Autodesk SketchBook Mobile in the iPhone

[Eduardo Rolon]

Interesting

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=13872203

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwYm5YhA0pQ

Buying now, to try.

[Thomas Holm]

That means Autodesk is doing their homework in Cocoa programming...
The implications might be scary, for GS, that is...

[Eduardo Rolon]

I think Sketchbook was part of the Alias acquisition and that is why there is a Mac version.

BTW it is fun though it will take time to get used to it. Feels like finger painting.

[Karl Ottenstein]

ejrolon wrote:
BTW it is fun though it will take time to get used to it. Feels like finger painting.

Reading that and watching the video, it sure looks like it would benefit from the larger screen of the much-rumored tablet that Apple may be working on.

BTW, I assume this would run on an iPod touch also?

Karl

[Thomas Holm]

ejrolon wrote:
I think Sketchbook was part of the Alias acquisition and that is why there is a Mac version...

Yes, but Sketchbook Pro was made some years ago, cross-platform (XP + OSX, both Intel and PPC) and most probably a Carbon thing, like Photoshop, and Archicad, because that was the easiest way to develop cross-platform before.
This mobile iPhone version is Cocoa, because that's the only API available for iPhone. And it's new, which means they currently have developers working this way. This didn't exist at the time of the Alias buyout that was 2005, two years before the iPhone.

[Anonymous]

Thomas wrote:

ejrolon wrote:
I think Sketchbook was part of the Alias acquisition and that is why there is a Mac version...

Yes, but Sketchbook Pro was made some years ago, cross-platform (XP + OSX, both Intel and PPC) and most probably a Carbon thing, like Photoshop, and Archicad, because that was the easiest way to develop cross-platform before.
This mobile iPhone version is Cocoa, because that's the only API available for iPhone. And it's new, which means they currently have developers working this way. This didn't exist at the time of the Alias buyout that was 2005, two years before the iPhone.

Hi,

I was one of the original developers of Sketchbook (Technical lead). Sketchbook on the mac was a native Cocoa application right from the start. Sketchbook was based on a painting engine I had created and worked on since 1994 (parts of the brush engine date back to Alias StudioPaint). The UI for Sketchbook pro was almost entirely platform independent, but with the appropriate pieces either talking natively to Cocoa or Win32.

Sketchbook Mobile is based on the same platform neutral and highly optimized multi-layer painting engine as Sketchbook, but with a new Cocoa UI designed for smaller touch screens.

These days I'm the tech lead on Autodesk Mudbox, but I still occasionally help out on Sketchbook. The guys currently working on it are top-notch -- as you can see from their work with SketchBook mobile.

-- Ian.

[Thomas Holm]

Hi Ian,
thanks for posting. I was obviously wrong about the Carbon part. But the interesting things remain - it's fully possible to do cross-platform development using Cocoa - and Autodesk has top-notch Cocoa developers!
You wouldn't take a position at Graphisoft, would you? 😉

PS
I also find it interesting that you are watching this forum. I have a feeling Graphisoft can't leave the Mac platform unattended for too long, if they had any thoughts in that direction.

[Anonymous]

I have absolutely no idea about this -- but I note that if Autodesk was planning to port Revit to OS X, they wouldn't have stripped out OpenGL support and gone to Direct X. We've taken that to mean that we're not going to see Revit on OS X any time soon...

[Thomas Holm]

metanoia wrote:
I have absolutely no idea about this -- but I note that if Autodesk was planning to port Revit to OS X, they wouldn't have stripped out OpenGL support and gone to Direct X. We've taken that to mean that we're not going to see Revit on OS X any time soon...

Hi Wes

I don't think I mentioned Revit?

Whatever, I seem to recall there are other cross-platform developers that support DirectX on the PC and OpenGL on the Mac, so that doesn't have to be a problem. The OSX platform has a certain momentum at the moment, so it would really surprise me if Autodesk didn't keep their eyes open. But I'm just trying to keep Nemetschek AG and GS on their toes, you know

[Anonymous]

Hehe -- no you didn't, of course -- but I was thinking about it because there are so many of us who would love to switch and ditch Windows!

I'm beginning to think that mobile devices like the iPhone have some utility on site as a field review / markup device. That you can do some pretty decent art on the phone is almost a proof of concept!