Help with an application development

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#1

Hello guys,
I’m new in Blender world. I’m a 2D graphic designer (webpages, marketing creations etc.).
But I’ve got a work to do and it’s too difficult for me for now and need somebody’s help, even if it’s be a paid work.

First of all - my title: INTERACTIVITY PARAMETERING WEB PRESENTATING APPLICATION OF PRODUCT.

WTF? :slight_smile: Yes, it looks strange :stuck_out_tongue:
I decided to make an app to show some products, like e.g. car, simple car - model is doesn’t matter. The car has to be interactive - that is the one of main goals. What I mean by that? Body colour or different model of wheels is a good example. Does it look simple? Maybe for some of you, Yes, but for me? Nooooot yet :slight_smile: But this is only a one complication. The most difficult is to make this by scripting in Python? I mean - the main goal is to make an application, web application, could be presented online by webbrowser on dedicated webpage. User should have possibilities to change the colour of e.g. car’s body or wheels by the clicking mouse or keyboard keys. Car should be rotateable be user. You can see effect like this on every car-dealer’s page, e.g. http://www.bmwusa.com/standard/content/byo/byohome.aspx?namodelcode=131H

As you can see - the car is rotateable and you can change e.g. body’s colour and wheels. But - this example is made by some combined pictures. My idea is to show car or every other product by full 3D view.

I know that the application can have less performance… but it’s not my prior. I need to have it for tests and show a few people tha it can be done and it can be real. Maybe in future…but it can! :slight_smile:

So… is there someone, maybe more than one, who can help me? The biggest problem is the time. I need it shortly. So it pleased to talk with someone, who have time and possibilities to make a model and its scripts. The web processing and communications with database would be on my side.

Thanks for any answer :wink:

Best regards from Poland,
Luc

#2

I suspect that you will get more responses if you fill out a few more details.

  1. Do you have a specific deadline? Is “shortly” 1 week or is it 3 months?
  2. Who is supplying the art assets (3D and 2D)?
  3. Do you want full 3D interaction or are you planning to just replay pre-rendered 2D images that might have filters applied?
  4. How do you see Blender fitting into this work flow? It would be months of dedicated work to get parts of Blender to embed directly into a webpage like Flash or the Unity Web player.
#3

I can do everything that you stated. I make video games. An interactive presentation is a more simple version of a video game. I can also make it run straight from the web browser. This is what I do!!! Contact me via [email protected] and I can show you how it works…

#4

Just so you know, the BMW site is not loading a 3D model. It is just a collection of images and the popular jQuery Reel Plugin.

#5

@3dementia @ Yes, I know that BWM site isn’t loading a 3D model but collection of images. And that’s the point :slight_smile: it’s not developmental a lot. My view is to make an application that could be develop and expand as much as I need. There are not only car to show - I would like to show other things by this way.

@GoshFather @ thanks for the answer, I wrote an e-mail to you

@kastoria @ Here they are:

  1. Do you have a specific deadline? Is “shortly” 1 week or is it 3 months?
    Yes… deadline is about first part of January

  2. Who is supplying the art assets (3D and 2D)?
    What assets do you mean? I need a simple, for presentation only, a car model. It’s not necessary to have a milion-detail’s copy of some oryginal car.

  3. Do you want full 3D interaction or are you planning to just replay pre-rendered 2D images that might have filters applied?
    It depends of costs and possibilities. Can you tell me more about both option in your opinion?

  4. How do you see Blender fitting into this work flow? It would be months of dedicated work to get parts of Blender to embed directly into a webpage like Flash or the Unity Web player.
    Why months? As I read in google and in some book - Blender has his own environment to make video games. Also has a possibility to scripting by Python. I read also some information about the plugins for browsers that allow to present application by the web. Correct me, please, if I’m not write :slight_smile:

#6

I’ll give a short answer here but the full answer is fairly long and there are major trade-offs to consider. When you find the right person to work on this they will be able to cover all the pros and cons of this scenario.

Short answer: If you want full 3D interaction then you will have to use one of the web-based game engines or another interactive 3D framework. If you want to provide photo-realistic images then you are probably going to have to use a collection of pre-rendered 2D images to fake an interactive effect.

