Free Blender Tutorials (Read more...)

Blender is one of the most preferred 3D modeling applications. I prefer much more Art Of Illusion, but I just can't ignore that Blender is the favorite for many 3D artists.

Free Blender Tutorials

The tutorials come in PDF format, and include the materials for doing all what's explained on them.

What is a Virtusphere? (Read more...)

A virtusphere is a virtual reality device that basically consists in a big sphere inside which you enter and run like a hamster. It uses to work combined with other virtual reality devices.

The hardware registers your movement so your avatar moves with you while you are actually walking inside the sphere.

Virtusphere. Photo by newblood91.

An interesting article of someone that has tested a real virtusphere is here:

http://cb.nowan.net/blog/2008/05/22/virtusphere-review/

Also have a read to his blog, as you may find it a really interesting one.

And finally, here's a video of a virtusphere:

2 Portals Of 3D Resources: Models And More (Read more...)

3DVIA: Get 3d models in 3ds and other file formats, create them online and upload your models. The creation tool can be seen in action here.


3DXO: Portal where you'll find all kinds of resources for 3D, from textures and models to indexes of software.

SceneCaster Ads Immersive 3D Without Installing Anything (Read more...)

SceneCaster will launch on Friday August 22 a new 3D viewer that will allow you to visit the scenes you create with SceneCaster without having to download or install anything (read the press release here). Watch the video:



There are more interesting news about SceneCaster, like the new game buit by one of its users, in which you have to find Waldo inside SceneCaster scenes, and the new Olympic objects that have been added and allow you to make scenes based on the Olympic Games.

Links: Vivaty Update, Punching And Much More (Read more...)

Vivaty Improvements: Dogs, Avatar Customizations And More:
Vivaty just released new features as you can read in their blog. Now you can customize your avatar with more than 200 options, and have a virtual pet that is a little dog.


Make Portraits Of Your Avatar:
Xiamara Ugajin published a tutorial on how to make decent avatar photo shoots, with steps, tips and tricks for Second Life.

Feeling feline in the morning? Photo by Veyron Supercharge

The CALT Encyclopedia: Virtual Reality
The Encyclopedia of Learning Approaches & Technologies has a page on virtual reality that summarizes a big number of resources of all kinds about virtual reality. Hiperia3D News is mentioned there, and it's also an honor for us.


Special SecondLife World For The Disabled:
A special world has been built in SecondLife for those who suffer disabilities, so they can still train their virtual skills to a good level. A very remarkable project.

Second Life wonder lands. Photo by Torley Linden

OpenSim In Facebook:
OpenSim is being integrated with Facebook. For now, users can see the status of their on-line friends and visit the 3D world. Full Facebook integration will be done in the future. Read the rest of the story here, at Virtual Worlds News.


The Native American Second Life:
In case you didn't know it, here's an article with some pics and info about the Native American Second Life, as mentioned in The Second Life Newspaper.

Photo by Torley Linden

Terra Nova: Do You Like When People Kiss Or Punch You...At Lively?
In this interview, Mark Young from Lively recognizes "Many people are delighted by the animation options but many are not happy to be kissed or punched by a stranger".
I didn't know that possibility. No strange thing at all, don't you agree? I can imagine punching wars between Lively users, and kissing maniacs being punched.


Free Photoshop Plugins For 3D Design:
I found a series of free plugins for Photoshop built by Richard Rosenman, and some of them are really useful for 3D, as for example correctors for spherical or lens textures, and the Tiler, for producing seamless textures.


Free 3D Flash Galleries:
Flash can produce decent 3D, and these galleries can display pics in immersive 3D. They are free and their code can be downloaded. To access them, click the "VIEW" word that is near their titles. The

Futuristic User Interfaces:
Smashing Magazine, excellent site for designers and web developers, publishes a list that is useful for us.



It is about user interfaces, and are mainly gadgets, some of them very focused to 3D or using some kind of virtual reality.



Learn Flash3D:
This site is devoted to teach you Flash3D from the beginning, with live examples and extreme clarity. It is focused to those who are new to computer graphics.


JShot Screenshot Capturer:
JShot is a screenshot capturer that can directly upload the pics you take to an FTP server or image storage services, or send it to your instant messenger. It is free and cross-platform.


List Of 3D Theaters All Over The World:
Search your nearest real 3D virtual reality cinema with this excellent list for many countries that have these kind of facilities. MarketSaw is a site devoted to the movies that are released for real 3D.

How To Use Xj3D Library In Netbeans IDE (Read more...)

