I remember a year ago or so there was some interest in porting Blender to Android. Is there still such a port ? Anyone knows is there any progress made ?
I think iOS was a no go because of Apple not liking GPL.
i did a search to the forum and found no relevant thread.
Not possible. Blender right now can’t be used without a keyboard. Navigation alone would not be possible.
There was a GSOC project that enabled .blend file reading and viewing. Any real interaction beyond that seems unlikely.
By default perhaps. My Nexus 7 works just fine with my Apple keyboard and mouse, so that shouldn’t be the limitation.
I had a dream where my device. (tablet,smartphone etc) was linked through WI-FI to blender and I had the UI on my phone and while I was blending I was able to use the device aswell… Was a weird but awesome dream.
You can get software to remotely access your home computer, it works reasonably well with my Galaxy Nexus…but never really found a use for it. I wonder if using a tablet, combined with an external keyboard/mouse, could result in a useable experience?
Or if remote access is possible while using the PC you could just bring up the keypad on the tablet and use it from there? Would be exactly the same as using a keyboard but I think it would be easier to use given that a tablet is not as bulky as a keyboard.
Weeks ago I have buy an Android Stick for my parents. This is a small device with hdmi output. It is very cheap. (You can buy 4core CPU stick near 100 dollars.)
It is incredible I must say. It works with mouse, keyboard etc. It is better than a tablet I think, on a big television.
So I think Blender must go Android too!
Yes its possible to port Blender to Android. Using a keyboard and a mouse with a table pretty much defies the purpose of the tablet in the first place. Multitouch excels in extremely complex interfaces like Blender. As a matter of fact as a musician I use tablets to control my synthesiser setup via wifi midi via tablet which is far more complex than the one used by Blender. My analogue synthesizer alone has over 800 parameters that can modulate each other leading to millions of combinations.
But my questions was not if this is possible , but whether there is such port , apparently there is not. I will have to communicate with the developers themselves.
I have talked about this with Ton a year ago and he said they were interested into introducing a cut down version to Android but that it was not an immediate goal. There are already 3d apps available for Android and iOS and also sculpting apps too. I have used one years ago with my G1 iPad.
Whatever for? It’s slow enough on beefy workstations…
Even on a less powerful Android device, I’d love the ability to create simple objects while I’m not home, maybe little things to help fill up a scene.
Call it Blender Go, the Blender desktop companion.
@kilon: I think you didn’t read fweeb’s post correctly, the google summer of code project “Swiss Cheese” had the result that blender itself was ported, together with blender internal render. There was a thread somwere here not so long ago where people posted rendertimes of their android devices.
Sadly the download link isn’t available anymore on blender’s ftp server because of recent changes but I actually tested it on my android tablet but I couldn’t do anything with the touchscreen. Maybe there are mirrors of the apk on the internet or you try to build it on your own.
I went back and read the thread Fweeb linked more thoroughly. First time I just skimmed through the first page where there is no mention about blender port. Ah nice it works even partly on Android. Thanks I did not realise that Fweeb was talking about Blender itself. I will go back and read that thread page by page now.
I guess the future will rely on tablet - touchscreen interfaces and so blender will change to some new libs to support it.
Ok, I was able to encounter the apk thanks to Fweebs links: http://download.blender.org/demo/android/BlenderPlayer_08_02_12_4.apk
Its named BlenderPlayer but when I load a simple blend file with it it loads blenders UI and after I load the factory default I get this:
They’re popular toys. You can create sounds with toys, of course - that can be a lot of fun. If they are used in serious production, it’s for novelty. Touchscreens are not good interfaces, except for their generality. Compared to the dedicated physical widgets which sound engineers are used to, they have terrible haptics.
Similarly, we have 3D toy applications. So far, nobody has come up with an interface that isn’t inferior in pretty much every respect, compared to what we currently use on the Desktop.
That is not to say it can’t happen, but if it happens, it’ll probably not be done in the framework of Blender. If anybody had an interesting concept that they’d want to implement, they would have already done so.
