Realtime 3D Character Animation for Websites

[Tehgates64]

Hi,
I’ve been working on a realtime animated cartoon website (its safe, haven’t got SSL yet) for a few years using Blend4Web. It was great in that it let you export straight from Blender to html. However, Blend4Web is no longer updated and I’d rather use an addon that is still active.

Does anyone have experience creating realtime 3D character animation for web with other software (eg Armory 3D, Godot, Unity)? Ideally, they need to have the following features:
-Have a timeline system similar to the NLA editor in Blender
-Character skinning and IK support or bakeable IK
-Support for compression or fast loading times
-Support action blending

Let me know if you have any ideas. Thanks in advance!

Regards

[Okidoki]

First gltf came to my mind…

Have you seen this ? :

Can blender export to html (or other self contained standalone file)?

I am not sure where to post this. Apologies if it is wrong place. I would like to export my 3D model for standalone viewing. Preferably in a self-contained file. Can this be done with Blender or some add-on? If not, are there plans to support or develop something like this, and what can I search for to learn more about this? I have previously used blend4web where it was very nifty to have everything in a single html, but they don’t seem to make any updates since a long while back and their w…

[Tehgates64]

Hi Okidoki,

Thanks for the help. I have considered gltf format. While it does support rigged animations, I don’t there’s a way to sequence several animations together to make a full episode. (if there is, let me know!) Verge3D is an option, it uses logic blocks, which I could string together to make a cartoon, but this would be very tedious compared to the NLA editor where you can scrub through and intuitively layer animations and blend them together.

If anyone has experience making videogame cutscenes using logic nodes/blocks I’d love to hear about your workflow.
Cheers,
Tim

[Okidoki]

Well i i have seen animated models on sketchfab… and

glTF-Tutorials

…it also has anomations features…

[Tehgates64]

Hi Okidoki,

Correct, you can animate in gltf format, but it still doesn’t offer the flexibility to be viable in a fully animated cartoon episode - I’d like to be able to change camera angle, have characters interact, sequence sounds and have interactive elements, ideally in an NLA timeline fashion. Coding would be too cumbersome to make a full episode I think. See
the link to my website I posted - that might give you an idea of what I’m trying to achieve, but on a different platform from Blend4Web.

Cheers

[Okidoki]

Well… there are several game engine like frameworks directly using webgl ( babylon.js was mentioned in t he other thread and three.js is also somekind of known…) :

List of WebGL frameworks

…where sketchfab is also listes as framework…

or game engines able to export to web(gl) (like for example Godot )… see target platform in…

List of game engines

So for this “special use case”… you might have to test this a bit for yourself …if there is not some animated cartoon forum ?? ( …or a user who knows better )

[Tehgates64]

Hi Okidoki,
Yes, this is one of those special use situations where I’m just going to have to sit down and read through all the different frameworks I guess. If I do find something that works I’ll update this thread. I appreciate the help!