Silverlight 3DSMax Exporter – Update

Posted by Vaughan on Apr 15, 2009 in 3D, Silverlight | 0 comments

The exporter is coming along nicely.  I’m really happy with the results.  So much so that I decided to create a Q*Bert scene.  Click on the image blow for the full sized image.

In the image you have 3DSMax in the background with all it’s wireframe goodness.  The render on the right, and as you can see, the Silverlight output in Firefox on the left.

Features in the short term will be more .NET features, as full scene rotation would give fantastic interactivity, and open up the door for useful Silverlight transitions.  Texture mapping is another one I want to look at, mainly focusing on texture scaling and offset.

Silverlight 3DSMax Exporter

Posted by Vaughan on Apr 14, 2009 in 3D, Silverlight | 0 comments

Silverlight 3 comes with the new shiny Projection and PlaneProjection for perspective 3D effects.  One issue is to create rich 3D environments, you need a good toolset, and although Blend is a great tool, it’s not a 3D authoring environment.

Enter 3DSMax.  3D Studio has an awesome scripting capability in the form of MaxScript.  Writing 3DSMAX exporters is a past time of mine, and having had a conduit to John Wainwright (aka Mr MaxScript) at that time I became very fond of 3DSMax and MaxScript.  But here ends the history lesson.

The main aim of the Silverlight 3D Studio Max exporter is to create a pipeline for 3D authoring, through to Silverlight in browser, and convenient stops in between.  It shouldn’t ignore or outcast Visual Studio or Blend (or Photoshop etc), and should not replace them.  But where as Visual Studio is a coding environment, Blend an awesome behavioural and layout authoring environment, neither are good 3D authoring environments.  The Silveright 3DSMax Exporter hopefully will fill that gap.

So first up, lets take the following image.

In the screenshot below I’ve taken the above image, applied it as a textures to planes (rectangles), replicated them helix/spiral paths in various directions, textured, translucent, with a blue environment background.  This process took about 2 minutes.

You can see in the image above the front perspective wireframe, the render, and an angled perspective view showing the planes along the various paths.

But with a click of a button, this 2 minutes of work gets exported to XAML in a second.  Alt tab to Blend (Visual Studio doesn’t like ImageBrush for some reason) and voila, instant 3D.

Note that the background is actually blue, but Blend doesn’t stretch it to the full view by default.  A quick stop over in Visual Studio and every object is named and available in Intellisense.

And the real test, taking it to the the browser.  Firing up Firefox gives us…

So in 2 steps, 1) Export, 2) Build, we have a 3D Studio scene in Firefox.

Currently in v0.001 pre alpha, but I thought I’d post some information about what I’ve been working on.  But it truly is 1 click, 1 build.  No smoke, no mirrors.

So what features does it currently have?  For the time being I’m focusing on only 1 shape, being a rectangle.  Simple shape rotation can be done in Blend.  Max is for full scene creation.  Shapes are the easy part, and the hard part is getting coordinate transformations, texturing, and full scene rotation.  These are the real features that I’m currently working on, and I’ll let you all know when it’s ready to get your dirty mitts on.  Stay tuned.

Five Second Test

Posted by Vaughan on Apr 1, 2009 in Website | 0 comments

Following a tweet from shanemo, I decided to check out fivesecondtest.com, and took the 5 second test.  I had no idea what it was prior to turning up, but within 10 seconds the minimalistic site had me sold.  From the site…

The five second test is a simple usability test that helps you measure the effectiveness of your user interfaces.

I’m a big fan of the “don’t make me think” usability principle, possibly because it’s the only one I truly understand.  But after doing a few tests, you notice that some designs remain vividly in your head, and you can visualise an entire design.  Other designs you can hardly remember, and possibly never knew what they were for.

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Having a community of people review your designs is an obvious benefit for submitting designs, but what do you get out of doing the tests?  For one, you get to see designs that work, and in turn that should be a learning experience.  The stark contrast between good and bad designs during 5 seconds really hits home.  Secondly, you get a warm and fuzzy feeling from helping the community of designers out there.