Metaverse One

 With their initial announcement of stepping into the game development arena made back in March, Autodesk finally launched their Stingray game engine this past week. Autodesk is going after small to mid-sized studios that don't have large programming teams so ease of use and simplicity to create content is a must if Stingray wants to compete against game engines like Unreal 4 and Unity 5. Built around the Bitsquid engine it bought last year, it has equipped the engine with node-based scripting tools to make coding a drag-and-drop affair. One advantage to Stingray is that Autodesk product users (Maya, 3DS Max, MayaT) will benefit from extra integration over these other engines. Autodesk will also be offering Stingray's C++ source code (for a fee) to companies that want deeper customization. "Live Link" is a Stingray feature for multi-platform testing. With Live Link, you can tweak a model inside Maya LT and see the changes in Stingray on a given platform...

So the AEC Hackathon just wrapped up its event in Dallas over the weekend of May 1-3. The event was held at the Tree House , a co-working space in the North Dallas area in the small town of Addison. Being a native Texan, it was great for me to be able to work with the local organizers Todd and Joe from Rogers-O'Brien , Brian from the Beck Group , and all the sponsors that made this happen. By far they did it bigger in Texas with the amount of tech in the house. There were virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, 3D printers, drones, 360° cameras, neural brain controllers, various haptic devices including Leap Motion and much more. There were also some really impressive hacks. See the presentations from the teams in the video below. A big thanks to the group from PolyPrinter that made this 3D printable bottle opener for the event. Make sure to visit their site and grab the 3D model file from Frank Lima’s Makerbot Thingiverse page to 3D print ...

  My first post of 2015 touched into how this is going to be a great year for web3D and the 3D Web. Now while there is a growing number of web developers already evolving flat websites into those with web3D content or into fully interactive 3D Web applications, games, and environments, there is still a lack of 3D Web art that one can visit online. Other than Chris Milk's " 3 Dreams of Black " and a handful of other experiences that leverage web3D, there really isn't much out there in the art-meets-music-meets-web3d realm. I encourage my readers to please provide links in the comments section to any web experiences that fit this criteria that you know of and like.  So why aren't more artists collaborating with web developers to make crazy cool web experience art like 3 Dreams of Back? Well it seems I am not the only person asking this and with that said, I am thrilled to announce the 3D Web Festival.   The 3D Web Festival  will showcase websites that a...

This past week I experienced zCon, the conference for Infinite Z's zSpace device. zSpace is an immersive, interactive hardware and software platform for developers and users allowing interaction in a true 3D holographic-like environment. zSpace works with most standard and off-the-shelf computers so that anyone can transform a PC into a virtual-holographic computing system. Users working in zSpace wear lightweight passive polarized eyewear and use the zSpace stylus — which feels like a normal ballpoint pen. When examining an object in zSpace, users get a realistic sense of its depth and volume. One can rotate the object or move their head around the object to see it from multiple angles. It is a cool sensation when pulling something 'out of the screen', but I noticed most people at the conference had to be informed that this was possible. zSpace even includes a virtual camera that users can move to visualize objects from different perspectives or even place inside ob...

Autodesk recently released Showcase , a real-time 3D presentation and rendering software for the AEC (Architecture, Engineering & Construction) Industry. Showcase allows architects, designers, engineers, and managers the ability to import 3D CAD data (mainly Autodesk formats) into an virtual environment for creating 2D image renderings, movies, and real-time navigation of the 3D model. Showcase has been in the Autodesk Labs for some time now (previously called Project Newport). I remember seeing this video from 2009 where they used a much cooler interface to show it off. Although I feel that Autodesk is a tad late to the real-time 3D party, Showcase will help those in the AEC Industry become more familiar with real-time 3D for architectural visualization. I would still recommend other tools and technologies to those that want interactive 3D environments, but this is a step in the right direction for Autodesk . I am sure my friend Jon Brouchoud at ARCH Virtual is happy to see...

As part of a presentation I have next week that focuses on mixed reality, I built an augmented reality application for viewing various 3D CAD models. For the time allotted to this project I kept it simple and sweet. I decided to use a traditional marker here as the scene had too much visual noise for image recognition with all the foot and car traffic. Markers on my iPod Touch load different levels of detail 3D models of this one building. Clicking on the model binds it to a viewpoint so the marker is no longer needed. The example in the video is built on a 'mixed reality' framework that allows interactive models to be accessed by virtual and augmented reality applications. I will be sharing more of my work, application examples, and videos about this framework in the coming months.

As of late, I have been witness to an explosion of interest in the web3D open standard by the Green community. Beyond the work our group is doing to promote green with Architecture For Humanity, I am constantly approached by those in the green space from both the design and manufacturing wanting to migrate to the 3D web. Many see the high barriers to entry for using virtual worlds, their platform limitations, and don't really need avatars. "I want to show how my building or design is Green", is a growing theme. Even in a recent issue of 3D World it was covered that a study by Autodesk and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) said clients are driving architects to green design. The Autodesk/AIA Green Index , which measures how architects are practicing sustainable design, reports that 42% of their clients are asking for green building elements on the majority of their projects. The Green Index also found the 66% of the architects surveyed said that this client deman...