The Web and 3D
I know I’ve posted 3D-enabled blog posts here before – one using 3Dxml from DS and one using a tool from Autodesk. They were both pretty slow. With everybody messing their pants about mobile computing, it really confuses me why we don’t see a lot more of this – why can’t we just put 3D content into a website as easily as a 2D image? With both of those methods I used, the person viewing the website had to install a special viewer plugin. The web and 3D seem like a great match, but you don’t see it much out there.
By the way, there is a 3DXML viewer set up in this page. If you use Chrome 16.0 or Firefox 9.0, it crashes. It only seems to work for IE (I’m using IE9). You can download the 3Dxml player from here. If you do install the viewer plugin and switch over to IE to check it out, it seems to take a while to load.
Maybe this is why you don’t see people putting this on websites much. On my computer it complained about missing fonts, then gave an error like it would fail. Only then did the viewer show up. HTML5…
Google has already implemented WebGL into its search engine,some examples here:
http://www.googlepalace.com/archives/1567
@Mark Burhop That’s true, but Adobe’s flash player is here and now for Win, Linux and Android, while iOS isn’t, and according to the late Jobs, won’t ever be. Mac’s Preview doesn’t do 3D pdf, there are no current Android apps that do, either. Adobe pushes its Flash updates, which might be annoying for some, but the stuff mostly just gets on with the job, and the Flash player is probably more ubiquitous than Acrobat Reader, and across more platforms.
@Murray The immediate load is because you have already installed the flash plugin. It is certainly one solution but as you note, lots of devices don’t support flash.
Carlos, 3D PDF is one of my favorites as it will do PMI (dimensions) too.
How about a more extensive use of PDF 3D?! A lot of CAD solutions already export their contents in this format, almost everybody has Adobe Reader installerd and it can be embedded in a web page, so it’s another possible solution, besides the Web GL. And me, as a Opera User, I have to wait for Opera 12 to have Web GL support.
@Don
Don,
When did you start working for SolidWorks? Just saw a forum post showing you’re in product definition. Hope it helps, but I know they’ve got a bunch of good people there already. Best of luck.
Anyway, Web Noodles would be stuff that turned out not to be so useful. Like the web toolbar in SolidWorks. Or that web 3d storefront that I can never remember the name of.
3D Instant Website used to allow you to put 3D on the web, but that got killed and replaced by something no one wants or can pronounce. Anyway. The stuff exists, it’s just awful.
flash?: http://www.david-laserscanner.com/wiki/user_manual/mesh2flash
Immediate load and run IE8 & 9 and FF 9 on PC and windows tab for me.
But my wife’s ipad sniffs and refuses to play it.
@Mark Burhop
http://www.ibiblio.org/e-notes/webgl/deflate/f22.html
Interesting. When I Open that web page in my HTML Editor, I see what appears to be geometry coordinates, am I correct?
Devon
@Mark Burhop
Mark,
Yeah. That’s cool. That’s the kind of thing you should have 50 of in a CAD blog post. Got any help for how to put WebGL objects on a blog?
@solidworm is so right. If you have Chrome or Firefox , go here for an example:
http://www.ibiblio.org/e-notes/webgl/deflate/f22.html
No plugin to load and very fast graphics. The issue right now is that there are some security concerns and Microsoft IE is refusing to support it. For some browsers, I think you have to change a setting which also messes up the experience.
On the plugin side, yes, it is very hard work because you have to support the OS’s under the plugin including different OS versions as well as different browsers and different browser versions. Then there are the browsers setting you (or your company) set. That is a lot of combinations with a lot of untested paths. If that all works, you still have the whole plugin download and install set of steps.
I’m very much hoping it will get better in a year or two when HTML5 has settled down and webgl concerns are addressed.
Here is a website done by a guy experimenting with 3D content using Javascript.
http://aerotwist.com/lab/undulating-monkey/
It is a challenge to do 3D on the web. Once the HTML5 spec is closer to being finalized and more people are on modern browsers then I suspect that the Canvas element combined with Javascript would be one method if the goal is ubiquitous reach. Of course, WebGL is also there.
Quote ““Web Noodles”, basically meaning stuff that sounded appealing but had no real substance.”
Interesting how yester-years web development was trounced on as something less than desirable but in just a few short years is clamored for. Everyone forgets that computer and information technology is basically exponential at this point and has been. Throw in the fact that hardware such as computers, tablets and smart phones are being commoditized and will be even more in the future…. hmmmmmm it will be an interesting one!
WebGL is the way to go i guess. there are some sites on the web related to human anatomy models that use WebGL they do not require any addons.
Hmmmm I see DS make no viewers for android or ipad…well I guess no one wants that…
I see too Nvidia are promoting Quadro and Tesla together for CAD workstations, the Tesla running apps like rendering and analysis while the Quadro runs CAD sessions without interuption, something I told SW they should pursue about 3-4 years ago… Did they listen? Were they onto it? No, they picked multi multi core cpu and more of the same via the cloud…
Error:
The following love-in has crashed: Dassault Systemes management of SW.
After a couple of years this shows up:
A problem occurred during conception. The idea is corrupt or not supported.
A problem occurred during conception. The idea is corrupt or not supported.
Check the idea integrity or the perversion.
3D Viewers are just a pain in the neck as you stated. Not being a programmer I don’t know what’s required, but it must be a challenge. Too bad.
Yet online 3D games can be played, right? Never played them myself 🙂
Devon
@Devon Sowell
I use chrome for most stuff, but I have IE on hand for a few things that don’t work on chrome. I installed FireFox for testing.
Here’s what I get in chrome:
And after a couple of minutes, this shows up:
We’re using Firefox 9.0.1, I saw a message stating a plugin was required, but after searching the next message stated the plugin was not found.
IMHO IE allows Trojan horses and displays web pages with malware links. Therefore we don’t use IE.
Devon