Blender for iPad development on hold after prioritizing Android tablets

Last summer, the team behind the open-source 3D creation software Blender made news after confirming iPad Pro support was planned. Seven months later, however, the project appears to be on hold as an Android tablet version takes priority.

Back in July, the Blender team acknowledged the need to bring the app to the tablet era:

Multi-touch interfaces like tablets have been common for years, but only recently thanks to increased processing power, have they started to serve as primary computing devices. To support Blender’s mission of making 3D technology accessible to everyone, it’s important to fully embrace these platforms.

Some of these devices include Apple iPad, Microsoft Surface, Huawei MatePad, and the Wacom MovinkPad, among others.

Testing initially began with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil:

The idea is to bring the full power of Blender to these devices. This requires adapting to platform-specific paradigms, but also to offer more task-oriented user interfaces with reduced information density. This will be achieved by extending existing input methods, and improving workspaces and application templates, running on top of a regular Blender build.

The initial platform where this idea will be tested is the Apple iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, followed by Android and other graphic tablets in the future.

But it sounds like development has progressed more in the Android space. YouTuber Brad Colbow has brought attention to the current status:

The team behind Blender for iPad’s development confirms in a public comment that “this project is on hold until further notice,” adding that “the team will instead focus on the Android tablets first instead.”

Fortunately, it doesn’t sound like Blender for iPad is being abandoned entirely. There’s certainly no hardware limitation on the iPad Pro these days as performance is equal to Macs. It just may take longer to get the right level of attention on the project. For now, we’re left with this video teaser from last year:

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