Continuing in the series of updates for the 3DVIA community this week, we are pleased to announce the public beta for both 3DVIA Studio and 3DVIA Scenes – 2 new 3D development applications that open powerful online 3D publishing to anyone.  To put it simply: if you need to create a 3D online game or application, 3DVIA now has the easiest way to create and distribute your work online—whether you are a novice consumer or even the most experienced 3D programmer.  3DVIA now makes online 3D content creation simple, social and powerful.  In addition, there is one more detail you should know…we’ve made it free!

This post should help you decide which of these applications is right for you.  If you are an experienced 3D programmer or 3D artist (yes, this app is also for you), you should check out 3DVIA Studio below.  If you are a creative professional or consumer looking to venture into the world of online 3D authoring but lack the pre-requisite skills, scroll down and check out 3DVIA Scenes.  For everyone, stay tuned to this blog as we will show how to use either application to quickly generate amazing online 3D experiences.

Impatient?  Download 3DVIA Studio Free Now or Create Your First 3DVIA Scene

3DVIA STUDIO BETA – POWERFUL 3D AUTHORING PLATFORM FOR ONLINE PUBLISHING

3DVIA Studio is a new 3D development environment for programmers and artists looking to create complex, interactive games or simulations and publish them online quickly with ease.  It shares many of the same concepts with its popular cousin, 3DVIA Virtools, but this beta software is being released specifically to address the online publishing needs of individuals and small teams (ie. the cash-strapped masses).

So what is really different?  Of course 3DVIA studio has amazing 3D rendering capability, real-time editing and a full set of 3D editing tools, however the real difference of 3DVIA Studio over other options is the connection to the social network, 3D hosting and content warehouse here at 3DVIA.com.  3DVIA Studio combines a high-end authoring app with a repository of 3D assets and deep network of 150K other users to help you collect feedback and deploy work online fast.  3DVIA Studio allows users to package interactivity, behavior and repetitive tasks into “building blocks” (Particle Explosion for example) and reuse them in their own projects or share them online with other users through the warehouse on 3DVIA.com.

What about publishing online?  Simple.  If you can publish a video from YouTube to your website using the embed code, you can publish a 3D application online using 3DVIA Studio.  We also provide an embed code for each application that is published to 3DVIA.com to make just as…simple.

How easy is it to use?  We offer a wide variety of programming interfaces to suit your background.  For the 3D artist, we have brought over the schematic view concept from 3DVIA Virtools to enable visual programming.  For the 3D programmer, we offer our VSL Editor which is a C++ style scripting language that will have any programmer (3D or not) quickly writing many lines of beautiful, glorious code.

Check out the first social game built with 3DVIA Studio, Download the Source and Make it Your Own!

To show you what a small team can accomplish in a short period of time, you should check out the Billions, Save them All game project.  It is an ambitious social experiment that will enable the 3DVIA community to help complete and develop future versions of the game.  We’re going to open the source code for you to publish your own version of the game and contribute ideas.

To participate, first travel on over to the Billions website and read the tutorials and articles on how the project was developed to date.

“Six weeks of learning the product while coding the game at the same time! Honestly, I do not believe that I have had so much fun in quite a while. I am impressed with what 3DVIA Studio delivers, and the most exciting part is that we’ve only scratched the surface of its potential,” said François Dujardin, founder of JUDVIA.

We also have a great set of tutorials and several other demo projects to help you get started over on the 3DVIA Studio website.

3DVIA SCENES BETA – WYSIWYG ONLINE 3D AUTHORING

Many of the more frequent 3DVIA users should already know and love this application.  It has been in a closed invite-only beta since December of last year and the reaction from user involved has been spectacular!  We opened the doors this week to let everyone give it a try.  The concept for 3DVIA Scenes is simple: provide a way for anyone to create online 3D applications, games and worlds through a browser with no programming or software required.

3DVIA Scenes provides users with a simple drag-and-drop interface to pull 3D models and pre-programmed smart objects into a pre-configured scene.  Need to create a 3D version of an office?  Simple.  Search our warehouse, find 3D models of your office furniture and drag-and-drop them into any of the pre-configured contexts (rooms, scenes, building, etc.) that we provide for you when you start the app.  Need to have the lights turn on and off, doors open and the TV turn on?  Simple.  Look for the models marked with the light bulb icon. These smart objects come pre-programmed with behaviors and animations that work inside of scenes, and range from simple animations to complex data integration apps.

Where do the models, smart objects and contexts for 3DVIA Scenes come from?  3DVIA.com! – They’re all here.  The 3D models come from the extensive 3D warehouse and the smart objects and contexts come from 3DVIA Studio.  In addition to allowing experienced developers and artists to create full applications, 3DVIA.com will also host a market for 3DVIA Studio users to create and distribute smart objects to the 3DVIA Scenes community.

ARE THEY REALLY FREE?

Yes!  Keeping with the “social” theme, we are releasing these products early in beta for non-commercial use in order for you, the user, to help us shape future versions.  Both products are expected to emerge from their beta phases with a “Freemium” business model, allowing a basic edition of each program to remain free while offering a premium version for commercial use. Interested parties may contact 3DVIA to discuss the details of the premium version  (that sounded very corporate didn’t it?).

GET INVOLVED – JOIN THE DISCUSSION

If you love 3D and want to help shape the future of The 3DVIA Platform, try the apps and join the discussions on both the 3DVIA Studio and 3DVIA Scenes forums.

 Download the 3DVIA Studio and 3DVIA Scenes Press Release

Enjoy!