With the announcement of Apple’s Project Catalyst (aka UIkit) will Blender be ported to iPadOS?
I think an iPad version would be cool, but it seems like a pipedream to me. Is apple also going to loosen all of the draconian restrictions they have on the environment? IE) can you imagine apple allowing a software to run arbitrary python that has full access to the filesystem? Likely not. Is apple going to be cool with software that doesn’t work in a ‘touch only’ mode (nevermind gestures and multitouch?). Likely not.
I say all of that not to crush the dream, but to show that an iPad version is still a huge can of worms regardless of what apples marketing people say about catalyst. when they unshackle the platform I’ll believe the hype.
Project Catalyst does not seem like it would help porting Blender to iPad in any significant way, since Blender has its own UI toolkit. In principle it could help share some underlying code, but that’s not where the challenge of porting to iPad is.
Maybe not a direct port as the underlying code would need to support iPadOS and its new file system, use of the Apple Pencil and finger gestures vs using a mouse. I’ve tinkered with Blender using Luna Display over the same Network and it is usable. It just takes a different mindset to get used to it. I’m sure with iPadOS now supporting full customization of a mouse and improved code it’s only a matter of time before we see either Blender or another major developer release either a stripped down version that offers for example character modelling or a full version of their software that was once only used on laptops and desktops. Several years ago there were those in the industry that ”pro” software can only be used on workstations and those same few balked at the idea of anything pro running on a laptop. Before that it was pro software that only ran on $50k systems only found in large studios. It only took Autodesk to take the leap with Maya after redesigning it from Power Animator to use on low end graphics cards for others to follow their lead. Question remains will Blender be first or last to make the leap to iPadOS?