Popular open source 3D modeling tool Blender's social media channels and subreddit have regularly seen people asking for a tablet version for years now. And according to a blog post by Dalai Felinto from the Blender team, the developers of the application have now committed to build just that.
"The idea is to bring the full power of Blender to these devices," the blog post explains. "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 long-term goal is to build out not just a standalone tablet interface, but to offer the same advantages something like an iPad Pro offers to PC-connected graphics tablet peripherals, too—and it goes both ways. Ultimately, a standalone tablet + a keyboard and trackpad should offer the same experience as on desktop, and a desktop PC with a graphics tablet should be the same as a standalone tablet in terms of experience.
To that end, some features developed for the mobile version of Blender will cross-pollinate to desktop, like icon support for sidebar tabs and a helper overlay with curated shortcuts, among other things.
You can see some mockups over at the Blender blog. Development has begun in earnest on a new, separate branch for this tablet application. It will be developed first to target the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, with other platforms and tablets to get tailored support later.
It sounds like the team already has some knowledgable designers and developers on this branch, but the blog post is also an invitation for new contributors. Specifically, it calls for "developers with extensive experience in this area" to contribute to building the application, touch events and gestures support, "File System / iCloud / AirDrop support," and OpenSubdiv.
It sounds like things are already moving relatively quickly, as a tech demo is planned for SIGGRAPH 2025 in Vancouver next month.
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