I know you are one of those people that use “toy” to devalue the importance of tablets in modern world but I am afraid you barking at wrong tree. I am not that closed minded. You see toy 3d apps, I see 3d apps that are quite capable in making 3d geometry and sculpting and able to export to formats or in some case directly to the desktop.
Especially for music apps that are my expertise I can tell you right now that there tons of capable apps for tablet, from simple toyish music apps for people that are none musicians to DAWs ported to tablet and even modular synthesizers solely geared towards professional musician that make a living out of this.
You are years too late to call tablets a “toy” they have penetrated pretty much in any profession already and have been proven an extremely valuable tool. And even though others may be impressed by Bred Victor’s presentations, his ideas are just common logic and I see nothing in what he says that proves that multi touch is anything less than superior to a keyboard and a mouse. I think he is a very good presenter, but in the end his ideas for me are just standard stuff.
Tablets are not just popular , they are extremely popular . Together with smartphones they eat the desktop market alive. Its niche markets like 3d , music making, extreme gaming etc which are highly demanding on processing power that keep desktops and laptops alive. Its all going to be inside a tablet sooner or later. “And You can take that to the bank” .
Until Blender can be used without a keyboard, trying to make Blender work on a tablet is just a waste of time. Like I’ve mentioned in an old thread, when designing a UI it should be from the perspective of a tablet user, even long before tablets were invented. UI or GUI is Graphical User Interface. It means all the tools, commands, property panels, etc. should be accessible via a pointing device. Keyboard shortcuts can always come later or at the same time. Now, before someone jumps in and make the usual, predictable response saying I’m advocating keyboardless Blender, that’s a knee jerk response. I repeat, keyboard shortcuts will always be there. They’re not going to disappear. This is nothing new. You can use 3ds max without a keyboard, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it with one. Same thing with apps like Modo, Rhino, MOI, SketchUp, AutoCAD, etc.
Tablets have their place, I use them myself for what they are good at. Even if you consider these applications capable, they’re still clearly inferior. There’s nothing to suggest that tablets are a worthwhile market to develop such applications for, either.
Especially for music apps that are my expertise I can tell you right now that there tons of capable apps for tablet, from simple toyish music apps for people that are none musicians to DAWs ported to tablet and even modular synthesizers solely geared towards professional musician that make a living out of this.
I’m aware of these applications and I own some of them, their main appeal being that they don’t represent an investment of thousands of dollars worth of music equipment. But they are, as well, clearly inferior. I find it hard to believe that anyone can make a living of just using these applications, seeing how hard that is even for professionals with decent equipment.
You are years too late to call tablets a “toy” they have penetrated pretty much in any profession already and have been proven an extremely valuable tool. And even though others may be impressed by Bred Victor’s presentations, his ideas are just common logic and I see nothing in what he says that proves that multi touch is anything less than superior to a keyboard and a mouse. I think he is a very good presenter, but in the end his ideas for me are just standard stuff.
I didn’t call tablets themselves toys, they have claimed the markets where they work best. There’s however no reason to believe that these small devices are going to claim professional markets that are dominated by multi-screen setups and workstation-class computers.
Also, it’s common logic that if touchscreens were superior to keyboards, we wouldn’t have people buying keyboards for use with tablets.
Tablets are not just popular , they are extremely popular . Together with smartphones they eat the desktop market alive. Its niche markets like 3d , music making, extreme gaming etc which are highly demanding on processing power that keep desktops and laptops alive. Its all going to be inside a tablet sooner or later.
Affordable laptops have eaten desktops alive. People aren’t replacing laptops with tablets however, they are augmenting them. Tablets are cheap secondary machines. There is no market for expensive tablets - whereas the market for expensive laptops is the most profitable.
Also, computers now are not getting noticeably faster/better for the average consumer, anymore. They can now do it all: Edit Photos, play HD video, store all the music… they evenrender all these terrible dynamic websites almost fluently.
There’s less and less incentive to buy a new computer at all, but not everybody has a tablet yet. Eventually, that market is going to level off, as well.
Manufacturers are aware of this, of course - that’s why you see design trending towards planned obsolescence.