Govie - Free online 3D presentation

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Hello fellow Blenderinos!

We made an online editor to present and share 3D models and I wanted to know what you think of it?

You can use the full feature set for free, and there are two blender add-ons to help you get your model ready for the web.

I would be happy if you could play around with it and let us know what you think. What could be improved, what features would you like to have to present your model not just as a simple 2D Rendering?

You can create complete interactive presentations that run online:


And something to play around with:


Melbourne

!Melbourne


Fancy Car

Herz


Outdoor Shoe

Shoe


Human Heart

Herz


House Panorma

Herz


House
thieme_house


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I’d like to play around with it but I have two initial questions as I couldn’t see the answers. 1- Is it possible to change the material? 2- Can I host it on my own domain / embed it to my webpage?

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  1. Not yet, it’s in an experimental state cause we need to save all properties per slide. As a work around you could insert the same object with different materials like shown in the e-cigarette example.

  2. Yes you can embed it as an iframe , check out the “share within seconds” entry inside the Plattform Features section.

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I saw that you are into architecture so I made a little demo video:

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Just a quick note that if you’re using Karol Miklas’ Datsun model, you need to provide him proper attribution as required by the Creative Commons license that it’s released under.

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Yes, I spoke to him and he’s fine. Also if you open the link you see he is mentioned in the scene

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Glad to hear you checked with him! However, the license is stricter than that - it also requires a link back to the original on Sketchfab (unless Karol provided you with a custom license of course).

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Why? If I modeled something for instance, and uploaded it to sketchfab, why would I need to ask them if I want to upload the same model to another platform?

By the way this is a quote from Karol

Hi Lorenz!

Thanks a lot for the kind words, appreciate it.

Sure you can use the model however you like, even commercially. Put the credit wherever you feel like.

Best, Karol

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Terms of Use - Sketchfab

But Bart can probably tell you how the licensing exactly works for Sketchfab.
Basically: their platform, their rules. :wink:

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Website looks good. I’ve couple of feedbacks and a question:

  • Fancy Car and House Panorama doesn’t load properly. Material and lighting doesn’t show up first. If i click “Backward” button then they show up. I use Chrome (64bit version 96.0.4664.45)
  • The website has a big “allow cookies” pop-up in the middle of screen which is distracting and it’s in German (It might even be warning for something else as Chrome doesn’t translate it).
  • After I registered and clicked verified my e-mail, “Please wait. The registration request is processing.” text is stuck at the website.

Overall it’s good but what is the advantage of using Govie over Sketchfab (Has lots of editor features) or Nira.app (Displays billions of polygons)?

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Hey Emir,
thanks for your feedback, that’s really helpful.

  1. The Fancy Car project starts with an outline of the car that is nearly black, in the next slide you will see it light up. I added some text to make that clear, or is the entire screen black? Are you on Windows, Mac or Phone ?
    Running the Panorma on the Phone and PC works fine for me on Chrome / Windows and Phone.
  2. Thanks for that hint, I need to translate the cookie, will do that tomorrow :wink:
  3. Did you get a mail ? We will have a look at it tomorrow.

Now to the most important question, why to choose Govie?

The main focus we have is storytelling. You can create different slides and all of the properties are saved per slide. This gives you the ability to build up a story around your 3D model.

Beside that you can upload nearly any format, including native CAD files, and our internal pipeline will optimise your file for you. In the technical Goove you have auto-generated animations and different shading modes while in the cineastic Govie you have camera transitions, post-effects, custom lighting, environment maps, interactive hotspots, images, videos, text, custom css and everything can be changed per slide with auto-generated transitions. Also you can include 360 images and connect them to Google Street.

Think of it as a 3D PowerPoint Presentation.

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Hey Emir,

also from my side, thank you very much for your feedback. I’m Fabian one of the lead devs of the platform together with Lorenz. We are very excited about our release and your opinions. Feedback like yours help us some much to see where we should go.
Regarding your comment about the stucked registration screen (“Please wait”). We have issues with the reactivity there and the auto refresh. Looking at the latest db setup, your registration should be done and you should be ready to dive into the Govie world.
We are about to fix that issue, at least with a more transparent dialog like “Please wait, or refresh after a while” or something like that. Anyway we are on it!

So like Lorenz mentioned, I wish you and everyone a happy 3D story telling with the Govie Platform.

Cheers,
Fabian

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We now added material variants so you can add them in blender using this add-on an get a drop down in the model section of the govie editor.

The add-on still has some issues with newer versions of the gltf exporter but I fixed it and could send you the updated version.

Currently this feature is only available in beta but we gonna release soon.

If you have an account try login to beta.govie.de

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Thanks a lot, I will definitely try it out soon

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Did it work for you?

Here is a quick example I made:

Material-Variants

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Hi Lorenz, hi Fabian,

I just recently stumbled across Govie. I tried it out over the last couple days.

Congratulations on the launch. I want to say, it is a well-rounded product, the viewer, especially the editor and the blender addons are great tools to use!

Here are some questions and ideas. Let me know if something is already answered on the website or in the documentation!


Viewer:
At the core, a Govie is a sequence of slides. I can go forward or backwards in the sequence, jump around randomly using the TOC or by clicking on a hotspot. I think a global back button could be useful, one that lets me go through my history of slides.


Full-License Tier:
Clients will request a full custom branding, without anything Govie related. Can I bring my own css, fonts?
There is a css area for each slide, could I add global css/overrides?


Blender/GLTF related:
Using many armatures in a scene, it seems that bone names need to be unique across the whole scene. Otherwise Govie will try to play the animations on the wrong rig. The same gltf plays the animations correctly in the Babylonjs sanbbox.
I dont think this is a problem though, but it should be mentioned in the Govie documentation.


