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MillimeterShoot Review: Autodesk SketchBook Pro 2.0
Dec 1, 2006 12:00 PM, Reviewer: S.D. Katz
New features bring landscape-generation software to the professional level.
The first version of Autodesk SketchBook Pro just missed the goal of being the definitive stylus-based drawing environment with a fast, key-stroke-free methodology — but it was on the right track. SketchBook Pro 2.0 has come much closer to this purpose, and it turned me from a sideline fan to a regular user.
SketchBook Pro 2.0 pushed me to the tipping point, so I am now jumping out of Adobe Photoshop and into SketchBook Pro for the sheer pleasure of drawing without distraction. Yes, you can set up Photoshop to be more drawing-friendly, but not to the degree that SketchBook Pro 2.0 comes right out of the box. This is not to say that Photoshop does not have features I miss when I'm in SketchBook Pro, particularly for painting, but I mainly view SketchBook Pro as a design and drawing tool. However, there are plenty of examples of work by SketchBook Pro users who are creating highly finished, full-color paintings with the tools 2.0 offers right now.
SketchBook Pro 2.0 has new features, but the workflow of existing features has also been tweaked and improved. As in the earlier version, SketchBook Pro continues to leverage Marker Menus, Alias' signature interface innovation first introduced in Maya.
Before looking at what's new, here's the overall workflow of SketchBook Pro: The canvas is a window without borders, which takes over the entire screen. There is a menu bar at the top of the screen, but you won't be using it much. Most of the time, you'll be hanging around a corner of the screen, where a curved tool well is located. Although few interface designers make use of the fact, it's a well-known principle of GUI ergonomics that the corners of the screen are the areas most easily accessed by a mouse or stylus. This is because the forearm pivots at the elbow — try it some time. For righties, the lower-left and upper-right corners are easily within pivot range.
The tool well is entirely graphical and can be placed in any corner. All of the tools are accessed here with icons representing the individual operations or tools categories. When you click the brush icon, for example, additional icons appear in a circle about the size of a quarter around the root icon. Each category has five or six options — for instance, six colors in the color category, or five brush types in the brush category. The tools only appear when the stylus is held down over the category icon.
To select any of the sub-icon options within the circle, you simply gesture towards the desired tool. No mouse clicking is required. Without detailing each tool individually, this is the basic methodology of the workflow: a clean canvas, icon-based options from a small tool well, and gesture selection. Once you get into the rhythm of working this way, it's very fast. Autodesk' goal is to eliminate text-based interaction or data entry of values for parameters. Like drawing, SketchBook Pro is all about images and hand motion.
So what's new in SketchBook Pro 2.0? Photoshop export, for one thing; Photoshop now supports SketchBook Pro's layers. Layers are a must in SketchBook Pro, particularly because there is no history palette in SketchBook Pro and only this one way to preserve versioning, but, of course, there are many other uses for layers.
One new feature that is going to be used over and over is the brush resize tool. Hit the “B” key on your keyboard, and a hot zone appears where you can drag the active brush to a new size with instantaneous feedback. This is a precise way to increase the size of your brush. A window pops up during the resizing with a numerical readout so you can match previous brush size settings. The resize action is continuous unlike Photoshop, where tapping the left or right bracket keys resizes a brush in 10-percent increments. SketchBook Pro's resize also works for the erasure tool at the end of the Wacom stylus opposite the pen nib.
You can also resize a brush by selecting the pen tool in the corner tool well, which brings up the brush palette. Click on the resize pad at the top of the palette, and a small disk appears over the canvas, which can be moved anywhere on the screen. By touching the stylus to the pad, the resize option opens and you can drag-select the size of the brush. These selection pads are used throughout the interface for other operations as well.
Another new feature using a tool pad is move, rotate, and scale. This pad has a concentric ring for each of the three operations, and it is opened by gesture selection in the corner tool well. The pad follows the stylus around the screen, and, as with the brush resize tool, changes are shown numerically as percentages (degrees for rotation) in a window at the top of the canvas. When you are finished with this tool, click on the plus sign at the top of the pad, and the pad closes.
Naturally, rotation and scale tools are much more useful if you have selection areas. SketchBook Pro has both rectangular marquis selection tools and a free-form lasso tool. When you make a selection, the move, rotate, and scale pad automatically appears. Also new is the ability to move, rotate, or scale entire layers.
While layers are not new, it's worth mentioning that they can be merged, duplicated, reordered in the stack, mirrored, flipped, named, and locked. It's not quite Photoshop, but the major operations for drawing are all there. As you might expect, images can be imported into a layer. Any layer can be locked or made transparent for tracing or onion skinning for animation. You could create a workflow from SketchBook Pro to After Effects (because it supports Photoshop layers) by importing layers and offsetting them in time as individual animation frames.
One nifty new feature is the Send Mail option under the File menu. Click this option, and you have the ability to send your image as a JPEG, TIF, or PNG file. JPEGs are smaller, but TIFs allow you to send a file with layers included. There is also a Calculate File Sizes button, which is handy. If you are satisfied with the size of a file you would like to mail, hit Send Mail and a blank email from your email program pops up. This is a small yet convenient feature.
Room for improvement
Once you are in the drawing groove, SketchBook Pro is enjoyable to use, but there are still a few missing capabilities. First on the list are brushes. If you are only drawing, this is not a major limitation, but if you want to paint in SketchBook Pro, a serious brush engine is needed. Right now, there are basic brush-defining parameters, but no way to make natural-media brushes.
Autodesk has been so inventive in gesture interface design that it's about time it or Wacom solved the canvas-orientation problem. Artists constantly turn the paper when they are drawing because the arm is most comfortable drawing lines at a 45-degree angle on the drawing surface, beginning low at the base of the table/canvas and moving upward in a gentle curve. If you have ever seen an animation drawing table, the cel is pegged to a rotating mechanism for this reason. If SketchBook Pro added this feature, it would be a huge advantage for digital artists working in any style. Wacom's Cintiq line of monitors/tablets allows you to rotate the drawing surface, but it's a pricey solution. (For more about the Wacom Cintiq 21UX, click here.)
Conclusion
There are three main choices for drawing and painting software: Photoshop, Corel Painter, and SketchBook Pro. SketchBook Pro 2.0 is no replacement for these other standard apps when it comes to image editing or natural-media painting, but for sheer ease of use and focus on a drawing experience uninterrupted by interface distractions, it edges out the big guns.
bottomline
Company: Autodesk
San Rafael, Calif.; (415) 507-5000
www.autodesk.com
Product: SketchBook Pro 2.0
Assets: Supports tablet PCs, Wacom Intuous and Graphire graphics tablets, and the new 6D art pen (only works with the Intuous 3).
Caveats: Lack of brush engine.
Demograpic: Artists of all levels.
PRICE: $179 (DOWNLOAD) OR $199 (CD-ROM VERSION)
S.D. Katz is a New York-based writer/director and author of the best-selling books Shot by Shot and Cinematic Motion.
To comment on this article, email the Digital Content Producer editorial staff at dcpfeedback@prismb2b.com.