These are instructions on how to use Xj3D libraries in Netbeans IDE so you can integrate them in your Java application. This tutorial is useful for people that are developing Java applications with Xj3D as a library. If your Java application needs a 3D window that shows X3D or VRML, the best way is to use Xj3D.

Yes, it's Java, but not the programming language. Photo by JpSlim.

You just need to install Xj3D, the Java SDK, and Netbeans IDE. Ignore any document that tells you to install more things. You don't need to set any system variable. Ignore all that.

Follow these simple steps:

1) Install Java SDK (Java SE) 32 bits. There were some problems with the 64 bits version, so install the 32 bits version.

2) Install Xj3D.

3) Install Netbeans IDE.

4) Create a NetBeans project: Java Application.

If you just want to run the Xj3D examples, specify "with existing sources", and use the folder examples/sai as sources.

5) In the menus, select: Tools -> Library Manager -> New Library. Call it for example "Xj3Djars" or whatever you like. Click OK.

6) Select the library that you have just created and add everything in the "jars" folder of Xj3D.

In Windows, it uses to be in C:\Program Files\Xj3D\jars

In Ubuntu Linux, look into: usr/local/Xj3D/jars (it may be in other folder, but for me it was there)

7) Right click on the project -> Properties -> Libraries -> add Library -> Xj3Djars -> add Library

8) In the Project Properties window, select Run -> VM Options

9) In VM Options type this:

If you use Windows XP:

-Xmx450M -Djava.library.path='C:\Program Files\Xj3D\bin'

In Ubuntu (I prefer Fluxbuntu) Linux:

-Xmx450M -Djava.library.path='usr/local/Xj3D/bin'

10) Click OK.

That's all!


Working With Netbeans IDE And X3D Or VRML

Now that you are working with your application that uses X3D or VRML, you will work faster and better if you could read easily and create X3D and VRML files from inside Netbeans IDE.

I had the same problem, so I created the free X3DV Module Suite.


The X3DV Module Suite is a free set of modules to code in X3D and VRML, the open standards for interactive and immersive 3D on Internet. With it, you can create virtual worlds in 3D, using the great edition features of Netbeans IDE.

This Module Suite is for coding in VRML and X3DV (X3D classical VRML encoding, the easy to read .x3dv files).

Just have a look at its section. The advantages of using it are obvious. It is also compatible with X3D-Edit, as it's shown in their website. You can use X3D-Edit for X3D files in xml format, and the X3DV Module Suite for X3D files in classical VRML encoding, and for VRML files.

If you like the X3DV Module Suite, you can help its development by making a donation. If you can't, another way of helping is voting it in any social bookmarking site, or simply voting it in the Netbeans Plugin Directory.

LivePlace Video Controversy And Photorealism (Read more...)

These days there were rumors that said that a new photorealistic virtual worlds platform was coming. This has generated a double controversy: whether virtual worlds do need to be realist, and how much the intellectual rights of content developers are respected. The reason: the promotional video of this product.

Copyright Violation?

TechCrunch posted a video that was shown as promotional video of LivePlace, and was retired from their website for some reason.

You can see that portions of this video come from a 3D artist portfolio located here. It is not clear why they retired the video, and it is not clear if this artist works for LivePlace or not, or if he/she allowed them to do this or not.

The comment at TechCrunch, that revealed this, says that this video portions were "stolen".



Each day, we find more examples of the lack of respect for 3D artists and developers that big companies show.

Seems that not only unscrupulous individuals, but also businesses and big companies have loss all kinds of respect for the creators of content, and they just grab and run with it.

This is becoming a real problem. Some people, feeling shielded by their wealth or a false idea of anonymity for being hidden behind great trademarks, think they can abuse less known content developers.

We all must collaborate against this, as content is being devaluated endlessly. Many people look to content like a free-for-all box of trash.

Many people place their content in Internet only under certain conditions, and these conditions must be respected.

Companies have also to learn that if they employ these content developers, instead of stealing them, they'll grow over a stable foundation. If they don't, they will just harvest their own ruin, as they're killing the way of life of many of these creators. And because each day there will be less people willing to share anything.

Having said this, there's a big number of companies that defend the rights of content developers and artists, and no host or domain provider tolerates copyright infringement.


Photorealistic Worlds?

LivePlace says to have a photorealistic virtual worlds engine, that will equal the quality seen in 3D movies. To simplify, these kind of technologies get this spectacular results by rendering the frames using a big server farm. Then, the images are sent to the clients (PCs, mobile phones, PDAs).

