Clara.io

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
21

but thats exactly whats going on around you, you just fail to see. MMORGs are extremely popular yet, they ultilise only a small fraction of modern CPUs and GPUs, pretty much what allowed Runspace to port easily to hmtl5. My 7 year old iMac was able to play Dota 2 which has been released quite recently.

You make the assumption that most users want apps that take full advantage of CPU and GPU, that assumption is wrong. Users want apps that are either fun or useful or preferably both. If we talk about 3d artists sure they will want a 3d app that can squeeze as much it can out of everything, but then that does not mean they cannot benefit out of web apps.

The average user though does not really care, he loves facebook, he plays games which according to your criterial are crappy as hell and does stuff that dont even remotely tax the CPU and GPU.

The reason why the web is slow, and yes its slow is because so far there was not so much demand for fast web anyway. But things are changing all the time, a web browser was just a thing to display static ugly web pages , modern browser can do a ton more because developers want to push forward. Who would think that the modern web browser would offer not one, not two , but 3 different technologies (WebGL , SVG and Canvas) that are GPU accelerated. It also means that web browser have become incredible more fast with the introduction of those new technologies. And is certainly will continue to get faster and faster.

And most importantly people LOVE the web. Take a look at Github, it does stuff you can as well do fine with a desktop app, you could argue its potentially way slower using still experimental / immature technologies, yet tons of people use it. Why ? People love to stay inside their browser.

Would you prefer to edit your 3d mess inside blender and then upload it, or directly edit the file inside your browser and reupload nothing, instant save, instant update in your website or web game, especially if its a small quick edit ? add to that the fact that you can edit that file from anywhere , any kind of device , anywhere in the world and you have a pretty tempting package. And if you do prefer doing in the first thing, how about all other people. These kind of web apps are not toys they are becoming increasingly popular and more and more companies prefer web apps to destkop apps.

You even tried to convince me that web technologies are more accesible from desktop than they are from web. Take even the simplest example, how easy to embed a youtube video inside blender and how hard inside a web app. For a web app/ web pages its a simple copy paste of few lines. There was a talk actually to do just about that for blender, and even provide links to blender wiki, but all that remained just talk. Your arguments fall down like a dominos.

Exactly !

22

I wasn’t quite clear, I guess: You are significantly limiting yourself as a developer of such an application, which is why I question the rationale behind it.

23

There are many times where you cannot do any work on a desktop Blender. Being able to do some work in those other times has utility to the user and therefore there is a need for a developer to fill.

I see this as similar to arguments against the crappy games we see on iPhones. It would have been hard to predict the popularity of these games beforehand seeing as how much better the gaming experience is on console and handheld game systems. Sometime good enough can win out over better. Web-based video editing even has a place in the world, despite being so limited.

It is very possible that before too long we’ll see children using sculpting apps on their iPads, android phones, or even on the browsers on their TVs, producing some incredible works. And that’s a good thing.

24

but thats exactly whats going on around you, you just fail to see. MMORGs are extremely popular yet, they ultilise only a small fraction of modern CPUs and GPUs, pretty much what allowed Runspace to port easily to hmtl5. My 7 year old iMac was able to play Dota 2 which has been released quite recently.

Well, so what? Yes, there are companies who design for the lowest common hardware denominator. Then there are those who don’t. I don’t really care which market is bigger, you don’t come into my market with fantasy stories about “cross-platform” and “performance is irrelevant”. Runescape 3 looks like it is ten years old and the HTML5 version only runs in Chrome.

You make the assumption that most users want apps that take full advantage of CPU and GPU, that assumption is wrong.

Users want the best possible experience and web technology certainly fails to deliver here on most parts.

The average user though does not really care, he loves facebook, he plays games which according to your criterial are crappy as hell and does stuff that dont even remotely tax the CPU and GPU.

Well, he certainly doesn’t love the facebook HTML5 app. Also, I never said anything about any game being crappy. Don’t put words into my mouth.

The reason why the web is slow, and yes its slow is because so far there was not so much demand for fast web anyway. But things are changing all the time, a web browser was just a thing to display static ugly web pages , modern browser can do a ton more because developers want to push forward.

The web is slow because the technology behind it sucks. It was never meant to be animated. The slowness of Javascript pales in comparison to the slowness of the DOM when you’re constantly reflowing because the web designer wants animation.