Editor Features:
Localization:
I am sure this is something you are working on. I might need to add languages to the mediabox content (Annotations will need this too I guess).

Govie Navigation:
Right now, users can trigger a new slide via the back and forward button, the TOC and the hotspots. While these are great options, I would need something else: trigger a slide from a link in the mediabox (text, image, icon…). The problem I see is that the user has several parts of the viewer to constantly observe:

  • an article with information
  • a 3d scene with animations and clickable hotspots
  • the control bar with the TOC.

This might be tiring, maybe even frustrating for some users.
Therefore, I might want to consolidate all information and clickable options in one place, the mediabox.
On top of that, I might want to keep the same mediabox across several slides. So essentially, just triggering 3d scene changes from the mediabox. So the user’s eyes just jump between the mediabox and the 3d scene.

Search:
Full text search for slide contents, so it is easier to link between them and break linearity.


Product Website:
I think the pricing is pretty well hidden on the website. You could add more CTAs that lead the user directly to pricing and signup.

I also had trouble finding the link to the editor after I closed the website :smiley:


Random questions:
Are images processed to be responsive? What happens if I upload a 5MB jpg?
What if I have a large article in the mediabox with lots of images? Do you support lazy loading?

How do I need to prepare a polystrip for UV Animation? In one of the videos with the Water Pump, I can see a collection named ‘UV Animation’. I guess the objects need to conform to a convention?


Viewer Technology:
From what I see, it is react with threejs and the viewer loads one glb file. Are you supporting loading with LODs?



Thanks guys and again, let me know if I missed something in the documentation!

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Hi Oliver,

first of all, thanks a lot for the positive feedback! We have been putting a lot of effort in the development and as one can imagine, there are thousands of open tasks, especially if you start with a small team.

Viewer:
At the core, a Govie is a sequence of slides. I can go forward or backwards in the sequence, jump around randomly using the TOC or by clicking on a hotspot. I think a global back button could be useful, one that lets me go through my history of slides.

Did you see there is also a table of content that is generated when you give the slide a name?

image
image1587×1215 442 KB

As for the “back button”, you could always insert a hotspot that leads to your first overview slide, like you see here:

image
image1014×983 174 KB

You can also style that button and position it at the right top. Ok, there is no right top in 3D, but you know where I’m going :slight_smile:

There is also another solution when you embed your Govie as an iframe inside an external Website. Then you could build your own GUI around it and trigger a slide, for instance. This external API is something we’re building on right now, but there is a working prototype and it shouldn’t take to long.

Full-License Tier:
Clients will request a full custom branding, without anything Govie related. Can I bring my own css, fonts?
There is a css area for each slide, could I add global css/overrides?

As you saw already, there is a css field in the post effect area. Currently, there is no global CSS, but you can use the copy function to copy all advanced lighting, including the css, to other slides. I would suggest using an external editor and the chrome dev tools to write css tough and later copy it into that field. I will send you a link to the css templates we made.

We are also planning a master slide where you can define your branding as a template for the hole Govie.

image
image1505×617 166 KB

Blender/GLTF related:
Using many armatures in a scene, it seems that bone names need to be unique across the whole scene. Otherwise Govie will try to play the animations on the wrong rig. The same gltf plays the animations correctly in the Babylonjs sanbbox.
I dont think this is a problem though, but it should be mentioned in the Govie documentation.

Yes, I had that issue once and also fixed it by choosing unique names. But could you try that file on https://beta.govie.de/ or send it to me, then I will have a look if it works in the newest version.

Localization:
I am sure this is something you are working on. I might need to add languages to the mediabox content

Yes, already implemented that for a customer, but we haven’t had time to integrate it in the editor yet.

trigger a slide from a link in the mediabox
Full text search for slide contents

I will talk to the others and let you know about that.

I think the pricing is pretty well hidden on the website. You could add more CTAs that lead the user directly to pricing and signup.

Yeah, you are so right! I finished a design draft for the plans this week and we gonna replace it on the Website when it’s finished. There is a lot of work to do there too. :wink:

GO_PaymentPlans_V3_Lorenz
GO_PaymentPlans_V3_Lorenz1920×1080 240 KB

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Thanks for the information Lorenz!

Concerning gltf:
I have a container running that uses gltfpack with meshopt, generating tiny 3d files. Can I use this on gltf files for govie or is it redundant, since you process gltfs on the server?

Also, could you elaborate on the UV Animation setup?

And I am very interested in that API! Is there a timeline for a first release? I am mostly interested in triggering slides.
Thanks!

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I have a container running that uses gltfpack with meshopt, generating tiny 3d files. Can I use this on gltf files for govie or is it redundant, since you process gltfs on the server?

If it is just about Draco compression, blender does a good job already but optimiser is pretty good in simplifying and optimising draw calls. When it comes to our pipeline, we use gltf transform but only on files that don’t have Draco yet. When you upload a file without Draco compression that file will be processed by our asset pipeline. In the meantime you will see your original file. Once the process is finished, your original file will be replaced by the optimised version. You can see that in the network tab.

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Here is an example of how to use the uv animation: You need to add an empty and add a custom property named uvAnim to it. The value of that property is the name of the object that you want to use for the uv animation. Then just animate the empty in x or y direction and the uv will move that way.

UV_Animation.blend (1.3 MB)

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You can use drivers to make the animation show up in blender.

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I implemented this only to get the water pump into govie editor, so it’s born out of those “can you quickly just bring that animation to govie, so we can show this demo” things :wink:

I could integrate it in the blender add-on, but you are the first to ask for it :wink:

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