  1. How do you see Blender fitting into this work flow? It would be months of dedicated work to get parts of Blender to embed directly into a webpage like Flash or the Unity Web player.
    Why months? As I read in google and in some book - Blender has his own environment to make video games. Also has a possibility to scripting by Python. I read also some information about the plugins for browsers that allow to present application by the web. Correct me, please, if I’m not write :slight_smile:

It is true that Blender has an integrated game engine and Python is closely integrated into Blender. However, Blender is designed to run as a stand alone application. I’m not an expert on browser plugins but I’m certain that there are rules that plugins have to follow to function inside the browser. It is likely that some major parts of the Blender startup and lifecycle would have to be modified to work correctly with the plugin APIs. On top of that which browsers do you want to support? IE? FireFox? Chrome? Sarfari? Opera? As far as I know each one has their own plugin system. Which versions of those browsers are you going to support? Each version has quirks that you have to test and work around. Which Operating Systems are you going to support? Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8 RT? Mac OS X? Linux? For each version of each browser you have to test on each OS.

It is true that all the pieces are there, but putting them together would be non-trivial.

#7

Completely agree.

Wouldn’t Unity be a perfect fit for this? http://unity3d.com/gallery/demos/live-demos#character-customization

#8

@kastoria @ thank you for the answer. Now I see that my idea is more complicated that I thought :frowning: diversity of browsers and operating systems can be really problematic.

Wouldn’t Unity be a perfect fit for this? http://unity3d.com/gallery/demos/liv…-customization

It looks great, really great. Demo from homepage looks like perfectly tailored. But - it look like the environment is not free like Blender software.

#9

If you are planning this for a business venture, I’m sure any licensing costs of the software will be negligible in the big picture. For business applications, I find that sometimes it is nice to work with paid software, and get the support and performance benefits that come with that.

#10

If you are still looking for this, I have a basic 3D Renderer made in Java that I can fix up and make into an Applet so you can render a exported from Blender(I will probably need to make a special export file type).

I could also probably make a basic 2D GUI and some car/wheel modelers (More of a programmer than a modeller)

#11

Could you run blender on a server, and feed them the render?

#12

There is already more than one such application in development already, that can display a .blend file directly in a browser window. I cannot recall One of them, but the other is burster3D.

I also have a version of the blenderplayer on my android phone that is interactive, maybe something that can be used in your mission.

#13

Hi tarjei86,

Not sure if this project is still in production for you, but I thought I would share what I know about the type of project you are describing. I’m also a web designer/developer and blender artist. A while back I ran across this video describing Mackevisions’s internal set up for generating multiple versions of automotive cg images that accommodated all the different trim packages.

Here’s the video:

I believe they are the ones that did the BMW site if I’m not mistaken.

Anyways there are a number of solutions on the BMW site.

  1. The most impressive asset is the large video of the car driving through the city. Users on the web page can change the colour selection on the page and the card in the video changes colour almost seamlessly. This is achieved by pre-rendering the video for all the colour options and then switching between the videos while in progress. There are no trim package options for this asset you will notice.

  2. The second type of product feature is the still image/image turntable with switchable options. To the best of my knowledge this is not achieved with “in-page” 3d model plugins, but with multiple sets of image-sequences pre-rendered out for every possible combination of options. Obviously if the number of options are large, the number of variations of image sequences can get quite large. Usually there are only a small number of variables to limit the amount of sequences that are need.

I’m assuming that you are looking at something like Option #2 and this is also something that I was interested in creating for myself a while ago and something that I started building but put it aside and have not finished it.

The most important thing to realize is that the Product Variations need to be organized in a structured file or database for 2 reasons. The rendering process needs to batch process and render out all of the image sequences for every variation, and then the web page also needs to know how to relate the options (colours, parts, sizes, etc.) that user can choose on page with the right image-sequence to display.

I started working on this and have a very early prototype of this workflow based on a CSV file instead of a database. I’d be interested in working on it further if you’re still looking for some help with this. Just let me know. You can PM me on here or email me directly at todd[at]resonancemedia.ca

#14