AR and VR Support

Serengeti (Rhino WIP)
21

@gustojunk Enscape has been a great option for VR for us. It adds a toolbar to Rhino and allows for immediate on screen walk-troughs or VR with additional export as web or standalone files. Among a bunch of other awesome features.
https://enscape3d.com/

22

Hi Sebastian, Iā€™m glad it works for you. It makes absolutely no sense for us at this point, for all the technical, workflow and business reasons I explained. Did I miss something in my thinking?

23

Ah yesā€¦ sorry, I did skip over the paragraph about not wanting another plugin, license, etc. earlier. Totally understand.
I do find it to be a nice integrated solution for VR, no exporting needed and any changes made in the Rhino model are reflected in the VR experience in real-time. You also get some great benefits of quick rendered screenshots, animations, web export, etc. You can get some great looking images from itā€¦ you just need to get past their cheesy graphics and website.

I also definitely agree that using VR during the design process is incredibly helpful and it wonā€™t be going anywhere.

24

@gustojunk your points about licensing and 3rd party plugins are totally understandable. However, please, let me show you another aspect: part of the reason why Rhino is so great is its developer-friendly environment and open structure that enables independent developers to build amazing plugins.

Some developers do that as a hobby or as part of a personal growth path, others come from businesses that thrive thanks to the licenses that users pay for. Now, McNeel is deeply committed to keeping this community alive and to focusing on the development of their product and SDK rather than solving specific problems like CFD analysis or VR/AR interaction. This is the reason why Andy and Louis keep saying (in all the focus groups I have participated so far) that they are building RhinoVR as an SDK rather than a final product. On the other hand, companies like Enscape and Mindesk that you mentioned are focused on solving specific problems like Arch Viz and VR interaction and by doing so, they are possibly able to provide much higher quality in what they are specialized in.

As for Mindesk, I can assure you that nobody is a hostage and people who invested in this startup left the team full white paper on product development :wink: . The only Masters who will steer our team are designers like you, who are always very welcome to provide feedback on any aspect of the platform (pricing included).

One more thing, VR in Rhino is already available on Mindesk, while GH + VR + Unreal will be very, very soon.

Hope to have provided some useful information :grinning:

Gabriele
full disclosure: I am CEO at Mindesk

25

Ciao Gabriele,

Nice to meet you. What you are outlining here is not another aspect. This is the exact same aspect and story Iā€™ve heard from the developers and CEOs of other plugins such as:

T-Splines
VSR RT rendering
VSR Modeling
Clayoo
Brazil
Maxwell

I donā€™t know much about the 3D software business, but I do know that the McNeel team is genius to create a ā€˜3D OSā€™ of sorts, and to let others try their luck, for hobby or incubation pre-acquisition reasons. It always works well for McNeel, and sometimes it works for the plugin developers to try a hobby, and some other times to try to get noticed by investors and by companies that might acquire them. This is especially the case when a company is VC funded and acquisition is the only viable way to cash out.

So you describe this as an amazing opportunityā€¦ for your company. I describe it as a non-starterā€¦ for my company. All given the existing track record already in place. They are the 2 sides of the same coin.

Please let me make clear that my feedback was not targeted at Mindesk or Enscape. It was about the affirmation that Rhino needs to have ā€˜just a VR viewmodeā€™. Thatā€™s all Iā€™m asking for. Basic stuff, the code is already there (for plugins like yours) and we are not interested in any other functionality inside Rhino at this point that requires other plugins like yours, or others.

Itā€™s clear that your plugin does a lot more and I can see how for some people sketching and modeling in VR can be very exciting/productive/impressive/innovative/useful. For us it makes absolutely no sense given the tools and options Iā€™ve seen and what they can do. Iā€™m familiar with what Mindesk, Sugarhill, Tiltbrush, Gravity Sketch, Google blocks, etc can do, and I tried some of them. Personally Iā€™m not interested. And I agree that separate plugins should do that stuff, because thereā€™s a ton of work to-be-done to get that right. I would rather not see McNeel spending resources doing that kind of work at this point. I just want a googles-viewmode.

As I said above, Iā€™m not your target customer. We work in Rhino/Grasshopper/Modo and then we do all our scene prep, blueprint and C++ hard-coded experiences directly in Unreal. Also itā€™s all product/automotive/footwear stuff, not architecture. (we are a small potatoes market)

I would say that even if you made a product more suited for our needs, for us Rhino Teams licensing is pretty much a requirement, $2000/yr/user is a non-starter, and 15 days trial is also a non-starter.

if you rethink those logistic things, and make something useful for compelling visualization needs w/ support of PBR shaders, exquisitely designed grasshopper remote controls, live-link to Unreal and remote conferencing options, then I might look it over again.

I hope this helps,

Best Regards,

Gustavo

PS: Three interesting things for you to consider integrations: