Blender Releases Linux 3D Web Plugin

Qbertino writes: "Not a Number, producer of Blender, the Linux community's favorite professional 3D Package (get it for free) has released the beta of their 3D Web Plugin for Netscape 6.1 / Mozilla on Linux/Unix. It offers full integration of Blender's realtime 3D enviroment based applications into the browser's enviroment. Including OpenGL acceleration and all. Check out the Demos. Feedback on the beta-release is welcome and kindly requested on the Blender Community Discussion Board."

Comments

Cross-platform

[maggard]

What didn't get noted is that one can go to the same demos running Wintel and IE and get a working plugin automagically installed. This isn't just Linux/Mozilla but reasonably cross-platform. Next gotta check with MacOS & MacOS X.

Are there any sites using this?

[tshak]

This sounds great, but are there any "real world" sites using or planning on using this plugin? Or is it just another VRML experiment?

Re:Does it support Internet Explorer?

[proxima]

The Blender plugin for Internet Explorer has been available for some time. Here is the link to the Blender 3D plugin download page.

Re:Heaven forbid you actually *go* to the site

[tommck]

I learned a long time ago not to click on any links in SlashDot until long after the article is posted :-)

T

Re:Blender in general

[brondsem]

Take a look at the learning path. It helped me get a good grasp on the interface. I haven't used other editors, so I can't say it's better or worse than any.

Market

[peterdaly]

Seeing how the site is slashdotted, I might as well reply.

I see the market for this not being "VRML" like things, like someone said, but remote viewing of blender files (and other supported formats?) without having to have blender installed. The same reason many companies use PDF for "print" documents. You don't have to have the DTP tool used to create the document, you just have to have a common web based viewer (Acrobat.)

I know companies charge thousands for web plug-ins that let people view ProE models and the like without having ProE installed. Is this much different?

-Pete

Re:I have to agree

[nhavar]

That's wild, i've never used any of those products and I mastered Blender enough to build - this - after about three days of running through the tuts and messing around with it.

naysayers - this is not VRML

[nhavar]

This plugin does not handle things in the same way that people think of VRML. Although Blender can work to create and read VRML the product and the plugin do much much more. 1) Blender is cross platform Win/Mac/*nix 2)You can create 3d objects to almost any level of realism that you want to (see the gallery on their site) 3) You can animate within the same package 4) You can create interactive content (i.e. games) in the same package. 5) the plugin/module architecture to create special effects is python driven. The web plugin allows for you to view a 3d object like maybe a product representation and then show it to your potential customer, or 3d games to run over the web, or interactive navigation for the website. There are tons of examples of what the plugin and application can do if one takes a little time to look through the web site. They even have an example of how to use the plugin to create interactive banner ads.

The tool is different from just about everything out there and once you get used to the method of interaction is seems very easy to get things done. I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there that bitch about the Linux interfaces and how hard they are to use, while many more people find them quick and efficient... give blender a try and see if it falls into this same scenario.

Stop griping about how it works/doesn't work or comparing it to other products like VRML until you've at least taken a look at what it can do. The user galleries and demos on the site are excellent examples of what can be done by an artist.

Yet Another Proprietary 3D Format

[Animats]

The Blender player is free. Blender as a 3D package rendering videos is free. But the part of Blender that outputs to the player is not free.

And the player file format is proprietary.

There are other 3D players. Shockwave 3D, for example. VRML, despite lack of interest, actually works quite well now, if you have a 3D accelerator board and DSL or better. There's X3D, which is just VRML text expressed as XML, but nobody uses that.

X3D would be a useful format if it was used, because it's one of the very few non-proprietary, documented 3D scene formats out there. Consider it if you're doing open-source 3D tools.

I'd like to see X3D import and export for Blender. VRML 2 export has been done as a Python script, so it's possible. Blender itself only does VRML 1.

Re:why is Blender not open source?

[MrResistor]

Some of it is.

I think this page gives some good insight into their business model. Basically, Publisher (not free) pays for developement, and thus gets all the new features first. Once development is paid for the features get rolled into Creator (free). I think this sort of model is an excellent way to run a project like this, as long as no one gets greedy. The developers are paid, and therefore more motivated to do the "less sexy" jobs, and all the hardware and software necessary to develope a truely cross-platform package are acquired without relying on donations.