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Autodesk® Mudbox™
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Autodesk® Sketchbook® Pro
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First Look
As the name implies, SketchBook Pro is literally the digital interpretation of the classic sketchbook. Originally launched in conjunction with the introduction of the Tablet PC, it has always been designed specifically for pen-based interaction. Featuring a streamlined user interface geared to maximizing "flow", the product boasts an environment where new users can become productive within minutes.
New Featurescreaturebox.com, Joshua Maruska
and Nick Harris
Hello, I'm here with Chris Cheung, Product Manager of SketchBook Pro (SBP). We're here to talk about some of the new features in the upcoming release of SBP 2010. Before we jump into the features, let's talk briefly about your background. Chris, can you tell us a bit about your history?
I've been with Alias and, now, Autodesk for about 13 years. My background is actually in design. I graduated with my Bachelor of Industrial Design, but rather than getting a traditional product designer job, I took an opportunity to work at Alias straight out of school and got hooked. Since that time, I've participated in a number of roles in software development and it's ended up my career.
What were the previous software packages that you helped develop?
Being an industrial designer by trade, I've naturally worked on the Alias product line in all it's various incarnations (formerly known as StudioTools, AliasStudio, etc...). Years ago, I also worked on an IRIX-only product called StudioPaint, which is, in fact, the paint technology that gave birth to the sketching engine found in the Alias product family and SketchBook Pro.
Let's talk about the previous version, SBP 2009, released last year.
That was the first major release that we had since the acquisition of Alias back in January 2006. In between that time, the last version was SBP 2 and that came out in 2005. There had been this big kind of gap for a lot of our users.
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Blur and Sharpen Watch the video |
Brush Manager Watch the video |
Custom marking menus Watch the video |
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Customizing lagoon icons Watch the video |
Elliptical ruler Watch the video |
Robot Sketching with symmetry Watch the video |
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Rotate canvas Watch the video |
Sketching with symmetry Watch the video |
Straight edge ruler Elliptical ruler Watch the video |
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Straight edge rule Watch the video |
Texture Brush One Watch the video |
Texture Brush two Watch the video |
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Tree Drawing Watch the video |
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What happened?
SBP is a pretty interesting package in that it has always been known for its simplicity. So, in that manner, it was in pretty good shape after the acquisition. A lot of focus had to go into taking care of the 'bigger' Alias packages. Somehow, it got lost in the fold and was basically on a backburner.
When did you guys start to develop 2009?
I adopted the software in the spring of 2007 and was really happy to take on that responsibility because of my love of sketching. But also the fact that this was a package people just clearly loved. It's really nice to put your passion into something where you know customers want the product to succeed.
So what kind of updates were there from version 2 to 2009?
The biggest one was the Photoshop interoperability -- ability to read and write PSD files. That was a big one because it addressed how people worked with different packages. Even though some people compare SBP with Photoshop, they have different focuses and strengths. This thing is a dedicated sketching tool and having the ability to read/write the same file format (.psd) as the package that often receives it at the back-end, was a big deal. We also added flood fill tools, including one that could fill in regions described across multiple layers, preserve transparency, and other small productivity enhancements. But we also had to do some catch-up. When SBP 2 came out, Intel-based Macs didn't even exist yet, so 2009 was the first universal binary release of SBP. It was a modest release, but everything kind of ramped into our longer-term plan with 2010 being intended as our first full feature release.
What can you tell us about SBP 2010?
First of all, we're really happy to be committed to project. Over the last year and a half, we've really put a lot of focus back into SBP and the loyal customer base - the people who have been telling us how they still keep their old versions of SBP 1 and SBP 2... nostalgia. So, we are just proud to be able to support them.
What are the new features in 2010?
We really tried to focus on a few areas. First, was being true to the nature of SBP, meaning, we wanted to keep it lightweight with a small footprint, streamlined UI that was fun-to-use, and really speaking to that whole aspect that it really is your sketchbook.
We got a lot of feedback about how people loved the UI, but when they became experts, they didn't use most of the tools...like the Lagoon for example.
What is the Lagoon?
The Lagoon is the signature UI at the bottom corner that provides gesture-based marking menus for quick access to tools. But it was interesting for us to discover that regular users refined their workflows and relied heavily on custom tools so they weren't using most of the preset tools in the Lagoon. Now, you can customize the Lagoon, arranging the tools you use most often, including custom brushes.
You can create your own brushes now?
Yes, you could always tweak 'do-it-yourself' brushes, but now you have the added power to make custom texture brushes. You can take a snapshot of an image to create fantastic effect brushes, graphic stamps, or textured patterns.
But because we had this explosion of unique brushes, we also realized that people needed to manage, save and share this stuff. In the Palette, we now allow the do-it-yourself brushes to be re-ordered, so no longer are users locked into the order that brushes were created; and we added the ability to import and export brushes. We just simply export out an xml file describing the brush and an associated TIFF file.
Another cool feature related to the customization and preferred workflow is the ability to work in full screen, without the lagoon. Even though the Lagoon is relatively compact, it can now be nested away without losing any functionality.
