talkingof3d

Loads of new updates!

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:20:02 -0400

Alright alright! So you haven’t seen any updates here in sometime. But wait, Sunglass is loaded with a host of new features.

New interface - The interface has been cleaned to let the content come to the front. Try it and let us know what you think.

Easier notes - Just drag and drop a pin from the top panel and add your note. That’s all you do to add a note to anywhere on any model on your stage. Add a snapshot and create a sketch on it too. Try it!

Undo / Redo - Made a wrong transformation? Don’t worry, you can undo and redo your actions on the stage now.

Audio conference - This is a biggie! We got powered by Twilio and give you audio conferencing. Now, you don’t just type your message to the team but also quickly begin an audio conference call right on your stage.

Render - Though still limited and under development, this will allow you to render your scene right from the stage. We’re introducing light and more material manipulations soon but go ahead, try a render!

Print your models! - Now, you can send your models for printing right from the stage. This is made possible through the awesome guys at Ponoko.

Sync up - Sync your scene with your collaborators. Just click on the sync button next to a collaborator in the collaborator panel and presto!, you’re now viewing the stage from that collaborator’s camera! But wait, here’s the sweet part: Click on the eye icon at the bottom panel and you can now view all your collaborators on the stage. Now, click on any collaborator on the stage and you’re synced with their scene. Sweet eh? Go try it!

Easier & better publish - You can now name your players. Which means when you create a player to embed it on your website, you can give it a cool name!

Better camera views - Want to add more information to a camera view. Just navigate to the saved view in the views panel and you can edit it to add more information to the view.

Better help - We have upgraded our help system to answer all your questions and help you understand Sunglass better. Check it out here.

Phew! That’s (almost) it for now. Hey no, wait! Don’t forget to meet the team who’s behind all the above!

Alright then, happy playing. Please do shoot back your comments and love :)

Cheers!

Team Sunglass

Improved apps interface + player + new apps!

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:13:00 -0400

We’re constantly working on improving the interface of the apps that we’ve been introducing, trying to make them more responsive and easy to use. There you go, improved apps interface with 3 tabs: 1. Parameters 2. Results 3. Info

The Parameters tab will enable you to quickly change the parameters before you run the app on a model/models. The results tab will keep a log of generated results in a certain session. The Info session is general information about the app, its creator etc.

What’s more? The app is still ‘runnable’ when you minimize an app window with a mini-run button. Just press run and the app is instantly run!

Also, we’ve introduced 2 new apps:

Sunglass Renderer : This app uses Pixie - a RenderMan implementation to return ray-traced images of your scene. Simply put, it generates for you, a render of your scene.

Airflow CFD : Air Flow lets you analyze the low speed, incompressible flow of air around 3D structures.

Wait a minute, did we mention that the player also supports camera views now? Which means you can view it as a complete showcase for your model(s)!

What are you waiting for? Go start dabbling and shower some love and feedback on us!

Cheers!

Team Sunglass

Now, save camera views!

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:20:02 -0400

We just released a long pending feature: Save your camera views.

Just click on the “+” and the current camera view will be saved to the camera views list.

Now, any member in your team can access that camera view and see exactly what you wanted to show them!

Stay tuned! Loads of things coming up soon.

Cheers!

2 surprises!

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:21:00 -0400

We have revamped the Sunglass dashboard.

Every project ‘tile’ is a quick look into the last stage you were working on. Every stage tile is the latest state of that stage. And every ‘Player’ tile is a beautiful slideshow of the stages embedded in it.

We give you the new and improved Sunglass Player!

Now you can embed more than one stages in a single player. Which means you can not only use the player to publish rich content in various places but also embed it in your own website. Wait, you can actually use the player as a portfolio showcase for your site. How’s that?

Up next: Sunglass Profiles. Stay tuned!

And hey, we’d love to listen from you!

Cheers!

Solidsmack Review: "One of the slickest web-based 3d apps yet.."

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:08:42 -0500

Solidsmack Review: "One of the slickest web-based 3d apps yet.."

Video

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:13:42 -0500

Sunglass.io is launched!

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:21:00 -0500

Yes. Its alive and we are excited to hear about your experiences with the beta version of our product. The last six months have been full of the usual ups, downs and surprises concomitant with any startup - however its been gratifying to see Sunglass evolve as the world’s easiest platform to share and collaborate around 3d content. Try it.

The vision of Sunglass is to democratize design tools by removing barriers to access and create an ecosystem by leveraging the micro-innovations appearing in the design computation community. We have a long way to go and several hurdles to cross, but as a step forward we are releasing the first version of our platform called the Stage. It is a web based, format agnostic shared model space for the 3D community and makes sharing, presenting, discussing 3D content easy. super easy. If you are a product designer wanting to showcase your work in 3D or, if you are an architect reviewing designs with a remote client or, if you are a 3D artist collaborating with multiple colleagues over the network - we believe you will find Stage valuable.

Our next release, Sim is even more exciting featuring an app store where users will be able quickly browse through applications and run them via our backend servers. This attacks a deeper problem - the ability to do heavyweight computations on lightweight (read mobile) devices. Imagine doing rendering, simulations and analysis just via your tablet. We spent a lot of time architecting Sunglass imagining this future and we took some fairly risky strategies recasting a 3D environment in a networked architecture. We believe that this architecture will have heavy payoffs for our users, releasing them from the need to hold multiple pieces of very expensive software. In the simplest of terms, it will allow users to get quick performative feedback, significantly speeding up their early stage design cycle.

From extensive surveys of design firms, we realized that design projects are more often than not a remote exercise today, with team members located in the different parts of the globe. There is no single tool which seriously looks at workflow management for this networked design practice. We believe that Sunglass owing to its architecture is well poised to take this problem head on. Without going deeper into this, we are certain that we will save the industry a near one-third of their design cycle time.

While the vision of Sunglass is to cater to this collaborative universe of design professionals, our dream is also to see Sunglass ushering a culture of experimentation and innovation in world of the design and computation, supporting new methods of conception and production. As an example, Sim will support running multiple applications synchronously - ie., one can run a generative sequence, an analysis and an optimizer at the same time on one model. These are super hard problems, but hopefully be super gratifying for our users. We have already laid out a strong foundation with Stage, we have already gathered a team of very talented and passionate individuals and we remain optimistic about our agenda. Watch this space!

Kaustuv DeBiswas
CoFounder, sunglass.io

Photo

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:43:00 -0500