Who would think that the modern web browser would offer not one, not two , but 3 different technologies (WebGL , SVG and Canvas) that are GPU accelerated.

Even if SVG or Canvas are GPU-accelerated (which is by no means a given) that doesn’t mean they are fast.

And most importantly people LOVE the web. Take a look at Github, it does stuff you can as well do fine with a desktop app, you could argue its potentially way slower using still experimental / immature technologies, yet tons of people use it. Why ? People love to stay inside their browser.

I’m not sure what you mean by that. People use github as a git server, pushing changes from their native github clients. The pretty-print of the source code you see, I doubt anybody seriously uses for anything. Maybe they use it like a forum, as well. I wouldn’t even call Github a web application, however.

Would you prefer to edit your 3d mess inside blender and then upload it, or directly edit the file inside your browser and reupload nothing, instant save, instant update in your website or web game, especially if its a small quick edit ?

Why would I even want to do that? If I needed to sync or share my data, I could use plenty of services like DropBox.

add to that the fact that you can edit that file from anywhere , any kind of device , anywhere in the world and you have a pretty tempting package. And if you do prefer doing in the first thing, how about all other people. These kind of web apps are not toys they are becoming increasingly popular and more and more companies prefer web apps to destkop apps.

None of these things actually work right now. Most devices are not even WebGL capable. If you expect this to work out in the future, so be it. I’m more skeptical.

You even tried to convince me that web technologies are more accesible from desktop than they are from web.

I don’t think I did. This sentence doesn’t make sense to me. You mean the things I said about getting data in/out of a webapp?

Take even the simplest example, how easy to embed a youtube video inside blender and how hard inside a web app. For a web app/ web pages its a simple copy paste of few lines. There was a talk actually to do just about that for blender, and even provide links to blender wiki, but all that remained just talk. Your arguments fail down like a domino.

That’s not “the simplest” example, that’s a cherry picked example where a webapp somehow wins. I don’t believe embedding YouTube videos is something a lot of Blender users are particularly interested in, but if somebody wanted to implement it, it wouldn’t be particularly hard, as long as it’s an HTML5 compatible video file.
Really, I suggest you to actually get some experience with web application development before you evangelize it so fervently.

25

Dont forget you dont need a full on 3d suite to get great results. Sometimes you just need a stream lined modeling app (see Silo 2). Being online can offer more collaboration options and cloud based rendering for speed. Perhaps it can be accessed with an large android tablet running a mobile cpu, when mixed with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, long hours can be spent at a coffee shop modeling or rendering without much of a hardware requirement. It wont replace the bigger client side apps, but it does have its place and whether or not it opens up more possibilities is to be seen.

There is pretty much no reason to look at this negatively. I am not sure I see the logic in your hostility towards this kind of tech Zal.

Users want the best possible experience and web technology certainly fails to deliver here on most parts.

Users also want accessibility, which plays a HUGE roll in user experience. There is no logical way anyone can say web technology fails to deliver on that. In fact web tech via a cloud can do many things the client side apps cannot, it is one reason why there isnt so much pushback against Adobe’s creative cloud platform, which replaced the rest of the adobe product line for future releases. Autodesk is looking into something similar.

They wouldnt be doing this if there were not some perks to doing so (aside from basic profit).

26

Go Zalamander go! You’re on fire! I don’t think there is a person alive that can stand up to you. If you weren’t here this forum would be so boring! :wink:

27

I’m curious what the animation is like, but can’t seem to find info beyond the modeling, and vray stuff.

28

There is pretty much no reason to look at this negatively. I am not sure I see the logic in your hostility towards this kind of tech Zal.

I just don’t understand why a developer would do this to themselves. It must be that somebody promised them cake, but I suspect there really isn’t any.

Users also want accessibility, which plays a HUGE roll in user experience. There is no logical way anyone can say web technology fails to deliver on that.

And I’m not denying that, but how can you possibly hold this benefit so high against all the drawbacks? Again, the target demographic here is not grandma that cannot install software. This is a standard 3D authoring tool.

In fact web tech via a cloud can do many things the client side apps cannot, it is one reason why there isnt so much pushback against Adobe’s creative cloud platform, which replaced the rest of the adobe product line for future releases. Autodesk is looking into something similar.

