DESIGN MAGIC METASHAPE — User Manual

A small Blender add-on that helps clean up boolean cuts in the KIT OPS DESIGN MAGIC KPACK workflow. It wraps the Remesh + Smooth modifier combo behind a one-click panel, plus a quick toggle for switching boolean modifiers between fast and precise solving.

Install

  1. Download the latest extension .zip (e.g. design_magic-1.1.2.zip).
  2. In Blender: Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions.
  3. Open the drop-down at the top-right of that page and choose Install from Disk.
  4. Select the .zip you downloaded.

The add-on enables itself automatically. Requires Blender 4.2 or newer.

Updating from an older legacy add-on install? Disable and remove the old design_magic from Edit > Preferences > Add-ons before installing the extension version, so you don’t end up with two copies registering the same operators.

Where the panel lives

After installing, switch to the 3D Viewport and open the N-panel (press N if it isn’t visible). Look for a tab named ♥Me on the right edge of the viewport. The METASHAPE panel is inside that tab.

3D Viewport > N-panel (press N) > ♥Me tab > METASHAPE

The panel contents change depending on what’s selected and what modifiers the active object already has — see the Control reference section for the rules.

The ? icon in the panel header opens the online documentation at http://cw1.me/dmdocs.

What it does at a glance

Section What it controls
Boolean Quality Flips every Boolean modifier on the active object between EXACT (precise, slower) and FAST (approximate, faster).
METASHAPE Adds (or removes) a Remesh + Smooth modifier stack that produces smooth, organic-feeling boolean cuts.
Resolution LESS / MORE buttons step the smoothness up or down in matched increments. Sliders below let you edit the underlying values directly.
Visibility Toggles the viewport visibility of the METASHAPE modifiers without removing them, so you can compare before/after.

Usage

Smoothing a boolean cut

The classic METASHAPE workflow: take a hard-edged boolean result and turn it into a smooth, organic shape.

  1. Select the object that has the boolean cut you want to soften.
  2. Open the ♥Me tab in the 3D Viewport’s N-panel.
  3. In the METASHAPE panel, click Add METASHAPE.

The button label flips to Remove METASHAPE to confirm it’s now applied. Two modifiers are added to the bottom of the stack:

  • Remesh — voxel mode, voxel size 0.05, smooth shading enabled.
  • Smooth — 50 iterations.

The viewport updates immediately. If the result is too coarse or too smooth for your taste, jump to Tuning the smoothness below.

To revert, click Remove METASHAPE. Both modifiers are removed; the underlying boolean stack is untouched.

Trading speed for precision (Boolean Quality)

Blender’s boolean modifier ships with two solvers:

  • EXACT — accurate, robust to overlapping geometry, slower.
  • FAST — approximate, can fail on tricky overlaps, much faster.

The Boolean Quality button at the top of the panel flips every Boolean modifier on the active object between the two solvers in one click. Use FAST while you’re still moving things around and need responsive viewport updates; switch to EXACT before rendering or when FAST starts producing visible artifacts.

The button label always shows the current state — “Booleans set to EXACT” or “Booleans set to FAST” — and the button is shown as pressed-in when EXACT is active.

The button only appears when the active object actually has at least one Boolean modifier. If you don’t see it, you’re either on the wrong object or you haven’t added a boolean yet.

Tuning the smoothness (Resolution)

Once METASHAPE is applied, the Resolution section gives you four ways to dial it in:

  • LESS — coarser remesh, less smoothing. Doubles the voxel size and halves the Smooth iterations in one step. Use this when the viewport is sluggish or when fine detail is being washed out.
  • MORE — finer remesh, more smoothing. Halves the voxel size and doubles the Smooth iterations. Use this when you need a tighter, smoother surface.
  • Smooth slider — edit the Smooth modifier’s iteration count directly.
  • Voxel Size slider — edit the Remesh modifier’s voxel size directly.

The LESS / MORE buttons are designed to keep the visual character roughly consistent as you scale up and down — finer remesh paired with more smoothing, coarser remesh paired with less.

