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Posts filed under Online 3D Graphics

Online 3D Technology Guide Part 3 | Unity 3D

Unity's 3D engine has it's roots in desktop game development. Recently they've branched out into the in-browser 3D world and brought their high-end graphics with them. Their Unity Web Player can be downloaded and installed onto both Mac and PC and allows you to view content built on the Unity 3D platform right inside your browser.

Features

Unity 3D's graphics are stunning to say the least, especially when compared to it's competitor in-browser plug-ins (Flash and O3D). When it's given to access your GPU the detail involved in the 3D scenes can appear almost boundless. Particles, shadows, shaders, physics and all up to standard with today's high end games machines. Not to mention full multiplayer and network game support. On the development side there are established pipelines between applications like Blender, PhotoShop as well as support for a massive range of file format imports. This is something the open-source equivalents struggle to do well in my eyes and can be a somewhat cumbersome process. Then once you've developed and got your 3D scene, model or game ready for deployment, then not only can you push it through onto their web player, but also iPhone, Desktop and even Wii. This really is where all in-browser 3D environments need to be.

The future of Unity 3D

Unity 3D already brings rich, highly detailed, multi-player environments straight into a standard web browser. This means with their web player still in such early days of it's release, what Unity 3D has to offer in the future is an exciting prospect.

Unity 3D is closed source and a license to use it's development tools needs to be paid for. This can be seen as a good thing or a bad depending on your opinions regarding the open-source movement.

The only real drawback we can see is that the Unity Web Player plug-in hasn't yet been nearly as widely adopted by the internet community as Flash's has. This means viewers of your Unity 3D created content will see a blank space asking them to download a new (3 MB) plug-in. In  the immediate, now now now culture of the internet it will put a lot of people off. Hopefully though with Unity's second to none GPU supported graphics will win users and compel them to download, install and enjoy.
Submitted by Ashley Davison on Sat, 2010-02-20 10:50 | 0 Comments
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Online 3D Technology Guide Part 2 | O3D

O3D is Google's own home grown open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser. First released late April 2009, this API's goal in Google's own words is to create an "open web standard for 3D graphics". First things first though, before being able to view anything constructed using O3D you will need to download and install Google's browser based plug-in (if you haven't already).

Features

Once you do install the plug-in it's clear from their demos that the resolution and technical abilities of the engine are far above anything a Flash based 3D engine can hope to achieve right now. High quality animation, particle physics, shaders, and shadow rendering are just a few of the features that O3D boasts at this early stage in it's development. Not only this, but being Google, you can be sure it's going to be a pretty stable platform.

The future of O3D

Google's plug-in hasn't yet been nearly as widely adopted by the internet community as Flash's has. This means viewers of your O3D created content will see a blank space asking them to download a new plug-in. In the immediate, now now now culture of the internet this will put a lot of people off. Hopefully though with O3D's stunning GPU supported graphics and trusted Google name it will compel uses to download, install and enjoy. 
Submitted by Ashley Davison on Sat, 2010-02-20 10:49 | 0 Comments
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Online 3D Technology Guide Part 1 | Flash 3D

Introduction

There are a variety of online 3D technologies out there that facilitate the integration of rich 3D graphics within a standard web page.

We wanted to do a series of posts taking a closer look at the underlying technologies facilitating this cutting edge browser based 3D web revolution. Our aim is that we hope to break things down and show how these technologies can work for you. Which 3D technology is relevant and what's actually do-able now and into the future.

Flash 3D Engines

For many years now Flash has been the underlying technology behind the mass growth of online video streaming. Such sites as YouTube wouldn't exist without it. Now Flash looks to do the same with 3D graphics processing... or does it? With the introduction of Flash's Action Script version 3 (AS3) a range of 3D graphical engines began to be developed and released into the Flash community. The ubiquity of the Flash plug-in meant rich 3D graphics could become accessible to anyone with a web browser. However such rich 3D media is limited by Flash's failure to utilise the GPU (any kind of graphics card). Currently it makes use of the computer's CPU processor. Which basically means it uses your computers main brain to do all the processing, where as today's modern standard of 3D graphics in games depends upon access to a graphics card geared specifically to heavy duty number crunching. However, there have been rumours that Adobe (the owners of Flash) intend on making GPU access for Flash applications a reality in the not too distant future. Watch this space.

Below is a consolidated list of the various Flash 3D engines active and available at the moment as well as their relevant applications.
  • Papervision 3D 2.0 Alpha
    Open-source project. Relatively robust in the world of Flash 3D engines. Supportive community with a plethora of tutorials and documentation available. Ideal for 3D web interfaces and simple games. Link | Examples

  • Away 3D
    Open-source project. Comparatively robust. Has a supportive community with lots of tutorials and documentation available. Ideal for games and interactive 3D interfaces. Link | Examples

  • Sandy 3D
    Open-source project. Ideal for 3D web interfaces and simple games. Link | Examples

  • Five3D
    Light-weight open-source project. Ideal for those basic projects that need to perform under optimised conditions. Link | Examples

  • 3DFS
    Open-source project written in Action Script 2. If AS2 is the programming language you need to deal with by necessity, then this is the engine for you. Link | Examples

  • Wire Engine 3D
    Light-weight open-source project. Link | Example

  • JigLibFlash 3D Physics
    Open-source project. Supplementary physics engine. Link | Example

  • Alternativa3D
    Closed-source/paid for project. Specifically designed to be a performance in-browser game development platform with comparatively higher resolution graphics. Online multiplayer capabilities supported. Link | Examples

  • Electric 3D
    Closed-source/paid for project. Electric Oyster's in-house realtime 3D engine. Contact them for further information. Link | Examples

  • FreeSpin 3D
    Paid for component. Good for visualisations of objects, simple games and web interfaces. Link | Examples

  • Sophie 3D
    Paid for Flash component. Gives high quality smooth performance realtime 3D renders. Limited as to the applications for the engine, suited best to visualisation. Link | Example

The future of Flash 3D

The most important thing to remember is that what these Flash engines listed above give us is the opportunity to make rich 3D graphics something accessible. All you need is a bog-standard web browser. No fancy big downloads or obscure voodoo magic, it should just appear instantly and work.

However, as other web browser plug-ins (Unity 3D) and technologies like HTML 5 become more widely available, Adobe will need to make sure Flash keeps pace with the predominantly open-source communities that push these engines to their limits. Flash 3D may have been one of the first stable, accessible platforms out there to get a foot hold, but in-order to secure a future in the online 3D market place it needs to be able to utilise the computer's GPU (graphics card processors).
Submitted by Ashley Davison on Fri, 2010-02-19 20:26 | 0 Comments
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