INKit - Annotate a 3D View in Blender from an iPad or Android tablet

What?
INKit is the Annotation Workflow I always wanted.
It lets you annotate or paint on a 3D View in Blender from an iPad with Apple Pencil, or from an Android tablet with an active stylus.

Why?
Do you ever feel like you are “going 3D blind”? I use this term to refer to the times you get stuck, orbiting the model endlessly and getting nowhere. You struggle to make decisions. You have a hard time evaluating your past choices and envisioning what to do next. Switching the medium to 2D is a great way to get unstuck. Trying out ideas in 2D forces you to think differently, gives you different tools, and is much faster.

Review past choices. Plan ahead. Leave notes for yourself or others. Explore ideas, compare variations, and iterate in 2D. Paint block-outs. No screenshots, no file transfers. Create text annotations from the tablet’s keyboard. Pick colors from anywhere on the canvas. Your ink is saved, and it stays in Blender.

How?
INKit stores 3D views as canvases, each with its own shading. Any notes you add will always keep the context they were drawn in even when the model changes. The Hyper Pencil tool is how you conveniently pick, create, duplicate, and remove those canvases. There’s no need to hide and reveal annotations and fight layers. Ink shows up on its own, only when and where you need it simply by selecting a canvas.

Your tablet and Blender have to be on the same Wi-Fi. You don’t need to install anything on the tablet, and the connection stays on your local network. Several tablets, or a regular browser, can be connected at the same time, which is useful for design reviews and presentations.

Requirements?
Blender 5.0-5.2 right now, also a tablet with an active stylus IS required, such as an iPad with Apple Pencil or a Samsung Galaxy Tab S with its S Pen.
A capacitive stylus fakes a finger and will not work. Graphics tablet support inside Blender is coming in 1.1.

Where?
I just launched it on Superhive and Gumroad,

See also ink.machin3.io and for documentation: machin3.io/INKit/docs/

Connect to Blender from your Tablet Computer

If the installation was successful and you have activated the addon, you will have access to INKit from the 3D view’s sidebar under the MACHIN3 tab.

This is where you can then set up the connection between your tablet and Blender.

See also:

are you planning to add more standard basic shapes and line drawing?

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I have some plans yeah, just need to see how it goes first, how it’s received. I think the intersection of Blender users who have an iPad or Android tablet with pen, and who appreciate a design workflow like this is fairly small unfortunately. As always I’ve built this for myself though. So more is coming for sure.

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sure it’s not so needed from the whole userbase but I think that some design markets could ask to have something like this.

For example, I’ve seen ChaosGroup put on their forum some previews of 2 new systems to help on client feedbacks and project presentations…so I suppose that some kind of demand about those solutions is in the air.

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You’re on fire my friend. Will buy it asap, good job.