Improving UX in Blender with iPad/Sidecar/Catalina

Support Basics & Interface
1

I spent a couple of hours in Blender using Apple’s new Sidecar feature and was surprised how well it worked. Generally, there is zero perceived lag in viewport navigation, or most tasks like modelling, scultping or even texture painting.

But there are two things where I got stuck.

  1. Most basic tasks like grab, extrude, bevel are a no-go on the iPad. Because for the cursor to move the user has to place down the Pencil and drag. The iPad doesn’t register hovering and just moving the cursor, like on Wacom devices. So placing down the Pencil ends the operation.

In most cases there are work arounds, like constantly switching to gizmo based transform operations, or numeric input for things like extrude, bevel and so on.

And here goes the question: is there a way to globally switch all operations from “move” to “drag”? Or at least how can I change the behaviour per tool?

  1. Grease pencil would be great with Sidecar, but is the only area that lags and is not useable. I hope this will be addressed in future releases.
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2

Globally, no. Each operator has its own keys, and most modal operators also have their own modal map. They’re not following any unified setting base. Each one would have to be manually tweaked (except when it’s literally the same operator with different default options). And there may even be operators that can’t support such input scheme (can’t think off the top of my head of any, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any).
Per tool, look in the keymaps. For example, search for “Bevel” and expand it, you’ll see a “Bevel Modal Map” as a sub-layout inside. There you can tweak which actions confirm or cancel the operator, etc.

3

Thanks, that’s a start. I am just looking at all the keymap settings for bevel. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. Any idea what I need to change here?

4

Probably look for the “Confirm” entry in modal map, and where it’s set to Left Mouse Press, change it to Left Mouse Release.

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5

Yes, that‘s it. Thanks!

6

One more thing came up: the so called “radial controls”, a.k.a. setting the brush size by hitting “f” doesn’t appear to have a confirm setting. Is that correct or am I missing something?

7

Yep, wm.radial_control seems hardcoded, unfortunately. There’s even a “TODO: fix hardcoded events” in the source :crazy_face:

8

Hehe, OK, just another Todo, right? Anyway Your input was very helpful. thanks!

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9

thanks man, you made my day! although, how do you do this for all the transform commands??
like, if you set one in global, does it change that command in every mode?

10

also Ive found a usefull website about the topic:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/editors/preferences/input.html?highlight=tablet

11

Nice, thanks. Waiting for new MacBook Pro to arrive until I can start testing and tweaking.

12

Hey man, any fixes for the drawing lag in Grease Pencil/Sidecar?

13

Same problem here. I can’t find absolutely nothing about this issue. Also Sidecar/Apple Pencil is working smoothly with other programs like photoshop. I have a 2019 MacBook Pro 13" 2,3 Ghz 16GB RAM. THis is frustrating :frowning: Thanks for any help.

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