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P3d.in Open Beta

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With P3d.in you can show your 3D models to anyone - no Flash or plugins required.

Nathan Letwory writes:

p3d.in beta is now open for everyone! p3d.in is an online visualization tool that allows you to show your 3D models to clients, students, work mates, with no plugins needed. Integration with Blender is rather simple by using the OBJ format.

We've been working hard to get the basics done and create a solid service. Building on top of that we'll be rolling out an array of cool features like textures and several cool new shaders to chose from. This year will be an exciting one!

We hope you'll join us during this beta period to help us make it the best online visualization service there is

the p3d.in team

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

54 Comments

  1. Nice so far, I checked the default models with Firefox 9 and a not-so good laptop and works nice, will check some of my models soon, 

    • As mentioned in the post we are planning to add texture support in the future, but we have been focusing on getting the basics 'right' first.

      • I think you are one of the lucky ones who got an internal chip set that can run OpenGL, it probably standard now but sadly it was not 6+ years ago when the current computer I have was built.

  2. great, will be trying this out with some models. a simple wishy-thing from me: turntable rotation. I get confused and itchy by that free-form wobbly axis navigation, and I can imagine some non-3d software users have it even worse. 

  3. Why, on the p3d.in web site, is it telling me that my graphic card doesn't support WebGL when in reality it's my web browser? (Safari)   
    Firefox 9+ works fine.

    Other then that... great tool.
    thanks

    TheElwolf

  4. very nice!  how will it work when it's out of beta, will there be a membership fee or market place to sell models?

    • There will always be a free version, but we will probably add premium accounts with more storage and possibly additional features.

  5. Nice!
    I was working on one of these in december, got textures and stuff working, but never got around to fixing all the bugs haha

  6. You can do this with unity3d as well and it is easier to set up textures/animations and doesn't have the webgl issue. There is always the risk of people hacking and getting your model for free though so only post stuff that you don't care if some people get access too. I know in the Unity community some people always beg for a web browser demo so they can "borrow" models and not have to pay for them. Cool all the same, hope it helps some people out. 

    • Unity3D is nice, it does however require a plugin, flash or NaCl. You also need to have the unity tool installed, compile you project to a web player, etc. The goal with p3d.in is to provide a simple, easy to use service that doesn't require any plugins. This means WebGL, which is still an emerging standard. It is our hope that in the future WebGL will be more widely adopted.

  7. JS library such as three.js can also do .obj import (including the texture).  ... I'd suggest you to check it out if you need more sophisticated stuffs (correct me if I'm wrong, but this thing seems to aim simple object presentation, which is cool BTW)

  8. Don't know... certainly does not look like a very "open" platform. I'd rather prefer a javascript plugin to put on a website directly than embedding it like youtube.

    • We would love to hear suggestions for how to make it more open :) We have been tossing around the idea of making an API (JS, REST or both) for accessing list of models, etc. One challenge is that the viewer itself must get the model data from the same host because of JS security restrictions.

      • At first I didn't get that you were trying to be 3D-model hoster (like youtube is a video hoster) rather than a plugin for websites. For my own websites where I have control over the html, js side and can upload static files as models, a plugin would be enough. For Facebook, blogging sites etc this might be easier.

    •  The models are available.  Since your browser must have the data in order to render it there is no way to stop people saving that.

    • This is a very valid question :)

      Currently it would be reasonably easy for 'bad' people to steel your models, so don't put anything up there that you don't want people to get hold of. We are however planning on adding more security so e.g. models would be encrypted. This is a bit tricky as in the end the viewer in the browser does need to access the data. We are however gonna add several measures which makes it non-trivial to get at the models. Also the models are delivered in a binary format to the viewer, so you can't just open it directly.

      • Lawrence D’Oliveiro on

        Sounds like you’re trying to DRM your site.

        Sure, it’ll keep out 99% of users, but it only takes one to extract the models and spread them all over the Internet.

        Not to mention that your measures will probably be buggy and cause problems for legitimate users. And generally end up discouraging people from visiting your site. (Don’t believe that’ll happen? It’s happened for every DRM system in existence.)

        Do you really want to go down that path?

        • Thanks for you insight.

          We surely don't wanna make yet another buggy DRM system, sorry if I made it sound like that.

          We do however want to respect users who make a living from modeling and want to protect their work. I'm thinking out loud here, but I see this as being optional (and possibly only for premium accounts, as it will require more server resources). As you point out we can't expect to make a 100% hacker-proof system (even Sony didn't manage that), however I hope that if it is a bit less trivial to 'steel' someones model, that most people will stop and think about the effort that went into making that content and respect the modeler's hard work.

          We most definitely also want to support users who DO want to share their models freely for everyone to learn from. I think we all here are amazed at what can be achieved with that open spirit :)

    • If you are looking for impressive features please also see http://app.3dviewr.com/#test/sintel_rig_cleaned.dae (requires Java though), supporting COLLADA with textures AND animation. I am the developer of 3dviewr.com and as mentioned above have joined p3d.in. In time I hope to bring some of those features (diffuse, normal, spec maps and animation support) to p3d.in. But we really wanted to focus on making the base service simple to use, responsive and pleasing to the eye before adding those features :)

      • Thanks for the link and reply. P3d.in already is looking real promising! I'll definitely keep an eye out for the future development. Cheers!

  9. Here's my profile: http://p3d.in/u/vvaris  Seems to be working good so far, I can see great potential for services like this! Would be really cool to have feature like this in blendswap for example, although might be too slow and expensive at least now.

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