Sculpting on a Tablet in the Browser: Pen Pressure, Palm Rejection and Touch

Re:Form has always run wherever a WebGPU browser runs, and for a while that quietly included tablets — you could open the app on an Android tablet or a recent iPad and push a sphere around with a finger. It just didn't feel like a sculpting app there. A pen behaved like a mouse with no pressure, a resting palm spun the view, and every button was sized for a cursor. Version 0.7.3 Alpha changes that. This post covers what tablet support actually means in Re:Form, which devices it runs on, and how to set it up.

Which tablets can run Re:Form?

Re:Form is a WebGPU application, so the requirement is a browser with WebGPU, not a particular tablet.

• Android tablets work in Chrome, which has shipped WebGPU on Android since 2024. A recent mid-range tablet with a stylus is enough for the Free plan's 12.58 million triangle ceiling.
• iPad works from iPadOS 26 onward, where Safari enables WebGPU. Older iPadOS versions show the app's unsupported-browser notice and stop there.
• Windows tablets and pen displays (a Surface, or a pen display attached to a laptop) work exactly like the desktop app, with the pen features described below.

There is nothing to install on any of them. Open the app, sign in, and the touch layout switches itself on the first time the screen is touched.

Does the pen have pressure?

Yes. Pressing harder makes the stroke stronger, from a light touch that barely grazes the surface up to the full Strength slider value when you press hard. That is the default, and it applies to every brush that has a strength: Draw, Inflate, Crease, Smooth, the paint brushes and the rest.

Pressure can be pointed elsewhere in Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Input:

• Strength (the default) — pressure scales how much each dab moves the surface.
• Size — pressure scales the brush radius instead, so a light touch draws a fine line and a hard press a broad one. The cursor ring always shows the full size, so you can see the ceiling you are working under.
• Both — the two combined, which gives the most brush-like feel for paint and for Draw.
• Off — the pen behaves like a mouse.

A Pressure curve slider sits next to it. Below 1 a light touch already counts for a lot, which suits a heavy hand; above 1 you have to press to get there, which suits a light one. The default of 1 maps pressure straight through.

Will my palm spin the view?

No. Palm rejection is on by default. While the pen is touching the glass, and while it is hovering over it on pens that report hover, every finger touch is ignored — so the hand you rest on the tablet cannot sculpt, orbit or zoom. The window extends for a moment after the pen lifts, so the finger contact that often follows a pen lift is ignored too. Lift the pen away for a beat and finger gestures come back.

If you prefer to orbit with a finger while the pen is still hovering, palm rejection can be turned off in the same Input page.

What do the finger gestures do?

• One finger sculpts with the active brush, exactly like a pen or a mouse. If you use a pen for every stroke, set one finger to Orbits instead in Preferences ▸ Input, and a finger becomes a pure camera control.
• Two fingers orbit, and pinching zooms.
• Three fingers pan.

A one-finger stroke starts a few frames after the finger lands, so the second finger of an orbit gesture never leaves a stray dab on the surface. You will not notice the delay; you will notice that orbiting never marks the model.

What changes in the touch layout?

The touch layout is what makes the app usable without a cursor:

• The whole interface renders at full size instead of the compact desktop density.
• Tool rail buttons grow to 56 px, chips to 40 px, and slider thumbs to 22 px.
• Menu pop-outs, which open on hover with a mouse, open on a tap.
• A Smooth switch in the brush panel's Options row stands in for a held Shift key, and Invert stands in for Ctrl, so no keyboard is needed for the two modifiers you use constantly.
• The options bar under the menus — Home, Persp / Ortho, snap views, Fit, the viewport aids, shading, Symmetry X, Undo and Redo — puts the view controls one tap away, with right-click (a long press on most tablets) opening the materials, lighting rig and grid options.

The layout switches on by itself on a touch device. Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Input ▸ Touch layout forces it on or off if you want the desktop density on a large tablet, or the touch density on a touch-screen laptop.

How do I open and save files on a tablet?

The same way as on the desktop. File ▸ New opens the Projects window with the primitives and your autosaves; File ▸ Import opens the tablet's file picker, which on iPad and Android is the Files app; File ▸ Export saves through the browser's download path into Files. Autosave keeps eight dated snapshots in the browser, so closing the tab mid-sculpt loses nothing.

Native .clay files carry everything — layers, reference images, viewport settings — so a sculpt started on a tablet opens on a desktop and back again without a step in between.

Can I render on a tablet?

Yes, and the render windows were rebuilt for it in the same release. Render ▸ Render image and Render turntable now open as full-window panels: the preview fills the left of the screen at 1280 px, the settings sit in a column on the right, and the finished render opens the same way, so you see it at full size before you save it. On a tablet that is the difference between judging a render and squinting at a thumbnail.

What does tablet sculpting not do yet?

• Hover on pens without hover reporting means no palm-rejection window while the pen is lifted and near the glass; contact still triggers it.
• Pressure on the Clip brushes and Grab is deliberately ignored — a clip is a gesture, and a grab moves the surface by the distance you drag, not by how hard you press.
• Triangle counts are bounded by the tablet's GPU memory, not by Re:Form. A phone-class GPU will run the base sphere and a few subdivisions comfortably; the 80 million triangle working limit is a desktop-card figure.
• Keyboard shortcuts need a keyboard. Everything they do is reachable in the menus, the options bar and the panels; the shortcuts are simply faster when a keyboard is attached.

Does any of this change the plans?

No. Tablet support is part of the app, not a tier. The Free plan runs the full toolset on a tablet up to its 12.58 million triangle ceiling, and Pro lifts the ceiling to 80 million and adds the 4096 px and 8K render sizes, exactly as on the desktop. Pricing is unchanged at $9.99 a month or $99 a year.

If you sculpt on a tablet and something feels wrong under your hand, the contact page reaches the person who wrote the input code. Pen pressure curves in particular were tuned on one hand; yours may want a different number.