Stereoscopic 3D website creation tool goes live

Orbcreation – the new platform that allows individuals, charities and businesses to create their own stereoscopic 3D virtual world websites, has gone live.

The concept of the Unity based platform, announced by 3D Focus last year, is to make it simple to build unique Second Life style immersive 3D environments using pre-built templates via a drag and drop interface. Later this year, more experienced users will even be able to design their own elements, or ‘Orblets’, using free software like Google Sketchup, and submit their 3D designs for other Orbcreation users to purchase (after quality approval).

At the click of a 3D goggles icon, Orbcreation will render the user generated environment into stereoscopic 3D. Even wearing the required red/cyan glasses, it works surprisingly well. Using a mouse and the directional keys, worlds are navigated in a third person perspective, Uncharted style.

Orbcreation has been built by Richard Knol who has been developing and creating complex programmes for many years. Orbcreation is powered by the Unity3D engine which is an authoring tool for creating 3D environments. It is a powerful but complex tool so Richard Knol’s platform simplified the build process whilst still retaining the features of Unity3D like video playback, occlusion culling, terrain and vegetation rendering and reflection mapping.

Looking at some of the demos, it is undeniably impressive with graphics matching the multi-million pound games of just a few years ago.

Users can open a free account and start building straight away. There are currently a limited range of video tutorials available as well as supporting documents. Orbcreation was launched as an invite only service a couple of weeks ago and entire 3D worlds were created within one day.

The interface is split into ‘Orbs’ and ‘Orblets’. Orbs are the individual worlds created by a user and orblets can serve many different purposes depending on what type it is. For example, a trigger orblet will open a door when approached or a weather orblet will change the sky and blow the wind in a certain direction.

Each Orb will allow up to 100 users in the same environment. Avatars are very basic, currently only offering the ability to change colour but further personalisation features are expected to be released in the future, as well as speech. People can currently talk to each other via text chat ‘bubbles’ and it is hoped this form of functionality will encourage people to build hobby ‘hubs’ where people with the same interest can talk about their shared interests, view video together or comment on a virtual gallery for example.

Exclusively talking to 3D Focus, founder Richard Knol said “Orbcreation brings 3D web worlds under the reach of normal people without a technical background. We've worked very hard on this over the past few months. The team grew with two very talented people and together we pulled it off. A 3D website where you can build 3D websites…I can hardly believe it myself. We need to help people over the threshold of flat brochure type websites to engaging live content. The difference is immense. It is a new way of navigating, presenting information and requires new thinking. We tend to remodel the normal world, but there are no laws of physics and there are no boundaries if you make something in a virtual world.”

He continued…”I am really curious to see what the new possibilities will bring and how websites will evolve in the next few years. We have set the first step. Offering 3D websites to the world and allowing visitors to encounter each other online”
Business partner Colleen Henderson-Heywood explained that what applications Orbcreation can be used for saying that it “is only limited by someone’s imagination”, seeing huge potential for individuals, commercial businesses and not-for-profit organisations.

Speaking to 3D Focus, Colleen Henderson-Heywood explained that a fashion outlet could build a virtual catwalk and a gallery to display new season designs. A shop could use it as a novel tool to showcase new products. A music fan could build a 3D music based ‘hub’ where other fans of the same musician/band could talk, listen to new music and watch new music videos together.

Charities are expected to use the tool as an innovative way to gage with its supporters; gurus could invite guests to webinars and exhibition organisers could build virtual versions of their events for those who could not attend.

Stereoscopic 3D websites at the click of an icon

During this week’s launch there have been issues with the stereoscopic mode for MAC users due to a bug on the Unity platform. However, PC users can build their 3D worlds and, at the click of the 3D glasses icon, convert it to 3D in real time. It works surprisingly well although there might not be as much depth as some would like.

Richard Knol said “Allowing people to enter a 3D world and become part of it is one thing, but it becomes really immersive if you can view it in S3D. Orbcreation has therefor added a feature to experience the website in red/cyan anaglyph 3D. Currently there is a shader problem with the Unity webplayer on the mac, which makes it only possible to use the 3D option on windows computers.”

Richard Knol continued to say “The red/cyan 3D option is only a first simple implementation that we added by using two cameras. Unity offers many more possibilities to experience 3D content and we will be looking into those soon. Split screen options like Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, Line by Line, Vertical Stripe and Checker-board should be fairly simple to implement. Full 120Hz 3D is something that might work in the future as many people are working on solutions for this.”

Orbcreation will monetise its services via hosting fees and a revenue sharing model retailing user generated Orblets.

In a similar way to WordPress.org, users can avoid any fees by self-hosting their Orbcreation websites but there are a range of hosting plans offered from $5.95 up to $24.95 per month for virtually unlimited uploading and up to 100 simultaneous avatar support.

For more information and to try it out yourself visit orbcreation.com

Orbcreation :: Cutting the ribbon from orbcreation on Vimeo.

Official opening of orbcreation.com

FREE WEEKLY 3D NEWS BULLETIN –