Blender on iPad Is Finally Happening | Hacker News Reader

Blender on iPad Is Finally Happening

creativebloq.com

86 pointswalterbell44 comments

I tried a demo, the Blender ipad interface expects a keyboard and mouse, pen and gesture are still being worked on. There was a bug with gestures, but another app had the same bug. The pen was being demoed.

The interface is flexible but probably want to have some interface presets out of the box.

Edited:

From the ui I couldn't tell it was a special build for ipad.

Content and extensions are currently hard coded.

Those Microsoft Surface pen tablet interfaces are more popular than Wacom tablets with some artists. iPads are great in many ways too, but offer reduced choices for application options.

Enabling Blender pressure sensitivity is trivial when the drivers aren't fighting you every step of the way. =3

Wacom is still king. The Cintiq Pro has kept them going through all the iPad hype. There’s nothing like it.

What makes it so good? I guess their target audience already knows what it is, but I looked on their website and I can barely figure out what it even does.

The Wacom stylus are pressure and angle sensitive pen input devices, and some pros work on non-screen surfaces to digitize sketches and sculpts etc.

Very common in video and media art work... also popular for Asian language glyph calligraphy inputs, but for regular users it is an acquired taste to put it mildly. =3

Current Apple pencils also support pressure and tilt sensitivity. Lots of people are using an iPad with software like ProCreate to draw, which is a lot more portable than a laptop with a Cintiq hooked up to it.

Procreate is very good for sketching, but the iPad ergonomics is not fully there for doing a full painting. Especially with the lack of keys. And a lot of pros are using the larger (24“+) display of the wacom.

We found running a recent Intel pen tablet is nice for some applications like the full blender plugin ecosystem support, commercial and free offerings.

Some treasure:

https://github.com/wonderunit/storyboarder/releases

https://krita.org/en/

Avoid in commercial use-case: https://github.com/Acly/krita-ai-diffusion

Seems ridiculous, but the 2nd paid seat you get works well for portable non-intensive tasks: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

The perpetual CSP or CS/EX license for iPad/MS Surface/Wacom is pretty much a necessity for the users, as in a commercial setting it is the only practical option for many use-cases (Wacom often included a free 2 year trial): https://www.clipstudio.net/en/dl/

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Blender plugins:

"Blob fusion" similar to ZSpheres with Metaballs/SDFs: https://bartoszstyperek.gumroad.com/l/ahwvli

3D Normal Map Painting: https://tradigital.gumroad.com/l/brushflow

Sanctus Procedural Textures: https://sanctus.gumroad.com/l/SLibrary

CC0 Assets: https://polyhaven.com/plugins/blender

Krita + Blender + Brushflow = almost a complete toolkit. Substance Painter is just so good. It's the one thing I wish Blender would focus more on - Texture Painting/Layers. Painting albedo is easy enough to do but the others are a nightmare to do in Blender.

Blender material node workflows are non-obvious, and indeed many find Adobe products easier to learn.

Sometimes parametric options can be fairly useful when combining displacement modifiers:

https://tinynocky.gumroad.com/l/tinyeye

https://kuhantilope.gumroad.com/l/ultimate-skin

Where a few people make it look deceptively easy =3

Yeah, I tend to stick to game models with a baking step. Realistic humanoids is the pinnacle of 3D art and I’m no where near. I buy mine like everyone else.

Hard surface modeling and environments, vehicles and ships, props and guns is what I like. Rigging simple IK. I’m always trying to improve but I lack the time between work/life/sleep. When I retire I’ll devote my time to perfecting the humanoid sculpt.

Most of the time in a production environment people will just slightly modify rigged models and mocap (content licenses get messy fast, but studio time with actors is also expensive):

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/explainers/digital-humans...

https://www.reallusion.com/ICLONE/

Or modify low-poly content from an asset generator:

https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/mpfb/

Getting the physics to look right is hard, as people are very good at spotting motion errors in baked mocap data. Re-targeting plugins for UE do work:

https://artell.gumroad.com/l/auto-rig-pro

https://fbra.gumroad.com/l/Faceit

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/live-link-face/id1495370836

I would advise against blender plugins that acquired mocap from unknown sources like research publications that rarely place the data into public domain, as the performance rights are not necessarily legally clean even if someone paid for or found some community asset pack.

Again, it heavily depends on who you have on a team, project time/budget, and copyright/legal-encumbrance risk tolerance ("AI" is like shark-fishing with your arm). =3

At this point, the pros are on screen surfaces like the Cintiq. Only hobbyists are using the Intuos non-screen surfaces.

It takes a bit of practice to get used to it, for sure, but there's virtually NO learning curve for the screen based surfaces like the Cintiq.

I loved SketchUp's interface, made tons of 3D "art" back then, and had high hopes Blender could fill the void when SketchUp was sold off Google and went subscription-based. But the various interface refactorings did nothing for casual 3D modelling and Blender is still as unintuitive and deserving of the "vi of 3D modelling" label as ever, focussing on undiscoverable keyboard nav and features for pro workflows spending 364d/year in it. What's the point of porting it to iPad OS, esp. when a keyboard and mouse is required? I even own iPad hardware with keyboard and pen and might give it a try but not if it's just a 1:1 port. Anyone checked out Blender for Artists (bforartists.de)?

I learnt basic Blender 3d modelling and UV mapping in a day, to the level and beyond of "create 2d plane and extrude" that I was doing in SketchUp.

Its UI genuinely isn't that inscrutable these days.

