3D animation on iPad
Key transforms, materials and parameters on a timeline, retime them in a dopesheet, and bend the in-betweens in a curve editor — on an iPad, from a browser tab or the free App Store app. Held in landscape it keeps the full desk layout rather than a phone shell, so the outliner, inspector, timeline and curves are on screen together. Then path-trace the result on the iPad's own GPU.
At 1024px and up an iPad keeps the real rails — outliner, inspector, the timeline dock and the curve editor, all at once. Turn it upright and the panels fold into sheets from a dock built for fingers, without losing anything from the animation model.
Set keys on transforms, material values and modifier parameters, drag them in the dopesheet to retime, and shape the interpolation with real tangents. Clips keep separate takes apart; drivers link one value to another where a keyframe is the wrong instrument.
Path-trace a still or a flicker-free turntable on the iPad's own GPU — the same scene you animated, with no export to a separate renderer and no farm to configure. Rigged characters render in the pose they are playing, not a T-pose.
Scenes save to your account rather than the tablet. Block a move out on the sofa, then open the identical file on a Mac, PC, Chromebook or Android tablet with every key, clip and curve intact.
See it in action
Why Mixos
Search for a 3D animation app for iPad and most of what comes back animates something else. There are excellent 2D and frame-by-frame drawing apps, a good number of 3D viewers with a play button, and a run of template fillers where you pick a canned move and swap a logo. Actual keyframe animation — a scene graph you can parent, keys you can retime, curves you can bend — mostly stayed on desktops, because that is where the software was written and nobody rewrote it.
Studio is not a tablet port of a desktop program. It is the same application, rendering through WebGPU on the iPad's own GPU, so the timeline, dopesheet, curve editor, clips and drivers are the ones the desk build has rather than a reduced set redrawn for touch. What changes is the layout, and it changes by orientation: held in landscape at 1024px or wider the iPad keeps the full rails, and upright the panels become sheets from a dock that swaps its contents with the section you are working in.
The Apple Pencil earns its place here for a reason that has nothing to do with pressure. Picking one keyframe out of a stacked column, or catching a curve tangent handle, is a precision task where a pen hits a target a fingertip smudges. Fingers keep the coarse work — one orbits the viewport, two dolly and pan — and the transport scrubber is drawn as a full band rather than a desktop's hairline, so scrubbing with a thumb is not a game of skill.
Two things are worth knowing before you start. You can import a rigged, animated character — a Mixamo GLB or FBX — and it plays in the viewport and renders in pose; what you cannot yet do is retime that imported clip in the curve editor, because those clips are not converted to editable tracks. And there is no cloth, hair, particle or rigid-body solver, and no production rig with IK chains and constraint stacks. Transform and parameter animation, cameras, cuts, cloners and effectors are all here. Animating, previewing and rendering to the viewport are free; a paid plan covers taking the finished render or the mesh out.
Yes. Mixos Studio keyframes transforms, materials and parameters on a timeline, retimes them in a dopesheet and lets you shape the interpolation in a curve editor with real tangents — running on the iPad's GPU through WebGPU. Install the free app from the App Store or open a tab in Safari or Chrome; it is the same engine and the same scene either way.
This one. Animating, assembling scenes, playing back and rendering previews are free on a Mixos account, with no time limit and no watermark on your work. The App Store download is free and so is the browser version — there is no separate purchase per platform. Exporting the finished render or the mesh is the paid step.
No. Any iPad whose browser provides WebGPU will animate. A faster chip mainly means path-traced frames resolve sooner and heavy scenes scrub more smoothly; keying, retiming and curve work are comfortable on ordinary hardware.
Yes, and it helps most on precision rather than pressure — picking a single key out of a stack or dragging a curve tangent is far easier with a pen than a fingertip. Fingers still do the coarse work: one orbits, two dolly and pan, and the transport scrubber is a full-width band sized for a thumb.
Simple character and prop animation, yes — parent a hierarchy and key the transforms. You can also import a rigged, animated character from Mixamo as GLB or FBX and it plays in the viewport and renders in the pose it is playing. What is not there is a production rigging system — no IK chains, constraint stacks or skinning tools — and imported clips cannot yet be retimed in the curve editor.
Yes. Scenes live in your Mixos account rather than on the tablet, so the same file opens on a Mac, PC, Chromebook or Android tablet with the animation, clips and curves intact. There is no export-and-reimport step between devices, which is usually where a tablet session goes to die.
No. There is no cloth, hair, particle or rigid-body solver. Cloners and effectors cover much of the motion-graphics ground people reach for simulation to get, but genuine simulation is out of scope on every device, not just the tablet.
Keep exploring
3D animation on iPhone
Online 3D animation
Online 3D modeling
Sculpting on iPad
Cinema 4D alternative
Free from the App Store or with nothing installed at all. Move something, key it twice, then bend the curve between until the timing feels right.