Server farm. Photo by Mr.Faber

As you may suppose, the limitations are bandwidth and server power. The server power can be improved with enormous quantities of money, as these images are generated not by a single server but by an huge army of servers.

The bandwidth is the real limit, and not only the server bandwidth. The client bandwidth is the key. Yes, you will receive superb images but your mobile phone or PC will need to be fast enough to download and display them at speed of light (well... much less, but you know what I mean). Otherwise, you'll suffer a big lag.

In the future, this may be more viable. Now, it's utopian.

Having said this, if you take some time watching the video, you'll see that there is a strange mix of the excellent content of the video by the 3D digital artist, and real world images.
There's also some images of some very basic 3D sceneries that don't look realist at all.

You can see some lights that seem to move at render time. But lights can be simulated by simply using transparent images attached as textures to primitives. Also, things like buildings that seem to be highly realist often are just boxes with high quality textures, and no real complex geometry.

In most of the length of the video, there's a lot of blur and movement that distracts the eyes.
These 2 resources, movement and blur, make your mind imagine what you don't actually see.

So don't trust promotional videos like this, that show things in a frenetic movement and blur.


Conclusion

I see an special emphasis in trying to get photorealistic worlds in the last times, and it's something I just can't understand.
It's not the quality of graphics, but the expression they give, what makes virtual worlds immersive.

Rendered teapot. Photo by Chris Fullmer

If users want a virtual world that seems totally real, why not just go out and meet the real world? What users want is a virtual world that can trigger their imagination, their taste for mystery, wonder, or adventure.
Realism is good for a while, but a virtual world that makes its users feel special, keeps them forever.

News: IM For SecondLife, and AC3D (Read more...)

Instant Messenger For SecondLife?
Linden Lab has registered the trademark SLim, and many think that this may be an instant messenger for Second Life residents. Read it in Virtual Worlds News.

AC3D Can Import Triangles And Boxed Objects Into SL:
Bruce Lehmann (a.k.a. Omind), administrator of the World Builders And Developers community, and one of our most valued readers, has called our attention about the affordable modeling program called AC3D (only $79.95). AC3D has plug-ins for importing triangle (.tri) and boxed objects into Second Life. Read more here. AC3D can also export to VRML and X3D.

News Of The Week And Other Links (Read more...)

There are a lot of things that happened or crossed our way this week. Some are blasts from the past, others are things that are now happening, and others will leave their mark on the future.

From The Past

3D Video:
Check this awesome 3D animation video with superb music:



Reviewing the past: SCOL:
Looking to the past makes you learn lessons through time. This interview at Web3D-France with the creator of SCOL, is a good way to know more about that platform for virtual worlds that was born much more time ago than those that are now ruling the market.


From The Present

Worldbuilders And Developers:
Bruce Lehmann has created a new community for worldbuilders. Described as "a group for world builders to post links and other info focused on VRML and X3D, but any other platform is welcome too". Join now here: http://vrml-x3d.ning.com/
Hiperia3D has joined, and we display their badge in our sidebar. We'll review it deeper soon, but for now, don't hesitate to join and share and discuss anything that you, as a 3D web developer and worldbuilder, are interested about.

X3D at SIGGRAPH:
X3D and related projects are being deeply showcased at SIGGRAPH. On next Wednesday August 13, there will be a tech talk about X3D and how it is the real-time 3D solution for the Web. There will be very important presenters like Tony Parisi (Vivaty), Don Brutzman (X3D-Edit) or Peter Schickel (Bitmanagement)

Video: 2008 Metaverse Tour
Gary Hayes, from Personalize Media, publishes a video and his reflections about most of the virtual worlds he visited. Read it here. In this video, he goes through more than 50 virtual worlds, from Traveller to SecondLife. In fact, an excellent intro for them all.



Who are you really?
The Virtual Version publishes a very interesting poll about your identity and your avatar: what is your relationship between you and your virtual ego.


From The Future

Second Life Community Convention:
The SLCC is comming. It will be on September 5 until September 7, 2008, in Tampa (Florida - USA). More info on their website: http://www.slconvention.org/ Don't miss it.
This event is added to our Calendar Of Worldwide 3D Events.

Photo by Torley Linden

Virtual Worlds Innovation Awards:
Virtual Worlds Management announces the Virtual Worlds Innovation Awards, to recognize top innovators at the Virtual Worlds Expo in Los Angeles on September 3-4, 2008.
Virtual Worlds Management is a key site in virtual worlds. So keep an eye on it, and check what the winners will be, as they will surely be people that will shock the 3D scene in the next years.

