Paint the selection along the tip |
| Drag on empty space | Marquee select |
| Drag with a tool armed | Scrub its value live |
Apple Pencil hardware
| Gesture | Result |
|---|---|
| Double tap the barrel | Cycle vertex → edge → face |
| Squeeze (Pencil Pro) | Radial palette at the tip |
| Barrel roll (Pencil Pro) | Scrub the armed tool's value |
| Hover (M2 iPads and later) | Highlight what you are about to hit |
The pad ring
- Camera - the ring moves the camera; tap the key again for orbit or zoom.
- Value - the ring sets a value for what is in hand; tap again for the next one. Hold Value for a wheel of values, slide onto one and let go.
- Bevel, extrude, inset and loop cut hand their value to the ring by themselves.
- Snap - grid snap on or off; while it is on, the ring sets its step.
- None in the wheel - the ring turns nothing, so a resting thumb changes nothing.
04Without a Pencil
Everything works without an Apple Pencil. Until a Pencil touches the screen, the app is in finger mode; the first Pencil touch switches to Pencil mode, and Settings → Input → Pencil mode switches back.
| Input | Result |
|---|---|
| Finger on the model | The tool, like the Pencil |
| Finger on empty space | Orbit |
| Click · drag | The Pencil's tap · the Pencil's drag |
| Alt + left · middle · right drag | Orbit · pan · zoom (Maya) |
| Middle · Shift + middle · Ctrl + middle | Orbit · pan · zoom (Blender) |
| Wheel | Zoom |
| Trackpad: two fingers · Shift · pinch | Orbit · pan · zoom |
| Right button | Radial palette; slide onto an item and let go, or click it |
05Objects
- Add - the + in the top bar: cube, cylinder, sphere, cone, torus, plane. New primitives come with their UVs already laid out.
- Select - tap an object. Tapping more objects builds a group that the gizmo moves together; tapping empty space clears it.
- Gizmo - arrows move, rings turn, cubes scale. Transform orientation (global, local, normal) cycles with the Orientation control or
X. - Duplicate and Instance - a duplicate is a separate copy; an instance shares its mesh, so editing one edits them all.
- Pivot - to the model's base, centre or corner, or to the world origin (Panel → Transform).
- Hierarchy - Panel → Scene: rename, hide, delete, join, and named groups you can select, hide and dissolve without deleting the objects.
- Snapping - to the grid or to geometry (vertices, edges, faces). The Snap key on the pad and on the rail; options in Panel → Transform → Snap.
- Measure - distances and angles on the model.
- Reference images - a photo or a drawing placed as a plane in the scene, to model over.
06Modelling
The Model department edits the mesh. Pick what you work on with V · E · F (vertices, edges, faces) on the rail or the pad, or with the Pencil's double tap. Faces can have any number of sides.
Selection
- Select tool with Brush and shape modes, All, Invert, grow and shrink (+ / −), Border and Similar.
- Band selects the edge loop through the selection, Ring the edge ring across it.
- Soft - soft selection: moving a selection drags its surroundings with a smooth falloff; the rail slider sets the reach.
- Symmetry - edits on one side are mirrored to the other.
Tools
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Extrude | Pull the selected faces out - drag on the model or turn the ring. |
| Inset | A smaller face inside each selected face. |
| Bevel | Rounds edges off: dragging sets the width, dragging sideways the segments. |
| Add edges | A new edge loop across the selection (loop cut). |
| Multi-cut | Tap along edges to build a cut path, then Cut applies it as one undo step. Snap ½ lands taps on edge midpoints. |
| Subdivide | Splits the selected faces. |
| Merge · Merge median · Weld | Merge the selection into one point, at its centre, or drag one component onto another. |
| Fill | Closes holes in the mesh (the one next to the selection, if there is one). |
| Bridge | Joins two equal edge loops with a band of faces. |
| Smooth | Relaxes the selected vertices. |
| Sharp | Marks edges that subdivision keeps sharp. |
| Separate | Moves the selected faces into an object of their own. |
| Polygon | Draws new faces, also on top of an existing mesh (see Retopo). |
Delete or Dissolve
- Delete takes the faces away too, and leaves a hole.
- Dissolve takes the edge away and lets the faces either side be one face.
- Nothing happened? The edge holds the shape, has no second face, or the merged face would have a notch or a hole in it - dissolve fewer edges at a time.
07Modifiers and booleans
Modifiers change the object without touching its cage: the mesh you edit stays as it is, and what you see and export is the result. Open them from the top bar or as cards in the Panel.
| Modifier | What it does |
|---|---|
| Mirror | Model one half, get both. With clipping, points on the middle stay on it. |
| Subdivision | A smoother surface from the same cage; Sharp edges stay sharp. |
| Thickness | Gives a surface a wall of even thickness. |
| Array | Copies in a line or around a circle. |
Each card has an eye (on or off), up and down, delete and Apply, which bakes that one modifier into the mesh.
Booleans
Pick objects A and B, then Subtract, Union, Intersect or Connect. The result is previewed live; heavy ones are computed in the background with a spinner, and Apply waits for them. The result is rebuilt into clean, convex faces, not a fan of slivers.
08Curves
Draw a line with the Pencil, or tap points one after another. It lands on the ground in the default view, on a wall in a side view, or on the model itself with Surface.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Draw | Start a new curve. |
| Closed | Joins the last point to the first. |
| → Tube | Sweeps a pipe along the curve; the slider sets its thickness, Sides its cross-section (3 gives a triangular bar, 24 a round pipe). |
| → Revolve | Spins a profile around an axis into a solid - a cup from its side view. |
| → Face | Turns a closed outline into a face, ready for Extrude or Thickness. |
| Undo point | Removes the last point. |
Drag a curve point to move it; with nothing picked, the thickness slider moves the whole tube, and Pencil pressure tapers it.
