As soon as you start trusting other people's code and reusing things (eg, don't write your own carousel) you can start building cool stuff on top of other people's work. This editor is standing on the shoulders of litegl.js.
True, without his lightgl library this project wont exist, but the first thing I did was to strip all the things I didnt like and improve from there. There is hardly any function in litegl that remains unchanged from lighgl.
Litegl grew as the requirements of webglstudio grew. I encourage my students to do not use lubraries so they have full control of ehat they do. Thanks for the compliment :)
This is amazing and feels very fluid. I think it is part of a web-based software trend that will surprise a lot of people who think of the web at best as an interactive document display system. Another app that has a very snappy UI like this is http://OnShape.com CAD software, which is full featured 3D solid modeling without any plugins (all JS and WebGL).
WebGL allows you to build completely custom UIs, and these are well suited for 3D apps (which typically use OpenGL on the desktop, so transferring knowledge is trivial).
However, between custom OpenGL UIs and HTML-based UIs, there is an entire spectrum of native apps (mobile and desktop) that make use of platform conventions and standard functionality. This space is difficult to cover with web technologies because you have to simulate the look & feel and make the site feel like an app.
Many people have tried to build "just like native" toolkits from WebGL and DOM, but it's pretty tough. WebGL is very low level for this, and DOM is much too high level for many things.
Now you mentioned it also passed my mind to scrap DOM and use my own gui, lots of advantages but im worried it will slow down the development. Indeed all the timeline editor is a canvas. Its worthy to consider it.
Doing your own GUI affords a lot of advantages in terms of how you structure your code. As soon as you decide to render every frame you can take advantage of immediate mode techniques that work very well in editors IMO (unfortunately, many of the examples of using and implementing these online are not very good and imply restrictions that are not inherent with the technique...).
That said you seem to be far enough along that redoing the GUI would not be a good idea really.
Also the DOM is a fairly okay retained mode UI, so if that is your preference I would just use it.
As a user I have to say it doesn't matter me if your app looks native or follows HIG. That's just a convention used to make apps behave predictably and smoothly. If you can accomplish that with your own sensibilities that works too.
The common user interface/HIG idea makes less and less sense as software begins to do more and more things.
IRL, we don't expect toilets, hammers, bulldozers, shotguns, and surgical scalpels to have the same user interface features, and it would suck mightily if they did. Unfortunately, as those things get computerized we wind up getting the same crappy touch-screen menus and whatnot bolted on to them (imagine what using a hammer with a touch screen interface would be like).
I don't know the answer to how it could be brought about, but we definitely need some radically thinking in UI design. 3D libraries seem to at least provide the tools to make some new tools.
Those real life tools have a far simpler interface than, say, a mail client. As software becomes more complex, HIG increase in importance, because there is more to learn and HIG enables us to transfer knowledge across apps.
The actions you perform with a scalpel (or even a bulldozer) are far more complex than sending email, so arguing that they have a simpler interface doesn't really support your case. Quite the opposite, in fact. I would argue that they have simpler interfaces because those interfaces are actually optimized for the task, rather than being some jack-of-all-trades compromise.
In many ways WebGL is akin to a plugin. It's effectively replaced what plugins like Flash and Silverlight offered in the past by bolting on a new piece of functionality to the browsers.
The difference is the browser vendors are in control of the implementation that will make it slightly more secure, but it's still a long way from the HTML/JS/CSS environment people though would replace plugins.
Do they have permission to use the WebGL trademark in the name? Khronos has quite some info about that, but I don't see immediately how their use fits into the terms. https://www.khronos.org/legal/trademarks/#webgl
Awesome project! Congrats to the author for such clean code base too!
Maybe slightly off topic, but one of the most important takeaways from this: you don't need a bulky JavaScript framework to build complex applications. In fact, you may be better off without using one.
I'm sure there's a very narrow sweet spot where a given JavaScript framework can make you more productive. But if your application is complex enough, like this editor, the framework will probably work against you. And if it is simple enough, it may be better to not use the framework, so you don't grow dependent on it and find it hard to remove it if you need to grow the app.