We've mapped each of the Lagoon items to hotkeys so that marking menus are also accessible directly at the cursor-point, on demand. These are things we got a lot of feedback on and so far so good, people like it.
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More about SketchBook Express 2009.
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What other enhancements are in 2010?
We have introduced symmetric brushing. This is a simple tool that allows you to interactively mirror horizontally or vertically, letting you see symmetric designs come to life as you draw them. You can also have both on at the same time, so you can mirror into the four quadrants.
Another common request was the ability to freely rotate the canvas - I think that one has come up in a few forums, including on the AREA. I'm happy to say that Rotate Canvas is going to be available in 2010. We've added this functionality directly into the navigation puck, so it's easily accessible and also automatically snaps into 90 degree positions.
Something else that a lot of people have asked for is a little more precision, the most common being just the ability to do straight lines. We've always had 'shift' to do horizontal and vertical and 'd' for diagonal lines, but you don't have to be an architect to need arbitrary line. To address this need, we made a straight-edge ruler guide, one that you can call up with a quick marking menu gesture, move around and reposition quickly, and apply your stroke keeping the nice line-weight based on the pressure of your stroke. The tool also gives you angular feedback.
We've also introduced an equivalent Ellipse guide. With controls for position, scaling, non-proportional scaling, and rotation, any artist or designer can nail perfect circles, arcs, or elliptical shapes.
We also did a number of small enhancements, including the affordance for non-proportional scaling in the transform puck, RGB input in the Color Editor, Blur and Sharpen brushes -- among other things.
How did you come to develop these particular tools?
We opened up a small user group on our beta portal even before we started developing. There we had a number of people just sharing what features they liked, how they worked, and their personal wishlist. This allowed us to better understand how people used the tool, how they relied on other applications in their process, and where the real problems were.
Obviously there will always be more feature requests than we can do in a release, so you need to be careful. One of the most common requests that we had was 'please don't make it bloated'. This is something we heard over and over, so it reminded us to not go crazy. At the same time, we did get lots of terrific feedback and we were able to very easily identify feature candidates that we explored for the 2010 release.
What type of users do you have and what are their backgrounds?
SBP is really fun that way. It truly appeals to so many different individuals and professionals from all walks. Even in the beta program we had classic artists, industrial designers, architects, automotive designers, storyboard artists, game and character designers, comic book artists, students, manga artists, illustrators... There are even engineers that we've met who use it, not only as digital paper, but also as a presentation tool.
It's a really incredible creative pool and it doesn't niche who a creative person is. Being able to have access to so many willing people who want to see the product succeed really helps us a lot. With support like this, we are pretty confident that what we are putting out is something that people will use.
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Visualization sketch Watch the video |
Toon character concept Watch the video |
Car concept sketch Watch the video |
What was the rationale on developing SBP for both Windows and Mac platform?
SBP has always been offered on multi-platform. It's really important for a product like SBP to be accessible - people shouldn't have to make a hardware purchasing decision. Also, if you take a look at hardware preferences, Apple (the Mac) has always been a dominant player in many creative markets. From that perspective, it's a no-brainer. For us, being able to accommodate the customer's choice is important.
Do you ever get comparisons between Photoshop and Painter?
Yes, there will always be comparisons... and wishlists. We get compared a lot with Painter obviously, but when we talk to the artists, there are reasons why different tools are needed. A product like SketchBook Pro is dedicated to sketching, that's why it's streamlined. If someone needs to capture painterly effects, there is a product out there that does it well. If someone needs to move artwork into a print production, they need something else. Ultimately, people have to make the choices on what toolset they need to get the job done. And if they need something that feels natural, keeps them motivated, is responsive and produces beautiful line work, SketchBook Pro is for them.
If we go back 5 years, that was the last big SBP contest. Are there any contests of the same scope that will happen this year?
We are really passionate to work with community sites, like the AREA, to rebuild this culture of creative competition and sharing. We've also been working on partnering with sponsors on potential cool prizes. So, we do hope to do a lot more and in particular have a lot of contests. So we are expecting to get a lot of prizes out there. And this is nice too because we are very dedicated to having our trial versions out there. It's a 15-day non-consecutive trial.
So when can we expect the release of 2010?
Early April 2009.
How can we purchase SBP?
This is a fantastic year, this year there are multiple ways to buy the package. Any Autodesk customer that works with a reseller will be able to buy it through those channels. We will be selling through our e-store at www.sketchbookpro.com and are also working with distributing partners like Amazon, Newegg and Buy.com
How much is SBP?
Pricing differs slightly by region, but for example SBP is $100 in the US. Either that or try to win a copy in the upcoming competitions :-)
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Free your creativity with Autodesk® SketchBook® Pro software. With a flick of the stylus, the industry's strongest paint and drawing toolset is at your command. It features an
artist-friendly, gesture-based user interface that is so fast and intuitive even new users can be productive within minutes. SketchBook Pro equips you with the tools you need
to move easily from pen and paper to a digital environment. |