I've made a few failed attempts at embracing blender before - how did you pick it up in a day?

It was this video tutorial that I used:

https://youtu.be/sbCW0Cs7aI8?si=lOIbHEgtQhE3775e

It covers the absolute basics of navigating the Blender UI before it even gets into How2Modelling. I found it remarkably clear.

When I first started using Blender I found it to be an insane application that I would never be able to like. It breaks every possible convention for user interfaces. After getting over the quite long initial hurdle I started loving the interface and how the core logic applies to all elements to the app, e.g moving something on a timeline has the same command as moving an object in 3D space. It's not perfect but now I miss the workflow in all other visual creative applications. I would love a vector app with a blender like interface. It's the first open source creative app that I actually found good. But Blender most certainly is the "vi of 3D modeling".

I am probably a minority, but if anything, Apple should show Blender Foundation some real appreciation for bringing such great software to their platform.

Like this?

Apple joins Blender Development Fund: https://www.blender.org/press/apple-joins-blender-developmen...

Apple actually has hired developers working on Blender, including for this project. And Apple is also part of the Blender development fund.

I really wish Freecad would move as fast as Blender does. I mean they are doing great work and the 1.0 release also works really well, but it's really fascinating to see how much progress an open source project can make once there is a bit of funding.

Not Blender, but I made a 3D modeling app (https://noumenal.app) for iOS designed from the ground up for a touch interface, simple enough that my kids use it.

‘Not available in your country or region’. Why did you not publish it worldwide?

I had to choose between putting my home address and phone number in the EU app store, renting a P.O. box, or letting my app be removed from that region because of the Digital Services Act. I haven't made enough from the app to justify that.

I'll probably end up using my personal address and phone number. They're probably easy enough to find, and it'd be cool if someone came to visit anyway.

Unless you're talking about Russia.

16 days ago, 105 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44671802

The creativebloq.com page is hard to read with all the SEO links to affiliate ecommerce link slop ("best drawing tablets", "best 3D modelling software", "best 3D modelling apps").

Is there no good web based 3D editor that works in the browser?

There's clara. Been around for 10+ years? https://clara.io/

https://web.autocad.com/

https://www.onshape.com/

There's lots of simpler ones or ones for specific needs

https://www.figuro.io/

https://www.tinkercad.com/ (for 3d printing?)

https://sketchup.trimble.com/en/plans-and-pricing/sketchup-f...

https://spline.design/

Looks like those are not open source?

I think I have seen people who do 3D modeling objects to later print them on 3D-printers use open source software in the browser. But I could be wrong.

A lot of them use onshape. In-browser but not open source. Free for public use though. Not sure what you’ve seen.

Theoretically you could compile Blender via Emscripten into a webpage. Kind of like someone compile Audacity into a webpage.

https://wavacity.com/

Of course I feel like web based editor would have accounts, cloud storage, multi-user (like Google Docs, Figma), and a bunch of other things, streaming files, streaming textures, etc.... Still, it might run with no mods :P

Three.js editor, Tinkercad, and PlayCanvas are all capable browser-based 3D editors with different strengths (modeling, CAD, and game development respectively).

Waiting for a decade for good Web based 3D graphical debuggers, other than coloured pixels....

I can't imagine trying to do real work on an iPad. But, I guess there are people now that can't image the inverse?

generally, I agree with you on this matter. However, I can see a real user case for this when texturing an object. In fact I believe that the Blender Foundation would be better of dedicating the entire app to this purpose. Currently, texture painting in Blender is a royal PITA. A dedicated iPad texturing app that seamlessly integrates to Blender would be a very exciting prospect.

I use it for real work, but it’s not the only device I use for work. However it fits a pretty specific work niche for me. With instant on and built in cellular with a Logitech folio case, it’s a hyper portable, yet comfortable to use fast and powerful device that allows me to do about 80% of work needs practically anywhere I can get a decent cellular signal. So for me if I need to be away from my desk for any reason, but stay connected its nearly like I am right in my office.

The best camera is the one you have, and the best computer is often the one you have.

I’ve been considering getting the folio, because I can no longer find the Magic Keyboard for my generation iPad (m1).

Kinda annoying that they don’t continue peripherals for their older devices

I like the folio, but have had an issue where the rubber material around the sides will distort around the speaker/vent hole (after about a year). My first one (on a first gen 11” pro), I warranty replaced but the replacement eventually did the same thing.

I upgraded the the 11” M4 pro, bought another Logitech folio, which I was hopeful for because they changed the design, but it had a similar rubber distortion issue. When it cropped up I was outside the warranty but due to the design change that added some plastic around that area and I was able to fix with a bit of superglue.

Despite this issue, I think as far as keyboard cases go they are the best. Would still buy again.

Appreciate this comment!

The fact that despite these issues you still recommend it is quite telling. I'll see if I can get one for my M1 iPad. Typing with the on-screen keyboard just isn't that convenient for longer sessions.

It's much more useful for artists than programmers.

It's too bad, I know a ton of devs who would buy one ASAP if Apple just allowed JIT in apps.

I love mine (typing on it now) for content consumption and social applications.

I wrote a programming book fully on my iPad, including the coding examples, often while traveling abroad.

But, I usually had it hooked up to a 60% keyboard and mouse, and I SSHd into an EC2 instance for the programming parts.

Still, pretty fun experience.

Yeah that's really the only viable system for doing coding projects.

It's a shame when this thing has a whole M4 chip with 16GB RAM yet is less capable natively programing than my x200 from '08.

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