How to Enable Cavity Shading in Blender

Cavity shading in Blender enhances 3D viewport visibility by emphasizing edges, crevices, and fine details on your models without affecting the final render. This guide provides a quick, step-by-step walkthrough on how to activate cavity shading in the Solid display mode and customize its settings for an improved modeling workflow.

To turn on cavity shading in Blender, follow these steps:

  1. Switch to Solid Display Mode: In the top-right corner of the 3D Viewport, click the Solid shading button (the plain white circle icon).
  2. Open the Viewport Shading Menu: Click the small down-arrow icon right next to the shading mode buttons to open the Viewport Shading popover menu.
  3. Enable Cavity: Locate the Options section near the bottom of the menu and check the box next to Cavity.

Once activated, you can fine-tune the cavity effect using the settings directly below the checkbox:

  • Type: Select World, Screen, or Both.
    • World: Calculates shading based on the 3D geometry in scene space, giving a consistent depth effect regardless of your camera angle.
    • Screen: Applies a 2D post-processing effect based on your current view direction, which is ideal for high-poly sculpting.
  • Ridge: Controls the brightness and intensity of exposed edges.
  • Valley: Controls the darkness and intensity of recessed crevices.
  • Distance / Attenuation: Adjusts how far the edge and crevice highlights extend across the surface geometry.

Enabling cavity shading makes complex mesh structures much easier to read, helping you spot topological errors, fine details, and overlapping geometry instantly.