“Chaining” your users to the cloud is of course a great way to keep customers in line. But that has really nothing to do with the particular technology at hand. Web browsers are client-side applications, after all. Anything they can do, a native app can do (and do it better).
Now, if you happen to use some kind of device you do not control as a “computer” (like a public PC, or an iOS/WindowsRT device) and your browser is your window to the world, then web technology wins.

29

Hmm… perhaps they’re targeting a different sector of the market than the full-blown 3d apps?

If someone can make a low poly game asset while waiting in line at the DMV then what’s the problem?

…and, if nobody pushes the current state of technology then nobody will invent the super-fast DOM tree update/display algorithm or work on making their javascript engine more efficient because it’s Good Enough™ for what today’s web users need.

30

WOW is far worse and , wait for it, its desktop!

Users want the best possible experience and web technology certainly fails to deliver here on most parts.

yeah and blender sucks, man you rock at forming arguments.

Well, he certainly doesn’t love the facebook HTML5 app. Also, I never said anything about any game being crappy. Don’t put words into my mouth.

OMG that certainly proves how web sucks. You just picked the most awful web app to prove a point , I smell desperation.

The web is slow because the technology behind it sucks. It was never meant to be animated. The slowness of Javascript pales in comparison to the slowness of the DOM when you’re constantly reflowing because the web designer wants animation.

You seriously trying to convince that desktop technology rocks ? Opengl ? DIRECTX ? GTK ? Windows own GUI API ? desktop is one bad design decision after another. What makes it so special ?

Even if SVG or Canvas are GPU-accelerated (which is by no means a given) that doesn’t mean they are fast.
Unless you want to do 3d graphics with them or some crazy graphics yes they are.

I’m not sure what you mean by that. People use github as a git server, pushing changes from their native github clients. The pretty-print of the source code you see, I doubt anybody seriously uses for anything. Maybe they use it like a forum, as well. I wouldn’t even call Github a web application, however.

Then you have no clue what a web app is. It has many , many tools. Pull requests, issues reporting, diff viewer, flexible search, Graphs for commits / commiters / etc , news reporting for repos you following , fork creation and management , branch creation and management and the list goes and on and on.

Why would I even want to do that? If I needed to sync or share my data, I could use plenty of services like DropBox.

which are web based. See thats the problem, desktop is web and web is desktop , you cannot easily separate them. You cant easily pick sides once you want to do anything web related.

None of these things actually work right now. Most devices are not even WebGL capable. If you expect this to work out in the future, so be it. I’m more skeptical.

They do work just fine. WebGL may not be fully supported by all devices, but there is no going back, resistance is just futile.

I don’t think I did. This sentence doesn’t make sense to me. You mean the things I said about getting data in/out of a webapp?

I think all people who read your post can understand what you think about web apps in general.

That’s not “the simplest” example, that’s a cherry picked example where a webapp somehow wins. I don’t believe embedding YouTube videos is something a lot of Blender users are particularly interested in, but if somebody wanted to implement it, it wouldn’t be particularly hard, as long as it’s an HTML5 compatible video file.
Really, I suggest you to actually get some experience with web application development before you evangelize it so fervently.

I can tell you one thing I am experienced enough to know that any user would love to have emded videos and blender wiki links inside blender tooltips out of the box. It would make learning blender a breeze. If you cant see that, you cant see much. Because its that obvious.

You only judge things from the surface. You think the web is not the future, I dont need to convince you, just let the time pass and watch and see how things do evolve.

And I am sorry to brake it to you, but I hate the web, I hate js , i hate hmtl , I hate css , xml and many other things. I actually considered JS pretty much the worst language I have studied and I have studied most popular ones. So you “evangelist” remark, sorry but that wont fly. Just because I disagree with you that does not make me a web lover, just someone that has the open mind to accept that web will keep dominating our lives more and more and desktop less and less.

31

I seem to recall you defending developers’ rights to make whatever they want to make, but apparently that’s only as long as they make desktop software :wink:

Seriously though, why must you assume that they are doing this to torture themselves? Either they are doing this because they want to or because someone paid them to do it, which in my mind is all right.

With this app they are laying out the ground foundation for cloud-based 3D applications. If no-one does it then we’ll never evolve our technology beyond what we already have and that would frankly suck.

