Cheetah 3D 8 licenses

[podperson]

I assume if I purchase a new license it will include v8. (One of my kids wants to learn rigging and I suggested he try C3D because he finds Blender’s UI to be too weird.)

I’m also hoping to upgrade my license when the time comes.

That said, I would really like to see emphasis on UI improvements for animation and round tripping gltf/glb content and real time rendering (even if it’s via a secondary window). Falcon is great and unbeatable for some things but I only care about real-time applications including SceneKit and WebGL and hardware rendering (e.g. Eevee).

VisionPro is going to create a huge market for 3d content and Cheetah is still the best UX in town. Please seize the opportunity.

You do realize that VisionOS and clones of VisionOS (Linux based like Android and Quest, or whatever Microsoft comes up with) will replace everything else including MacOS within 5y and 3d is going mainstream.

 

[podperson]

I may produce a new version of c3dbuddy that renders your scene using Babylon or three js if there’s any interest.

 

[Martin]

Hi,
every purchase of Cheetah3D 7.x after Jan. 1st 2021 already includes a free Upgrade to Cheetah3D 8.x.

I don't think that VR headsets will become a very mainstream. I at least don't want to watch a movie with diving goggles nor do I want to wear such a headset 8h a day.

I already have a working USD loader. Once v8 is out I want to finish the work I started years ago.

Kind regards
Martin

 

[shadowfork]

I second the motion on GLTF/GLB. I couldn't for the life of me export any decent animation (even a simple rotating cube!) to Godot and would like to leave Unity soon. I'm still holding off on Blender. I'd like to stick with C3D for my character animation needs.

 

[podperson]

I don't think that VR headsets will become a very mainstream. I at least don't want to watch a movie with diving goggles nor do I want to wear such a headset 8h a day.

Who said anything about VR headsets?

VR headsets will not become mainstream, I agree. They're been around for 25 years and are pretty useless.

Mixed Reality headsets will replace laptops, and then pretty much everything else… Consider how fast the iPhone killed off the flip-phone.

At launch, a VisionPro + keyboard will provide a better working environment than a laptop and any number of giant displays, with security from snooping (e.g. employees of big tech companies are required to use laptop screen filters in public to make it harder to be spied on), and is lighter and smaller than a laptop, even including spare batteries, and lighter and cheaper than a laptop and the displays.

And that's v1.

Every device Apple has released since the Mac has been subordinate to the Mac because the Mac has always better display technology. The Mac will be subordinate to VisionPro within five years, at best acting as a CPU server.

 

[podperson]

I second the motion on GLTF/GLB. I couldn't for the life of me export any decent animation (even a simple rotating cube!) to Godot and would like to leave Unity soon. I'm still holding off on Blender. I'd like to stick with C3D for my character animation needs.

C3D's GLTF/GLB export is pretty good w.r.t. animation. My biggest problem is that the materials don't transfer well.

 

[gsb]

Who said anything about VR headsets?

VR headsets will not become mainstream, I agree. They're been around for 25 years and are pretty useless.

Mixed Reality headsets will replace laptops, and then pretty much everything else… Consider how fast the iPhone killed off the flip-phone.

At launch, a VisionPro + keyboard will provide a better working environment than a laptop and any number of giant displays, with security from snooping (e.g. employees of big tech companies are required to use laptop screen filters in public to make it harder to be spied on), and is lighter and smaller than a laptop, even including spare batteries, and lighter and cheaper than a laptop and the displays.

And that's v1.

Every device Apple has released since the Mac has been subordinate to the Mac because the Mac has always better display technology. The Mac will be subordinate to VisionPro within five years, at best acting as a CPU server.

Hello,

This nascent evolutionary step in "normal" computing will, like many such, leave some behind.

For the sake of this discussion, referring to something specifically as a VR vs a Mixed Reality headset isn't the point… and seems a bit of a distraction. While the difference between the two technologies is real, for the sake of this UX-of-the-future discussion the choice of descriptors should be considered semantics as both types of headsets are currently far heavier/bulkier than nothing. And wearing nothing on their heads, except perhaps eye glasses, is what the vast majority of current users do to view their computing environment. That said: VR = dead end; Mixed Reality = the future. UI and UX designers, more and more, will need to be designing in 3D.