09UV
The UV department opens the layout next to the model. Seams say where the surface may be cut so it can lie flat for a texture.
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Seam: draw along the model | The seam follows the edges the tip passes |
| Seam: tap, then tap further on | The seam runs between the two points; tap the red dot again to end the chain |
| Cut | Sew | Cut adds seams, Sew removes them; the Pencil's double tap switches while the tool is in hand |
| Seams in the layout | The same strokes and taps work in the UV editor, on the existing edges |
| Mark | Turns the selected edges into seams |
| Auto | Seams on the sharp edges, unwrapped and packed |
| Unwrap | Lays the pieces flat, cut along the seams |
| Live | Re-unwraps by itself as you cut |
| Pack | Arranges the islands in the square without overlaps |
| Layout: Pencil on an island | Pick it, drag to move; corner dots scale, the top dot turns, with a magnet every 45° |
| Layout: fingers | Drag and pinch the tile |
The Grid | Texture | Off menu shows a colour grid on the model and in the tile - stretched squares mean stretched UVs, colours running the wrong way mean a turned or mirrored island - or the material's texture.
10Retopo
The Retopo department lays a clean mesh of quads over a dense one - a scan, a sculpt, an import - with every point stuck to its surface. Finish makes the patch an object of its own. Polygon in the Model department uses the same gestures.
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Tap on the surface | A corner; the fourth closes a quad |
| Tap near a dot or a border edge | The corner snaps to it - it lights up first |
| Draw out of a border edge | A quad, or a strip of them as long as the stroke |
| Draw a shape | A face, with corners where the stroke turns |
| Draw starting inside a face | Cuts along the stroke - a short line cuts that face wall to wall |
| Tap mode | Tap empty surface for a bare vertex; tap vertices to pick them, four make a face |
| Cut mode | Tap edge to edge to cut from one to the next, or draw across faces |
| Drag a dot | Slides it on the surface; drop it on another to merge |
| Relax | Evens out the patch, still on the surface |
| Re-snap | Puts every point back on the surface |
11Materials
Materials belong to the scene, like assets in Unity: one material can be worn by many objects, and changing it changes all of them. Duplicate for this object gives one object its own copy.
- Material card in the Panel: pick a material from the scene's list or make a new one, name it, set colour, Metallic and Roughness.
- Maps - Albedo, Normal map, Occlusion·rough·metal (ORM, packed) and Emission, from Photos or Files, with thumbnails. Images up to 2048 px.
- In the Model department the material goes on the selected faces; otherwise on the whole object.
- Shading in the top bar: Wireframe, Solid or Material (PBR with the maps), and See-through with any of them.
- Materials and their images go into FBX (embedded in the file), GLB, OBJ (with an .mtl) and USDZ.
12Check for print and export
Check for print shows whether a model is closed, where the holes are, how thin the walls get and the model's size and volume - and repairs what it can: fills holes, fixes flipped faces.
Files menu
| Item | What you get |
|---|---|
| Save project (.serwus) | The whole scene, editable later - modifiers, curves, materials and images included |
| Export FBX (centimetres) | The standard for game engines and animation - Unity, Unreal, Maya, Blender. Quads stay quads, with materials and embedded textures; the file names its unit and axes, so the target converts on import |
| Export GLB (metres) | For the web and glTF tools, always in metres, with materials and textures |
| Export OBJ | In the scene's units; with materials it becomes a folder with the .obj, the .mtl and the images |
| Export STL (mm) | For slicers and 3D printers, always in millimetres |
| Export USDZ (AR) | Opens in AR Quick Look - the model at its real size on your table |
| Turntable video… | A spinning video of the scene to share |
| Import model… | FBX (binary or ASCII; every object comes in as one, with its UVs), STL, OBJ (including line-only files, which come in as curves), GLB, glTF and .serwus |
Export presets
| Preset | Settings |
|---|---|
| Unity | FBX, real size, materials and textures - Unity converts it to metres on import |
| Unreal | FBX, real size, materials and textures - Unreal turns it Z-up on import |
| 3D print | STL, millimetres |
The open scene is saved in the background. If the app ever closes unexpectedly, the next launch offers to recover it, and a scene that keeps crashing the app is set aside instead of being loaded again.
13Keyboard shortcuts
With a Magic Keyboard or any hardware keyboard. Letter keys pause while you are typing in a text field.
| Command | Key |
|---|---|
| Undo · Redo | ⌘Z · ⇧⌘Z |
| Edit mode | Tab |
| Vertices · Edges · Faces | 1 · 2 · 3 |
| Select all · Invert | ⌘A · ⌘I |
| Grow · Shrink | = · − |
| Extrude · Inset · Bevel · Loop | E · I · B · R |
| Subdivide (edit) · move pivot (object) | D |
| Merge · Fill · Delete selected | M · F · ⌫ |
| Duplicate · Instance · Delete object | ⌘D · ⌥⌘D · ⌘⌫ |
| Grid snap · Geometry snap | ⇧S · ⇧G |
| Orientation · Measure · Symmetry | X · K · Y |
| Outliner · Modifiers · Materials · UV | ⌘1 · ⌘2 · ⌘3 · ⌘4 |
| Check for print | ⌘P |