Hi All,
Writing here to officially introduce Stork - a plugin for walkthrough / flythrough experience inside Rhino viewport.
It is a project I have started four years ago with some simple keypress reading tests. Starting with just WASD + Mouse Look camera movement I soon realized that for a tool like this to be truly useful, it would require much more thought and refinement. Over time a lot more was added, drawing from my teenage years of 90’s PC gaming experience (playing, not coding!) and professional work in architecture and visualization with Rhino. Stork has been “almost ready” for past two years and I have been using it extensively in my work - by doing so I kept finding more things that need tweaking or adding; also decided to drop V5 support since V6 display speed is much better, and that part is critical for decent experience.
This type of navigation in Rhino has been discussed here from time to time over the years and recently many external applications offer it as a standard. However I see a lot of benefits of having it directly in Rhino, with no need to relink/export models and having Rhino-specific functionalities like Named Views, Clipping Planes and various Display Modes incorporated. Experiencing the scene from first person perspective for human scale models is quite valuable in evaluating the design and in the process of optimal camera angle selections for visualization. Stork aims to offer all of that as a special, quick to access “viewing mode”.
Basic gravity and ground collisions are implemented for walking to keep the camera at eye level on any terrain, stairs, ramps etc. Also optional collisions to prevent walking through walls etc. There is even a “fall prevention” - I found it very annoying falling from balconies and roofs by accident, so this is prevented, unless you intentionally jump off… (yep, jumping is there, too).
Working with Stork could be as simple as WASD keys + mouse, or quite complex with all other functions. Full keymap looks a bit like airplane cockpit, but don’t be overwhelmed - no need to use a lot of it most of the time:
If you are working in an industry where evaluating your design from eye level is beneficial, hope you can give Stork a try.
All instructions and download link are available HERE and also it has been added to Food4Rhino. Rhino for Windows only.
To celebrate this release, Stork will be available at a discounted price until April 10th.
This group has been extremely helpful with solving a lot of issues I ran into in the process, especially that I still have quite limited coding experience. So I want to thank everyone contributing here, plus special thanks to RMA crew (@Pascal, @Dale @Steve @Nathan) and superusers @Clement and @Holo for all your help and advice along the way.
Thanks for reading this - hope everyone is safe and well, and if you are social-distancing and isolating in front of a screen with Rhino open, maybe you can try “gaming inside Rhino” with Stork.
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Here is a video with some navigation basics:
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PS. Mentioning here those who participated in some of the WASD Rhino topics:
@jjn @wynott, @arch, @coberlan @ATH @michaelcbell @Czaja @mrhappy @lucio_zadra @bringley @chris10
