New Autodesk Impression Illustration Application!

[archislave]

I discovered this link on http://bimania.blogspot.com through a link to another blog. (by the way - I tried to leave feedback but you have to create a new blog to do so and I am not ready)

Autodesk Impression looks amazing! It is a combination of Photoshop, Illustrator and a little Piranesi. It also takes the line style effects that GS is trying to do through re-rendering into a much more graphic technique. You will just have to watch the videos.

http://labs.autodesk.com/Impressionlanding.aspx

Impression has the clean simple interface that I like. It is nice to see the stoic Autodesk having a more candid experimental side revealed. Seems like Ford is also doing this in the US through the Ford Bold Moves Blog.

Graphisoft could learn from this since corporations are taking a page from Myspace Blogs and at least pretending to be open, friendly and willing to listen.

[stefan]

FWIW,

it is Windows only, needs a very good graphics CARD (which is a bit strange for a 2D application) and while the goal of the application is fine, there are still some issues.

Palettes can be glued to the borders of the screen, but some additional panels float out of them so you have to take care where to place the palettes or they'll expand offscreen. Some usability issues...

The biggest limitation I see is that the application is still struggling between technical CAD (AutoCAD-style) and artist-friendly application (Artlantis/Piranesi-style).

But since it is now freely accessible from the Autodesk-labs (public beta-testing) instead of the closed beta from before, I encourage everyone to give it a try.

[Eduardo Rolon]

I don't know if it is true but I think Impression comes out of the previous program that was a "set" of architectural tools. Anyway here's an example without using any Autodesk stuff. On another note you can try using www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html it is free.

[Djordje]

A revived Architectural Studio?

[stefan]

Djordje wrote:
A revived Architectural Studio?

Not directly.

There are basic drawing tools (lines, rectangles, splines, text), but the main workflow is defining visual styles (pen strokes and fills) and apply them to layers from an existing DWG file.

There is nothing 3D and no modeling at all.

I'm still sad that Architectural Studio has disappeared... it was not SketchUp, but there were many interesting concepts in that application and not much of it has migrated to other applications.