Interview With Mark Hull, Vice-President Of Products At Vivaty (Read more...)

On August 6, Vivaty launched a new program for content developers called Vivaty Create, and also released the new Vivaty Studio. Mark Hull, Vice President of Products at Vivaty, explains us what they are in the interview he gave to Hiperia3D News.

In a previous article series, I analyzed 6 different systems to have your 3D world in Facebook or in a web page. Vivaty was one of the most remarkable ones.

Vivaty has one of its strong points in that everything is based on X3D, the standard for interactive and immersive 3D content. Tony Parisi is one of the founders of Vivaty, and he's the co-father of VRML, and the editor of the X3D specification. So it's not strange that they're taking X3D to its natural place: multiuser virtual worlds.

As an introduction to the interview, I will explain shortly what are Create and Studio and what are they for.

Vivaty Create
http://developer.vivaty.com/

Most of the systems to have an embeddable 3D world have an online catalog that contains objects. These objects can be inserted in the 3D scenes. These catalogs use to be limited, and having a big catalog of 3D objects is one of the most important feature for users.

Vivaty Create is an initiative that Vivaty has started to build a big catalog of objects and scenes. It is a process in which you upload your objects and scenes and they'll be featured in Vivaty. That way you get promotion of your modeling skills, and they get objects for the application catalog. But you can even win $1,000 in cash towards a trip to the San Francisco Bay Area to meet the Vivaty team in person.

They have also called all users and 3D designers (developers, content creators, hobbyists, animators, and modelers) to share their ideas, ask for features, etc.
There's even a developer wish-list in which you can suggest anything that you find valuable. For example, the ability to use VRML avatars has been suggested.

The first participants will also have the opportunity to join as members of the Vivaty Create Council, and belong to a selected group of users.

No sex, violence, or offensive material is allowed. You must also send optimized content, that meets some requirements, and in X3D format. Think that the idea is to have fast loading scenes and quick access for the object and scenes catalog.

You can consider Vivaty Create as a way of integrating yourself in the Vivaty community. With this initiative, Vivaty gives the voice of their users a place inside their organization.


Vivaty Studio
http://www.vivaty.com/downloads/studio/


In a previous article I mentioned Flux Studio, which was developed by the same company before it changed its name to Vivaty.
The company has continues its development, and now they offer us Vivaty Studio for free. With it, you can create full X3D worlds, and also content for the Vivaty Platform.

Vivaty Studio is a very complete world edition application, as you can see in their feature list. It can also import your content from other famous 3D modeling applications.

The many users of the old Flux Studio can now be sure that the project will continue growing, and they can keep on creating great X3D content with Vivaty Studio.


Interview With Mark Hull, Vice-President Of Products At Vivaty

Mark Hull is the Vice-President of Products at Vivaty. He ran more than a dozen businesses at Yahoo! (including Groups, Photos and Personals), and also ran product management and marketing at iWin and MerchantCircle.
With his vast experience, he explains in Vivaty's own words, what are Vivaty Create and Studio.

- What will be Vivaty Create? Is it a repository of objects and scenes, a showcase of 3d works, or both?
- The first phase is not a repository or showcase per se. Vivaty Create is the pilot phase for our new developer program. We are starting with a manual content submission process, where creators email us their files to vivatycreate@vivaty.com. We are accepting both Scenes and Objects and we hope to get a much wider variety of content than we could ever produce (or dream up) internally. Select submissions will be showcased on vivaty.com and inside Vivaty Scenes by mid-October, when the contest ends.

- How will this project be shaped? Will it be a web page at Vivaty, or will it be done through an application?
- Submissions are currently being taken via an email address (vivatycreate@vivaty.com) but we see this evolving into a submission process on the web. Whether that's on vivaty.com or through an application, we have not decided that yet. We hope to get feedback from developers so we know how they want this to work.

- What are the advantages for contributing to Vivaty Create?
- Getting involved early means your feedback will have a louder voice and you'll always be one of those first contributors to this program. Your content, if chosen, could also be some of the first third-party content that Vivaty users see and experience. Top content creators can win prizes ($1,000 towards a trip to the San Francisco area to meet us and give us your thoughts first-hand, as well as other prizes) Other advantages: this is all web-based and flexible enough to include anyone who is exporting to COLLADA and many other file types.