Limits

The MORE button is clamped to keep things sane:

  • Voxel size is not allowed below 0.015. If you press MORE past that point, you’ll see the warning “Voxel size is too small, please edit directly!” in Blender’s status bar — use the slider if you really need to go finer.
  • Smooth iterations are not allowed above 200. The corresponding warning is “Smooth setting too high, please edit directly!”.

The LESS button is unconstrained — you can flatten the result completely if you keep clicking it.

Comparing before/after (Visibility)

The Visibility toggle at the bottom of the panel hides the METASHAPE modifiers in the viewport without removing them, so you can see the raw boolean result underneath and toggle back to compare.

  • “METASHAPE visibility is OFF” — the Remesh and Smooth modifiers are hidden in the viewport. The button is shown as not pressed.
  • “METASHAPE visibility is ON” — both modifiers render in the viewport. The button is shown as pressed.

Both modifiers toggle together — you can’t show the Remesh without the Smooth, or vice versa, from this panel.

The Visibility toggle only appears once you’ve added METASHAPE to the object. Before that, there’s nothing to hide, so the button is omitted.

Control reference

Every control in the panel, in display order.

Boolean Quality

Property Value
Label “Boolean Quality”
Button “Booleans set to EXACT” or “Booleans set to FAST”
Action Switches the solver field on every Boolean modifier on the active object between EXACT and FAST.
Visible when The active object has at least one Boolean modifier.
Pressed state Pressed when EXACT is active.
Operator id chippops.bool_solver_toggle

METASHAPE

Property Value
Label “METASHAPE”
Button “Add METASHAPE” or “Remove METASHAPE”
Action when adding Appends a Remesh modifier (voxel mode, voxel size 0.05, smooth shading on) and a Smooth modifier (50 iterations) to the active object.
Action when removing Removes any Remesh and Smooth modifiers from the active object.
Visible when An object is active.
Pressed state Pressed when METASHAPE is currently applied (a Smooth modifier exists on the object).
Operator id chippops.meta_shape

Resolution — LESS button

Property Value
Button label “LESS”
Action Doubles the Remesh modifier’s voxel_size and halves the Smooth modifier’s iterations (minimum of 1).
Visible when The active object has a Remesh modifier.
Limits None — you can scale down indefinitely.
Operator id chippops.metashape_x2

Resolution — MORE button

Property Value
Button label “MORE”
Action Halves the Remesh modifier’s voxel_size and doubles the Smooth modifier’s iterations.
Visible when The active object has a Remesh modifier.
Limits Voxel size clamped to ≥ 0.015 (warning: “Voxel size is too small, please edit directly!”). Smooth iterations clamped to ≤ 200 (warning: “Smooth setting too high, please edit directly!”). Warnings appear in Blender’s status bar.
Operator id chippops.metashape_div2

Resolution — Smooth slider

Property Value
Label “Smooth”
Action Edits the Smooth modifier’s iterations value directly.
Visible when The active object has a Smooth modifier (otherwise nothing renders here).

Resolution — Voxel Size slider

Property Value
Label “Voxel Size”
Action Edits the Remesh modifier’s voxel_size value directly.
Visible when The active object has a Remesh modifier (otherwise nothing renders here).

Visibility

Property Value
Label “Visibility”
Button “METASHAPE visibility is ON” or “METASHAPE visibility is OFF”
Action Toggles show_viewport on both the Remesh and Smooth modifiers in lockstep.
Visible when The active object has a Smooth modifier (i.e. METASHAPE has been added).
Pressed state Pressed when visibility is ON.
Operator id chippops.meta_shape_toggle

Header ? icon

Property Value
Action Opens http://cw1.me/dmdocs in your default browser.
Operator id dm.open_help_url

Updates

The add-on checks for new versions roughly once a month. When an update is available, an “Update Available” box appears at the bottom of the panel.

Property Value
Box title “Update Available”
Buttons Blender Market → https://blendermarket.com/products/design-magic
GumRoad → https://chippwalters.gumroad.com/l/designmagic
Check frequency At most once every 30 days.
Source https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chippwalters/versions/main/metashape.json
Dismissable No — the dismiss control is disabled by design. The banner disappears on its own once you’ve upgraded.