Paint fuzzy skin where you want it: grippy handles, fur, extrusion and ripple
Fuzzy skin no longer covers the whole part. Paint it on a handle or an animal, pick displacement, extrusion or combined mode, try ripple, see how far the surface moves.
- Set fuzzy skin to Painted only and paint just the grip or the fur. Mating faces and show faces stay smooth.
- Displacement moves the nozzle in and out: sharp texture, but thinner, porous walls. Extrusion varies the flow instead: solid walls, about half the texture.
- Keep fuzzy thickness at or below the outer wall line width. With 0.4 mm lines and 0.2 mm layers, extrusion mode tops out around 0.35 mm.
- Ripple gives an even, woven-looking wave. The count is per closed loop, so it suits shapes without holes or separate islands.
Fuzzy skin tells the slicer to jitter the outer wall in and out at random, so the surface ends up rough, a bit like textured injection-moulded plastic. What changed is that it no longer has to cover the whole part. OrcaSlicer and PrusaSlicer let you paint where it goes, and recent OrcaSlicer adds a flow-based mode and an even ripple pattern. A toy can now have a grippy handle and a furry body while its show faces and joints stay smooth.
This picks up from the basic fuzzy skin section in smooth surfaces. Setting names follow OrcaSlicer 2.4 and PrusaSlicer 2.9; the numbers assume a 0.4 mm nozzle and 0.2 mm layers.
How fuzzy skin works
The slicer splits each layer’s outer loop into closely spaced points and pushes each point off the original line at random. Two settings matter:
- Fuzzy skin thickness is how far a point may move. Prusa’s guide describes it as measured perpendicular to the wall, in both directions. OrcaSlicer recommends keeping it below the outer wall line width.
- Fuzzy skin point distance is the average spacing between random points. Smaller means finer texture and longer G-code.
In OrcaSlicer’s code the defaults are 0.2 mm thickness and 0.3 mm point distance. Some printer profiles ship different values, so check your own profile.
How painting works
PrusaSlicer has a Fuzzy Skin tool in the left toolbar. Select the model and paint. Brushes are Sphere, Circle and Triangle (Triangle paints whole mesh triangles and has no size). Smart Fill floods a region up to sharp edges. Shift + left-click or right-click erases. Thickness and point distance still come from the global Layers and perimeters settings, so every painted area gets the same values.
OrcaSlicer ported the tool from PrusaSlicer in 2.3.1-alpha. Its Fuzzy skin setting has these options:
| Option | Where the texture goes |
|---|---|
| Painted only | only the painted areas |
| Contour | all outer walls |
| Hole | walls of holes and cutouts |
| Contour and hole | both |
| All walls | every wall, inner ones too; much slower to slice and print |
| Disabled (default) | off, painted areas included |
If you paint while it is Disabled, OrcaSlicer warns you and offers to switch that object to Painted only.
Paint only the faces that hands or eyes meet. Leave faces that fit, latch or sit on the bed smooth.
Three ways to make the texture
OrcaSlicer 2.3.1-alpha added Fuzzy skin generator mode, which picks how the roughness is made:
| Mode | How | Good | Bad |
|---|---|---|---|
| Displacement (default) | moves the nozzle sideways off the path | sharp texture | weaker, porous walls; more shaking; slower |
| Extrusion | keeps the path, varies the flow | solid walls, no pores, fastest | texture about half as strong |
| Combined | a mix of both | almost as sharp as displacement, walls stay solid | slower than extrusion |
Extrusion and Combined work only with the Arachne wall generator. If you still use Classic, switch first.
This choice matters for toys that get squeezed and dropped. With displacement, the outer wall gets thinner wherever the nozzle moves inward. For a part that takes load, use combined or extrusion.
Ripple and the other noise types
Fuzzy skin noise type changes what the randomness looks like:
| Noise | Looks like | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Classic | even random, coarse | grips, anti-slip faces |
| Perlin | smooth, natural variation | fur, stone |
| Billow | like Perlin but clumpier | fluffy fur, clouds |
| Ridged Multifractal | sharp ridges, marble-like | rock, bark |
| Voronoi | cells, each pushed in or out | patchwork, scales |
| Ripple | regular repeating waves | woven look, spiral grips |
Ripple arrived in OrcaSlicer 2.4.0 with three extra settings: Number of ripples per layer (default 15), Ripple offset (50%) and Layers between ripple offset (1). The count is per closed loop. On a shape with holes, or a layer split into several islands, each loop gets a different wavelength and the pattern stops lining up.
Perlin and the other coherent noises also have feature size (default 1.0 mm), the base size of each blob. Bigger value, bigger blobs.
Worked example: a 30 mm toy handle
A round handle, 30 mm across, 0.4 mm outer wall line, 0.2 mm layers.
- Circumference = π × 30 ≈ 94.2 mm.
- Ripple at 15 per layer → each wave is 94.2 ÷ 15 ≈ 6.3 mm long, easy to feel. With a 50% offset every layer, the phase flips every 0.2 mm and the surface looks woven. For a finer pattern, 30 ripples → about 3.1 mm each.
- Maximum thickness in extrusion mode. The in-app help says a line cannot get thinner than roughly 15–25% of the layer height, so 0.4 − (0.2 × 0.25) = 0.35 mm. Go above that and slicing fails.
- Size drift. At 0.3 mm thickness with points moving both in and out, each side wanders ±0.3 mm, so the diameter sits somewhere around 29.4–30.6 mm. Fine for a handle; enough to make a shaft that goes into a hole tight or loose.
Print two or three short 10 mm sleeves first and compare them in your hand. Each takes a few minutes.
Toy uses: handles and fur
Handles. Paint only where fingers go. Classic or Ripple, 0.2–0.3 mm thick, combined mode if the part takes torque. Leave the end that plugs into the toy smooth.
Fur. Teddy bear, cat, dinosaur: paint the body, leave eyes, nose and base clear. Use Perlin or Billow and raise feature size for bigger, fluffier blobs, keeping thickness within the wall line. It is still rough plastic, not soft fur, but a dry-brushed coat of paint makes the texture pop (see sanding, priming and painting).
First layer. Apply fuzzy skin to first layer is off by default. Leave it off: a rough first layer sticks worse.
Common mistakes
- Painting, then leaving Fuzzy skin on Disabled. Every painted area is skipped. It must be Painted only.
- All walls on the whole part. Slicing and printing take much longer for inner walls nobody sees.
- Thickness wider than the wall line. Displacement walls get holes; extrusion mode will not slice.
- Ripple on a part full of holes. Each loop gets a different wavelength and the pattern looks broken.
- Forgetting the size drift. Fuzzy skin on a snap-fit or shaft, then it will not assemble.
Sources
FAQ
I painted the model but the preview shows no texture.
Check that Fuzzy skin is set to Painted only. On Disabled, painted areas are ignored. OrcaSlicer warns you and offers to switch that object to Painted only.
Can I put fuzzy skin on a screw hole or a joint?
Better not. A surface that wanders in and out can be off by a few tenths of a millimetre. Paint only faces that do not have to fit anything.
Extrusion mode throws an error when I slice.
Extrusion and Combined need the Arachne wall generator, and the fuzzy thickness must fit inside the wall line. Lower the thickness in 0.05 mm steps until it slices.
Circuits and code were tested on sample boards. Boards differ in pin layout, so check your board's pinout before you power anything.