Category: Poly

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Icosa Gallery Beta Launches For As Open-Source Replacement For Google Poly

Icosa Gallery, a community-built, open-source replacement for Google Poly, has launched in beta, just seven days before the latter service shuts down for good.

It offers VR artists a way to store their creations online, including environments and models built using Tilt Brush and its new open-source counterpart, Open Brush.

In December last year, Google announced that Poly, its 3D object sharing service, would be shutting down on June 30, 2021. Just over a month later in January 2021, Google then announced that it would also be ending official development of popular VR creation tool Tilt Brush and making it open-source, so that the community could continue to tinker and play with the software in lieu of official support.

Since then, community solutions and replacements for both Poly and Tilt Brush have sprung to life. Open Brush offers an open-source, free version of Tilt Brush for PC VR and Quest users via App Lab. Meanwhile Sketchfab’s CEO encouraged creators to upload 3D models to the successful site in Poly’s absence. Likewise, Psychic VR Lab’s platform Styly added direct uploads for Tilt Brush creations in March, which can be viewed both in VR via a native app or online in browser.

Icosa Gallery is the latest option for Tilt Brush creators, with the ability to upload GLTF and GLB files from Tilt Brush sketches and have them display and animate online in the same way as they would in Tilt Brush. There’s also plans for direct integration with Open Brush in the future, as well as support for the .tilt sketch files. It’s also possible to import all of your current Poly creations into Icosa Gallery before the service shuts down in a week’s time.

You can view Icosa Gallery’s beta site here and download Open Brush for Quest via App Lab and PC VR via Steam.

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With Poly Out, Styly Adds Direct Uploads From Tilt Brush

Psychic VR Lab’s VR creation platform, Styly, is adding direct uploads for Google Tilt Brush creations, after news of Poly’s demise.

Operated out of Tokyo, Japan, Styly allows any user to jump in and start making 3D content almost instantly. These experiences can be viewed online via browser or fully inside VR via a native SteamVR app. By stepping in with Tilt Brush support, Styly will offer creators a new destination to publish their creations and share them with others.

As an online library of 3D assets and scenes, Poly played an important role in keeping content creation accessible on the platform. But, in December 2020, Google announced it would be shutting Poly down on June 30th of this year. While support for Poly will continue on the platform, Styly users can now export Tilt Brush creations as a glb file and upload them directly to the app. More info about exactly how to upload can be found here.

“The closure of Google Poly will drastically reduce the number of places where Tilt Brush artists can present their works, which will in turn affect the creative activities of many artists and will be a major issue for the culture of XR art,” said Ryohei Watanabe, CMO of Psychic VR Lab, in a prepared statement. “We have decided to officially  support Tilt Brush with STYLY in order to support the creative activities of Tilt Brush artists in their continuous efforts to break new ground for XR art.”

Psychic VR itself raised a further $8.5 million in funding earlier this year, bringing its total raised to $18 million to date. Recently, the company launched a mixed reality version of its app for the Nreal glasses.

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Let Your Google Poly 3D Models Live on at Sketchfab

Google Poly

In December 2020 Google continued its run of abandoning support for its virtual reality (VR) initiatives by announcing that its 3D object library Poly would be shutting down in June. Which obviously made a lot of content creators who used the service since 2017 rather unhappy. Today, rival service Sketchfab has announced a new tool to transfer Poly models onto its platform.

Poly to Sketchfab UI

After Google Poly’s announcement was made public Sketchfab contacted the team to find a solution for users. They came up with the Poly-to-Sketchfab Tool, a seamless method to transfer 3D models between the two platforms rather than creators having to download their entire library before 30th June 2021.

The tool works by connecting both accounts after which it then presents users with a list of models which can be transferred. Most 3D files can be copied across, only those created in Tilt Brush or Tour Creator aren’t supported. If you are a Tilt Brush users don’t forget that: “you can publish your work directly from Tilt Brush to Sketchfab using Tilt Brush’s built-in Sketchfab Exporter,” notes the company.

So hopefully that’ll make things a little easier for those artists with large Google Poly libraries. In a press release, Sketchfab also notes: “Some apps were using Poly as an integrated library of assets; Sketchfab also offers this functionality through our Download API, giving access to over 500,000 freely downloadable Creative Commons models.”

Even Tilt Brush got the chop from Google this year but was at least given a second chance to continue with its code now open source. While Google has ended official support, the XR community quickly got to work exploring the possibilities, one of the most notable was multiplayer. Thanks to work by Rendever CTO, Tom Neumann, he released MultiBrush as a free Oculus Quest app via SideQuest.