Instead of the framework imposing the structure and constraints, a team can decide on the structure, agree on the constraints, and build libraries helpers according to that. Way more economic than the alternative: working around buggy and/or undocumented framework features, trying to catch up to constant changes and "upgrades", fighting against the JavaScript marketing machinery trying to decide which of the "Top JS Frameworks" to use, etc.
The main diference is that I created the engine to fulfill my editor needs and not the other way around. Also not having legacy allowed me to recode lots of parts without problem.
This being said I love the idea to stop at runtine any application coded in threejs and have the freedom to edit it from the console using the chrome extensition.
It is being used by several companies in pretty large productions (including games, ads, educational projects, etc) both for desktop and mobile devices. You should really check it out.
Full disclosure: I work for Goo Technologies as a Frontend developer.
Very cool. Seems better than the competitors (playcanvas, three editor, ...) by some amount. Being 100% open source including the editor is pretty huge IMO
The big questions for me are: What model formats does this support? How well developed is the animation support? How is the performance in large scenes and on mobile?
Good questions. It supports collada which is the default ascii format por scenes, i managed to export complex scenes with animation without problem but there are some cases that do not work.
Performance could be improved, im aiming more to flexibility but i managed to have hundreds of objects with independent materials at 60 fps. For mobile i want to create a lightweight rendering mode because the current one has too many cases to consider.
The next release will be focused in bugs, and the one afterward in performance.
This is really great and I would not know where to start building this. The only thing that I would like to have is the use of "modern" JS tech like ES6 and a build pipeline... Surely this can be added later as well.
There are some features in ES6 that could improve the coding but nothing that is really game changer for performance, but ES7 will have SIMD support, that would be amazing
MIT is a fine license, but it worries me when I hear this. I've seen too many people who make assumptions about what copyright offers (and doesn't). It sucks, but it's a good idea to spend some time getting familiar with licenses so that you don't offer something that you don't intend. Also, if you are using 3rd party libraries, you need to make sure that they are compatible with the license you choose.
Just friendly advice from someone who has seen things go badly before ;-)
Even though the rendering performance is very snappy and efficient, to me this fails on the most important thing for this sort of software - UI. Can you imagine someone totally new to 3D modelling opening this thing and just going for it? It's completely unintuitive and yet, because it's so accessible that should've been the primary concern.
But it is not a 3d modelling software, it is a 3D scene editor, like Unity. Improving the interface is the easy part, for me the important aspect was to be sure that all the important features are there, so now I can focus on improving the experience.
Exactly. 3D engine !== 3D modeling tool. If you are interested in a WebGL-based 3D modeling too, give http://Clara.io a try.:)
BTW we should figure out a way to connect Clara.io to WebGLStudio as it can be a source of content, both models as well as 3D animations (Clara.io has a full keyframe editor.)
Is there any 3D modeling software that is intuitive enough for a beginner to jump in start creating 3D scenes? The barrier to entry and learning curve of 3D modeling has always been high and steep.
I dont know about Wings3D that is probably casual tool. But ZBrush? Are you sure? ZBrush is notorious for its crazy learning curve. I mean sure you can do something with it instantly but to make something meaningful is hard.
Besides you should compare it to game engines like unity or ue4, its very differend thing than 3D modeler.
Wings3D is not a casual tool. It is a fully featured 3d modeling application that does that very well. It works on the box modelling principle. ZBrush is really easy to get into and make something instantly like you say, but yes it's really difficult to learn. I started with Wings3D and still use it.
UI is following standard practices in 3D applications from what I've seen so far. It's intuitive for someone used to those apps. Those apps aren't something you dive straight into though. It has a learning curve, but it is logical.
The object/component system looks like a Unity3D ripoff. Even component names ("MeshRenderer") are unchanged from Unity.
Also it is interesting that it's written in JS without any higher-level technology like TypeScript or Dart.
A little bit off topic, but every time I try any kind of similar application (this, a CAD, a PCB editor) that is implemented to work in web browser, I lack feeling of "stability" of a desktop app with all the files stored locally - I would rather use a desktop app with inferior functionality.
Component based applications have existed for a long time but obviously there are choices made in webglstudio that tried to appeal to unity users, just because unity is the defacto standard.
About the stability of desktop apps I agree with you, but sooner or later that will have to change, so thats what we are pushing.
