Have you ever wanted to just jump into a sketch? Morpholio has enabled that with AR SketchWalk, an augmented reality application that lets you walk around inside the images you create, like cruising through real-world blueprints.
With the release of iOS 12 and Shared AR, the creators at New York-based Morpholio have taken design, collaboration, and augmented reality to new levels.
Architects, builders, and engineers have always had to tape off rooms on a floor for clients to walk through so they can imagine the finished result. Pounding stakes into the ground and tying a small rope between them is another age-old trick for visualizing a room. But with Apple’s iOS 12 ARKit and Trace, you can now teleport into your sketch through your iPad and use AR to walk around a scaled plan. And — importantly — you can bring others with you.
“People have been pacing out plans as long as they’ve been drawing them. The palpable sense of scale, dimension, and extent simply can’t be communicated with stills, or even animation,” said Morpholio cofounder Mark Collins in a statement. “The AR experience gives you a real sense of how your space will feel and lets you decide if it works for you.”
You can do things like take a family through their new home design, let your team browse a space your firm just designed, or stroll through a proposed plaza in a new project.
“Design is one part idea and two parts convincing others that your idea is the right one. By gathering around an iPad Pro to either sketch or experience AR SketchWalk, you put your client next to you and take them on a ride that is incredibly empowering. Being able to gather around and even jump into our drawings in new ways is making design conversations far more engaging and productive,” said cofounder Anna Kenoff in a statement.
Above: Morpholio
The recently released iPad Pro Gen 3 takes creativity to new levels with a faster, more integrated Pencil and more power than most laptops, Morpholio said. Morpholio has brought the new Pencil Tap functionality into Trace, allowing you to simply tap on your pencil to flip tools, such as a ruler, from horizontal to vertical or to scroll through stencil options.
“Drawing and creating has never felt more natural or intuitive than with this powerful synergy of hardware and software,” said cofounder Toru Hasegawa in a statement.
With a single tap, you can place yourself wherever you desire inside your drawing. You can start with any floor plan, sketch, or background and set the scale, and the lines you draw in Trace can be extended and controlled in layers.
After registering a surface (Morpholio learned this trick from other AR apps), you now have your plan on the ground and, believe it or not, to scale. Wander around to get a feel for the room. You can use the 3D slider to extrude selected lines and create surfaces to walk between.
With Trace’s SketchWalk, you can experience everything from a huge building down to a piece of art on your wall, all in stellar AR, powered by Apple’s ARKit. It’s a powerful way to experience scale for yourself or with others through ARKit 2 support for shared sessions.
You can download Morpholio Trace for iPhone and iPad in the App Store here. Morpholio was founded by four architects who wanted smarter mobile tools for all phases of the design process. Their apps put designers first, as they fuse the fluidity and speed of working by hand with the intelligence and precision of device technology. With users in over 150 countries, Mopholio has been recognized on numerous Best App lists.