Apart from its acquisition of Owlchemy Labs (Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator), Google’s interest in VR has significantly waned considering how invested it was only a few short years ago. As Sketchfab continues to support the XR community VRFocus will keep you updated.

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VR Artist Laments The Loss Of Google Poly As Petition To Open Source Goes Live

Last week Google announced it would soon be shutting down Poly, its online platform for storing and sharing 3D assets made in apps like Tilt Brush, Blocks and others.

The news has wide-reaching implications for many VR artists that had depended on the service for the past few years. Those artists, especially those working with Google’s own creative VR tools, will need to download their existing libraries before the service is taken fully offline on June 30th 2021 and then find a new home for that work. For some, though, this is about more than the inconvenience.

UK artist Rosie Summers has been storing her work on Poly for the past three years. She regularly relies on Google’s services as a means of preserving and promoting her work. Indeed, even sharing her work from Poly in this post below takes just a few simple clicks to embed. Though if you’re reading this after June 2021 those embeds probably aren’t there anymore.

“Poly is the centerpoint of the VR artist community,” Summers told me. “So many creators rely on the site as an easy way to share and promote their works with their audiences. I’ve recently released my VR advent calendar that users download via Poly, so followers can join in with the festivities. I use Poly’s 3D viewer nearly every day to share work in progress with clients, as being able to navigate a scene in 3D is so much more immersive than a couple of screenshots.”

 

But Summers also says that Poly provides a crucial pool of resources for other applications, allowing easy importing of VR-made assets to create unique virtual assets. “Applications such as VRChat, Wave, and ARize have all had the ability to integrate artworks from Poly to create immersive landscapes, exhibitions and galleries that groups of users can experience together,” she adds. “Lots of artists used platforms like this to promote and sell their digital artworks, so Poly shutting down means a vital revenue stream is lost during a pandemic that is proving to be exceptionally tough on creative industries.”

The strains of the COVID-19 pandemic aren’t the only reasons Summers says the timing is less than ideal. “To me the timing of the shutdown is particularly odd, as the cost of entry to VR is rapidly falling, and it feels like the XR content revolution is about to begin. Poly would and should have been a key component in the digital asset space.”

In the wake of the news, many people have pointed to a similar third-party resource, Sketchfab, as a suitable replacement for Poly. Summers, however, says that many of Poly’s alternatives still don’t have the basic support and features that Poly offered for free, like unlimited private hosting. “Poly is more than a site, it’s a community at the core of the digital VR art revolution, and shutting it down will fracture the community,” she says.

To that end, Summers is now promoting a recently-launched petition. It asks not for Google to roll back its Poly plans but instead make the platform open source so that others may continue to carry the torch. The petition has amassed over 500 signatures at the time of writing, and Summers also has hopes for other alternatives. “A community-led effort to create an open-source replacement to the site is already in the works, hoping to re-implement and improve on Poly’s core features, in a way that keeps artworks and heritage safe from being lost to time when large corporations choose to no longer support a platform.”

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Want to Switch from Web Developer to VR Developer: Here’s How

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies are gaining faster pace among different industries. Henceforth, it’s the perfect time to learn how to create content for these market-bursting technologies. They need to make a leap towards the next level of adoption.

From the designer’s perspective, the abilities for getting into AR and VR is fundamentally the same as and furthermore the inconveniences to passage is low. Regardless of in the event that you are a novice who has quite recently begun with programming or a specialist with long stretches of involvement in this field; to turn into a VR designer, you have to have solid abilities in the 3D region. By and large, it is like the advancement of the 3D game in light of the fact that VR is tied in with making vivid conditions that can be interfaced within three measurements.

In this article, we will be covering a brief guide on how you can switch from a web developer to the VR one.

In the initial stage, VR development needs to have a creative use of spatial thinking. Therefore, creating in 3D is traditionally based on math where you are required to think back to your X, Y and Z coordinate days from geometry sessions.

Begin your VR improvement venture by getting a page from the 3D game advancement handbook. Does the inquiry emerge for what reason do you have to do as such? All things considered, VR content advancement is very much similar to 3D game improvement where there is a spatial plan for a huge and vivid 3D universe for clients to navigate individually.

There are different foundations when it comes to dealing with 3D game development/VR development. Firstly, the developers are required to learn how to use a 3D videogame engine. Additionally, designers ought to have the option to make or import 3D resources for populating the condition that you are building.  For instance – 3D modelling tools such as Blender or Maya or online asset stores of Google’s Poly. The programmers need to learn to program in that game engine where they have to design the objects to interact with each other.