- Let's talk about Vivaty Studio. Is it similar to Flux Studio, the previous design studio of the company?
- Yes, it's very similar to its predecessor, Flux Studio. Vivaty Studio is a tool that's used to create and publish for the web…it's designed to simplify the complicated aspects of 3D for the casual creator, while exposing more powerful features to advanced creators. You can read more about the specific features of Vivaty Studio here: http://www.vivaty.com/downloads/studio/

- What kind of worlds can the users produce with Vivaty Studio?
- Vivaty Studio imports many types of files (including COLLADA) and then exports an X3D file. Based on open standards, X3D is supported by more companies and creators than Vivaty alone.

- What file formats will Vivaty Studio be able to import?
- For Vivaty Create, developers would do the following to send us either scenes or objects:
1. export COLLADA files and many other supported file formats (see http://www.vivaty.com/downloads/studio/Studio_Feature_List.pdf for all the details)
2. open them in Vivaty Studio
3. save them as .x3d files
4. send them to vivatycreate@vivaty.com.

-What is the output file format that will have the contents created with Vivaty Studio? Will they be X3D?
- Yes, X3D is right.

-Is Vivaty Studio an application for use with Vivaty Scenes, or can it be considered a complete solution for X3D authoring?
- Vivaty Studio has its roots in being a complete authoring tools for X3D development. Vivaty Studio can be used as a lightweight modeling tool for creating 3D content from the ground up, or it can be used to import COLLADA content from a range of tools (3D studio Max, Maya, Google Sketchup, Blender, Milkshape and many others). The evolving focus is to optimize the tool for publishing to the Vivaty platform, starting with our first application, Vivaty Scenes. But we don't see those two things (authoring and publishing for the web) as mutually exclusive.

Conclusion

Vivaty is expanding the presence of X3D on Internet and at the same time developing an excellent multiuser 3D platform.

I see their project as a whole movement towards an interactive 3D web. Vivaty Create, Vivaty Studio, Vivaty Scenes... they are all branches of a bigger structure that will bring us to a wider range of 3D interaction on social networks.

Latest News: Plugin-Less Virtual Worlds In 3DXplorer V4 (Read more...)

The new version of 3DXplorer that was announced in a previous article is out for all to test, and I wanted to share the screenshots that I took when I was invited to the private beta of 3DXplorer V4.

3DXplorer has become multiuser. This means a new event of high relevance in virtual worlds. 3DXplorer offers multiuser virtual worlds without the need to download nor install anything. This, added to its high usability, makes it highly accessible even for those who never heard a word about 3D virtual worlds.

(You can click the images to watch them at a bigger size)

Avatar Customization

The avatar edition allows you to save different looks for your avatar, that can be altered in all its attributes. Once you're done customizing your avatar, you can save it with a profile name that you choose.


The process offers you many possibilities. There's a good set of combinations, and it will be expanded in future. You can change the face, the hair color, the clothes, etc.


As you create your avatar, you can easily add or remove all its features.


The use of different clothes and accessories allow you to have your avatar in different outfits for party, special events, formal clothing, casual...


It seems that more animations will be added in the future, and there's 2 types: simple (for quick gestures) and combined (that play a complex animation made of many gestures).



The 3D Multiuser Platform From Inside

The loading process is fast, the same as in V3. It takes only some seconds with an average broadband connection.


Using 3DXplorer V4 is as easy as with V3. On the upper right, just click and enter the multiuser avatar chat. You simply enter the name and password for the avatar outfit that you want to use.


There are several camera views, from first person to third person from the rear, and third person perspective.


The chat window is floating (they're working in making it dockable too). From there, you can chat with your friends that are in the same virtual space, and trigger gestures.

You'll see three lines of gestures. The upper is for gestures that indicate a more continuous mood of the entire body, and the second line plays gestures that are less permanent and are more often used through conversation. The third line is for complex animations.


The gestures are very expressive, without being affected or exaggerated.


Some objects in the scene contain links to web pages, and browsing them is just as simple as clicking, which opens them in a new window of your browser.


In this window you see a view of the avatar from the rear, that is to what most of us are used to when navigating a 3D world.


The mouse gives you control over the view rotation, while arrow keys move your avatar, as in many 3D games.


Changing between cameras is very easy. The help messages are not intrusive, as in V3.


3DXplorer demonstrates the potential of Java applied to virtual worlds. Most of us have the Java plugin installed in our browsers. Java is a strong and stable language that also offers security and is cross-platform. And that's the reason why 3DXplorer uses it, and inherits all these characteristics.

You can give it a try at: http://www.3dxplorer.com/