While I currently share Martin's opinion when he offers that he has no desire to wear such a headset device for 8 hours a day, as I age (and hopefully continue to age) and mixed light levels increasingly trigger disturbingly strange behavior of my eye-brain vision system, I certainly may be looking at adapting to such technology for my computing display, just so I can keep seeing while I work.

To podperson's point about direction of "displays" and computing environments…

Much like the average computer user today has had zero experience using a grey-scale monitor (or even an 8bit color monitor)… Beyond another five-ten years it seems very likely that there will be a rapidly growing group of "computer" users who have never used a flat-screen monitor for "normal" computing tasks. These folks will be totally comfortable using some sort of mixed reality headwear that is a derivation of Apple's VisionPro.

cheers,
gab

 

[podperson]

For the sake of this discussion, referring to something specifically as a VR vs a Mixed Reality headset isn't the point… and seems a bit of a distraction. While the difference between the two technologies is real, for the sake of this UX-of-the-future discussion the choice of descriptors should be considered semantics as both types of headsets are currently far heavier/bulkier than nothing

VR headsets don't replace and subsume laptops. XR headsets do. The "VR" part of an XR headset is merely the display. It's like suggesting that there's only a semantic difference between a monitor and an iMac or a photo and a camera.

I'd suggest that if Steve Jobs launched the Vision Pro, he'd probably have announced it as three new products:
1. Apple's first Mixed Reality headset.
2. Apple's lightest fully-capable portable computer that offers not only the best display on any portable computer, but the biggest and arguably the best display on any computer.
3. A magical new input device that tracks the user's hands, eyes, face, and head.

As for the weight: I'm not suggesting VisionPro takes over the world at its current weight and with its current limitations. I'm saying it will not only go mainstream but replace laptops within five years. For early adopters and high-end users (including a lot of 3d creatives) it will be faster.

This is the Original iPhone of XR computers. This is the Firewire iPod of XR computers.

And even at launch it's far lighter than a laptop, even including accessories.

Martin has a chance to provide the first native 3D tool on the next big platform.

And frankly, it's ridiculous that he is dismissing it so blithely when he put support for the ridiculous 3D connexion widget into Cheetah 3d years ago.

 

[Martin]

I've looked into the gltf export and it looks like there were some minor bugs. Nothing dramatical but the gltf validator complained about it. I basically exported some redundant information which was not necessary. I've fixed these problems in the final v8.

I've tested the alien walk animation in https://gltf-viewer.donmccurdy.com/ which also uses the gltf validator form KhronosGroup and it seems to work fine without errors.

For material export I strongly recommend to use the PBR shader.

 

[Martin]

Apple might call it spacial computing, XR or maybe even magical but for me it's a VR headset with see through cameras. When I saw the announcement of the vision Pro I hoped that they would have come up with a killer feature but their main focus was on watching movies which is not really a killer feature.

The Apple watch wasn't very successful at the beginning because it hat no killer feature. It took quite some time until Apple focused on the health features and that turned out to be a killer feature. The killer feature for VR, AR or whatever is still missing.

For AR there are some really cool applications like in medicine and training but those are not mainstream.

I'm sure the display is excellent and the eye tracking feature is a big improvement over other headsets. But at that price point and these repair costs I will stay with my monitor and Mac mini M1 for the next 10 years. And that setup just costed me 1000€. I'm not sure a vision Pro will last 10 years without repairs.

You might have missed it but Cheetah3D 8 doesn't have Connexion support anymore. I was tiered supporting that device which caused me so many problems. And NO. I was never a big fan of it. But some some time it was sort of popular.

 

[podperson]

My point was that the connexion was a terrible device used by almost no one and you at least devoted some effort to it. I think the Vision Pro is likely more worthy of consideration.

Version 1 is far from perfect but it’s still basically useful in its current form. I imagine there will be major announcements at WWDC regarding software and then likely more hardware within a year.

It is of course VR with (really good) see through cameras but so is the Quest 3 and if the Quest 3 could do what the Vision Pro can I would be using it as my main computer (over a desktop). But pairing the Quest with a keyboard is a nightmare, the controllers are a constant pain, it doesn’t run any good software, the browser is terrible, and so on.

I could do my entire job using a Vision Pro with a small amount of work today.