The engineers can likewise consider catching 360° photographs and recordings to start by building up a spatially thinking muscle. You can check a few examples of the famous brand that is making use of 3D space in an attractive way.

AltspaceVR-Daydream-RL1 (2)

Initiate by Working on your Technical Skills

For becoming a VR developer, you need to have a great command over your technical skills as they range from knowing a programming language to manage how to use a VR tool. Initially, you need to start networking with other VR developers and ask about their potential experience in their field to give you an idea about their journey and some hacks to survive on. You are also required to learn to operate the tool called Unity which is a cross-platform game engine that supports more than 25 platforms.

Along with this, you are required to have a basic to advanced knowledge of C# programming language. Furthermore, you can try your hands on the basic guide or refer Google Daydream/Gear VR for experiencing the VR journey which includes modules from Android development experience.

Knowing the Right Hardware

It is crucial for every VR developer to have a test unit for checking how the applications work and what are the bugs which need to get fixed up. You need to go off your budget and experience something that you want to develop. If you wish to target casual users of VR then develop for Google Daydream but if you wish to target premium VR users then there are plenty of options available such as HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. After you have decided your target platform along with the associated hardware or headset, you need to consider the computing requirements. To continue with Rift and Vive, you need to invest some bucks in a PC gaming computer that comes with a solid graphics card.

HTC Vive

Wrap Up

Here, we come to the end of the article. We hope you have learned how to swiftly move from being a web developer to becoming a VR developer. As the world of VR development seems to be challenging, commit to learning new skills by trying your hands on small projects. And also, don’t forget to learn from the tutorials in order to push yourself towards spatial thinking. Till then – keep learning!

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VR Hits Major Milestone As Computing Platform With New Google Team-Up

VR Hits Major Milestone As Computing Platform With New Google Team-Up

Google is taking its biggest step yet toward becoming an important service provider for immersive computing.

The company’s latest move allows people using development software like Unity and Unreal to easily bring 3D objects into their projects from a growing crowdsourced library. Earlier this month Google launched Poly, a repository for objects and scenes created in VR apps like Tilt Brush and Blocks. With its newly launched interface, Poly also becomes a library that’s easy to pull from for a variety of innovative VR creativity apps like Mindshow, Normal, TheWaveVR, AnimVR, Unity EditorXR, High Fidelity and Modbox.

The takeaway? You can now intuitively create something in one VR app and then use it in another VR app without taking the headset off. That’s a big step on VR’s path toward becoming the next platform for personal computing.

What’s The Big Deal?

Think of the way someone might save documents to their desktop and then use pagination software to turn them into a magazine, or how you capture a video and then use an editing program to turn it into a movie with snazzy transitions. When it comes to 3D immersive computing — sometimes called the “final platform” because we interact with it so naturally — there’s no similar process for moving work from one app to another without taking off the headset first. That could begin to change with something like Poly.

There is of course a long road ahead and a lot of improvements still need to be made for VR truly to become the final platform for computing. Today, VR is often mistaken for a peripheral device because you can’t do these seemingly simple things. That’s starting to change with Poly. As an example, you could theoretically build a bunch of objects in Blocks, save them to Poly, switch apps and open them up in Mindshow. Then you animate a cartoon tapping into your acting skills and using props you just made a few minutes earlier in VR. This example is a completely different form of content creation compared with 2D magazine design or movie editing and it draws on a new set of skills and talents to do well, but the trend here is crystal clear. VR as a new computing platform is finally starting to emerge.

“Making magic accessible is one of the promises of the medium that Google has now further empowered for the entire VR platform by putting the Poly ecosystem into the world,” wrote Mindshow CEO Gil Baron in an email. “We’re putting out an update for our astronauts with Poly support today and can’t wait to see what gets made!”

The idea with Poly is to make it easy to search, download and bring virtual objects into software ranging from VR and AR apps to workhorse development tools used to create some of the biggest videogames. There are other services like Sketchfab and Microsoft’s Remix that are focused on this same idea, but with this Web-based integration across different apps Google’s Poly might have jumped into a leading position.

“We are already integrated with more than 100 tools as an upload feature,” Sketchfab CEO Alban Denoyel said. “It makes it easier to add a download switch, giving us the potential to be the 3D search bar of all the 3D authoring applications….we are already integrated for download with a few apps.”

