IS 3D DESIGN POSSIBLE ON THE IPAD?
APPLE PENCIL
In recent years there has been rapid progress when it comes to drawing and sculpting on the Apple iPads. For a long time I have been working with a rubber tip stylus for drawing and sketching. That actually worked surprisingly well considering the apparent lack of precision. But each time I tried to connect two lines, the probability of succeeding at the first try was very low. Although it is possible to draw precise drawings by zooming and pinching, most lines had to be redrawn a couple of times. For complex drawings the time adds up, and what would take one hour may take three or four hours.
When Apple finally supported Apple pencil for ordinary iPad models in 2018, things changed a lot. Without the need to buy an expensive iPad Pro, it enabled drawing with pixel precision. It also made it possible to take notes easily. Still there remain some differences compared to drawing with pen and paper, which mainly has to do with friction. When drawing on paper, the pen stops immediately where you want it to stop, whereas in the case of the iPad, that becomes a bit difficult, due to the glossy surface of the screen. The friction problem can of course be solved by putting plastic between the stylus and the surface. But the plastic iPad covers to some extent changes the visual appearance of the screen. Those are also usually permanently attached to the device, which may not be desirable when using other apps. Still that is a way to solve the problem.
IOS APPS FOR DRAWING
The drawing apps available on iPad today have very advanced functionality, and some also include support for old school 2D hand drawn animations. To create animations have become so much easier the last 6-8 years compared to the solutions available earlier. Drawing on an iPad is more or less the same as drawing with a pen on paper, but it also offers lots of functionality for coloring and using layers etc.
The Apple Pencil in combination with these drawing apps, has really made it easy to create digital images in a natural way. Earlier I have tried digital drawing using a stylus on a board beside my desktop computer. Although that is possible to get used to, in my opinion that never felt natural. Drawing on the iPad is near the experience of drawing with pen and paper.
APPS FOR 3D DESIGN
Another interesting area is the 3D design apps for iOS, which have been released in recent years. There is still a long way to go to reach the level of true 3D animation software for desktop computers. But when it comes to 3D sculpting, there are several good options for the iPad. So far I have tried one of them, and I have to say it is very fun and easy to learn. The resulting sculptures can be displayed with a short turntable video, where the 3D model is rotated 360 degrees.
These apps can be considered the starting point for more advanced 3D animation apps to come in the near future. As processing power increases for the iPads, there will likely be more advanced functions in the 3D design apps, supporting more animation features. It will probably be a gradual process, initially with very limited support for animation. A full fledged 3D animation app is probably not on the horizon in a long time, since that kind of calculations requires very high performance processors.
WISH LIST
Assuming an initial simple animation support will be available soon, there are some features I would like to see. One feature that would make a huge difference, would be the ability to choose camera movement path from a small number of paths, for a short animation. That could be camera movement along a straight line towards the sculpture, a circle (as it is today), or an ellipse or any combination of these. Then one could make sculptures of things like houses, and then make a short video with camera movement going between the houses. That is the simplest kind of animation, but it would still make a huge difference.
Another useful feature, which is not directly related to animation, would be to enable more controlled wrapping of images onto objects. For instance it would be nice to use a photo of a brick wall with a window, and in a controlled way wrap it onto a stretched out cube. That would then become a building with a brick wall and lots of windows. With the app I am currently using, it is possible to do this, but it is very much a trial and error activity. Support for more precise wrapping would make a huge difference.
None of this is very difficult, since the basic functionality exist already today. Later on, animations with movement along a chosen path for rigid objects, could be the first step towards creation of 3D animations on the iPad. These improvements would bring the 3D apps closer to being 3D animation software.
RELATED FUNCTIONS AND THE FUTURE
LiDAR scanning is possible already today, where the tablet scans a room and reproduces a 3D model of it. I haven’t tried it, but it seems to work in many cases. As I mentioned in my wish list, if the image data could be wrapped onto 3D objects, it would be possible to create a perfect 3D model of reality including colors.
There is also potential for various iPad applications in the areas of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Already today there is some support for that, but as always there is a lot more to come.
Looking further into the future, perhaps initially with the Pro versions of the iPads, there will likely be complete 3D design programs. As mentioned, one should note that 3D rendering generates an extreme processor load, even for desktop computers. The latest iPad Pro has processing power similar to laptop computers – from that perspective it should be possible to do some 3D design of simpler scenes already today. The created 3D animations, could also be integrated with the device camera to produce augmented reality apps. The tasks performed on desktop computers will sooner or later move over to the tablets when the processing power allows it.
For the time being the animations that can be created on iPad, is limited to mostly 2D animations and simpler 3D animations, like the turntable video clips in the sculpting app. It will be interesting to see the development of 3D design apps the coming years.