32

?

yeah and blender sucks, man you rock at forming arguments.

…

OMG that certainly proves how web sucks. You just picked the most awful web app to prove a point , I smell desperation.

I’m not sure if it is “the most awful web app”. It’s a good example because we’re talking about a company that has essentially unlimited resources and pretty much only needs to render a couple of images and text. And they failed.

You seriously trying to convince that desktop technology rocks ? Opengl ? DIRECTX ? GTK ? Windows own GUI API ? desktop is one bad design decision after another. What makes it so special ?

I’m not singing the praises of any of these technologies. What makes native code so special? Well, for instance you can implement a browser in it…

Then you have no clue what a web app is. It has many , many tools. Pull requests, issues reporting, diff viewer, flexible search, Graphs for commits / commiters / etc , news reporting for repos you following , fork creation and management , branch creation and management and the list goes and on and on.

I’d kind of expect git users to perform many of these things on the commandline. Then again, I don’t know. These things are not good examples of where web technology pushes any boundaries. It’s what you’d expect to work.

which are web based. See thats the problem, desktop is web and web is desktop , you cannot easily separate them. You cant easily pick sides once you want to do anything web related.

The key aspect of DropBox is the directory sync, which requires a “native” application (as in: It’s impossible to implement in a Browser). It should be obvious that the web technology I am talking about is not just “anything that connects to the internet”.

They do work just fine. WebGL may not be fully supported by all devices, but there is no going back, resistance is just futile.

If you want to believe that, fine. Buy more HTML5 stock.

I can tell you one thing I am experienced enough to know that any user would love to have emded videos and blender wiki links inside blender tooltips out of the box. It would make learning blender a breeze. If you cant see that, you cant see much. Because its that obvious.

It’s a “nice-to-have”. But that doesn’t mean Blender needs to be a web app.

You only judge things from the surface. You think the web is not the future, I dont need to convince you, just let the time pass and watch and see how things do evolve.

I’m actually judging things from a fairly technical point of view, below the surface.

And I am sorry to brake it to you, but I hate the web, I hate js , i hate hmtl , I hate css , xml and many other things. I actually considered JS pretty much the worst language I have studied and I have studied most popular ones. So you “evangelist” remark, sorry but that wont fly.

You’re quite clearly praising a lot of supposed benefits that aren’t even really there today. That’s evangelizing.

Just because I disagree with you that does not make me a web lover, just someone that has the open mind to accept that web will keep dominating our lives more and more and desktop less and less.

Most of the time is already spent in browsers, that doesn’t mean all content creation apps suddenly need to move there, too.

EDIT:

I’m not questioning their right to torture themselves. They should be free to follow their beliefs:

33

well I said what I wanted to say, time to let other chime in with their own opinions.

34

Hi!

(Ben Houston here from Exocortex, the developers of Clara.io)

We do support keyframe animation on most parameters you see in the system. We have implemented but standard cubic interpolation and linear interpolation but right now through the GUI you can only create linear animations. At SIGGRAPH this year we showed off a keyframed bone system that updated a skinned character at 50 fps in the browser. And this was using a software skinned algorithm, not a GPU optimized limited system.

I’ll create a video in the next few days on how to create animations.

Best regards,
Ben Houston

35

I can answer this as one of the developers of Clara.io. We are a moderately small company that is self-funded by sales of our desktop based tools. We choose to do this on our own as we figured that things can be more convenient for a lot of 3D tasks, not all of them, but many of them. We have a really long history of creating success desktop based tools both here at Exocortex and myself before at a place called Frantic Films Software (I co-created Deadline and Krakatoa, which are moderately popular tools.)

We are doing this because we ourselves believe in it. We are also doing it because we love pushing boundaries.

Best regards,
Ben Houston

36

Great! looking forward to it.

37

You have a cool job/career.

38

its always cool to try (new) things in a new way, thats how we progress really, even if it lacks some certain advantages and benefits for the time being, but things will get better if people keep pushing and trying, its not to hard to image at the end of the road these web based app will play big time and big deal, so to speak cloud technology even most of them just company hogwash at the moment, you can’t deny that the major market is slowly moving from desktop/local to cloud era which web app will play a major role.

39

They put up a video that shows the real-time collaboration. Also, since I just realized you can embed vimeo videos here I added the modeling tutorial I linked on the last page.