Earlier this month, I reported how an artist used a VR-first workflow to build a fully interactive game in just two weeks. That process depended on Unreal Engine’s blueprints, which allows people to add logic and interactivity to a virtual world without requiring knowledge of a programming language. The kinds of VR apps Poly is working with point toward a future in which creation time might be reduced down even further.

Find details about the Poly interface here. It is open to any developer.

Update: Quotes added from Sketchfab and Mindshow.

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Google Introduces Poly, a one Stop Shop for 3D Objects

Developing good immersive content for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications isn’t always the easiest of processes, it takes time building virtual objects and worlds that look amazing. To help with this Google has just launched Poly, an ever expanding library of 3D objects that developers can browse and download from.

Poly is designed purely as a place for everyone to quickly find 3D objects and scenes for use in their apps. While the content can be used for any app, Poly was built from the ground up with AR and VR development in mind.

Poly cheeseburger

It fully integrates with Tilt Brush and Blocks, making it easier for content creators to upload and showcase their work to a wider audience. At present Poly is completely free to use, there’s no monetisation in place, so anyone making 3D objects or scenes is doing it for the love of getting their work seen rather than making any cash from it.

The library also features a remix option for anyone that finds a model but needs to make slight adjustments to it for their own requirements. Users import a remixable object into Tilt Brush or Blocks make the necessary changes and then Poly will automatically credit and link to the original creation when the remix is published.

Other features also include direct uploads from desktops of OBJ files, and the option to view 3D objects in a mobile or desktop browser. If you find an interesting design you’ll be able to create a GIF to share online or view it in VR using headsets like Cardboard or Daydream View.

Poly is ideally suited to those developers working with Google’s own ARCore or Apple’s ARKit as most of the designs are currently in low-polygon style so they won’t be too demanding when it comes to computational resources.

The launch of the library also puts it in direct competition with the current market leader Sketchfab, which has been been rolling out both AR and VR support over the past year and mobile support.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Google, reporting back with the latest announcements.

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Poly: Google veröffentlicht Bibliothek für virtuelle Objekte

Mit Poly veröffentlicht Google eine neue Plattform, die eine Bibliothek mit kostenlosen virtuellen Objekten darstellt, die von kreativen Menschen für die Erstellung von virtuellen Welten genutzt werden kann.

Poly: Google-Bibliothek für 3D-Objekte

Poly Man

Mit Tilt Brush, Blocks und Poly bricht Google eine Lanze für kreative Tools in der Virtual Reality. Wie Clay Bavor von Google auf Twitter schreibt, sei es das Ziel des Unternehmens, die Erstellung von 3D-Objekten zu vereinfachen und jedem Menschen zugänglich zu machen.

Während Tilt Brush und Blocks für die Erstellung der Inhalte gedacht sind, sorgt Poly nun für die Präsentation und einen einfachen Austausch der eigenen Werke. Derzeit ist es mit Poly aber nicht möglich, eigene Objekte zu verkaufen. Alle hochgeladenen Objekte sind kostenlos und frei verwendbar. Falls ihr jedoch eure Modelle vor Veränderungen und Erweiterungen schützen wollt, könnt ihr die Objekte auch zur reinen Ansicht uploaden.

Die freie Verwendbarkeit der 3D-Objekte bezieht sich außerdem nicht nur auf private Projekte. Ihr könnt die herunterladbaren  Inhalte auch für kommerzielle Projekte verwenden. Alle weiteren Infos findet ihr auf der neuen Webseite für die Bibliothek von Poly.

Vermutlich wird der nächste Schritt von Google ein Tool sein, mit dem sich einfach Animationen mit den virtuellen Gegenständen aus Blocks in VR erstellen lassen. Somit hätte das Unternehmen zwar keine komplette Lösung für Entwickler, jedoch ein Tool für alle Menschen, die kleine und lebhafte Welten erschaffen wollen.

(Quelle: Upload VR)




Der Beitrag Poly: Google veröffentlicht Bibliothek für virtuelle Objekte zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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Poly Is Google’s Foundation For Building Virtual Worlds

Poly Is Google’s Foundation For Building Virtual Worlds

Google is launching Poly, a service with a growing library of free objects for creators to incorporate into their virtual worlds.

The repository immediately makes it easier for creators to publish their works from apps like Tilt Brush and Blocks, as well as find pieces to incorporate into their own designs. The service, however, is another piece of the puzzle as Google seems focused on a much grander ambition. Poly further positions Google to deliver foundational software and services that could one day open up 3D modeling and virtual world creation to millions of people through VR and AR.