Verge3D 4.1 pre2 available!

Reworked Ecommerce features (WordPress plugin)

As you know, to this day Verge3D WordPress plugin included the integration with WooCommerce (a third-party WordPress plugin for creating online stores). Verge3D WordPress plugin also included our own simplistic set of features which was accessible for use via the place order puzzle.

For this update, we completely overhauled the latter piece of functionality, turning it into a full-featured ecommerce solution. The motivation behind this our work is that although there are many ecommerce solutions out there, none of them fits well into interactive 3D world. They would also require lots of hacks and coding to integrate with Verge3D/WebGL. We want to offer our users a complete integrated package for the most popular CMS on the market, which would include all features necessary for making sales efficient.

Major features we implemented for this update:

🔹 Proper itemization in orders.
🔹 Products and prices are now created in the admin interface, not in puzzles as before.

🔹 All products now have quantity.
🔹 Currencies can be selected in the plugin settings.
🔹 Attachments of various kind are available. Before this update you could only make screenshots and attach to the order. However, now you can use any images, sounds, videos, PDFs, .txt files, and even glTF models. These files are then can be used to fulfill the order or just provide more information from the customer.
🔹 Generation of formal quotes and invoices, customizable with logo and notes and downloadable as PDF. These can be emailed, or attached to an order notification.
🔹 Possibility to make downloadable products.
🔹 Optional PayPal integration.
🔹 Improved email notifications. Emails are fully customisable.
🔹 Optional shipping and billings addresses.
🔹 Discounts and taxes.
🔹 Everything is configurable with hundreds of settings.

The main puzzle that creates the order is now called place order + in addition to the old puzzle place order which continues to work as before. We also significantly improved the security of the plugin by thoroughly verifying all incoming data.

The updated WordPress plugin will be available when the final Verge3D 4.1 is out. In the meantime, you can install it manually from the wordpress folder of the Verge3D installation directory. Note that the WooCommerce part will continue to work as before.

PayPal integration

For those Verge3D users who seek the simplest ecommerce solution possible without even bothering about website, we implemented a new puzzle to pay via PayPal. Create a 3D scene, upload it to Verge3D Network and place the PayPal buy/donate button – what could be easier than that?

You can get the client ID from PayPal as suggested on this page.

New Puzzles

New puzzle, create dict with keys values allows you to create dictionaries more easily: the keys and values can be provided as lists, or as multi-line text.

New puzzle AR hit normal allows you to cast AR content not only to the floor but also to the ceiling and walls (imagine a lustre attached to ceiling, or wall pictures).

New puzzles – add event listener, remove event listener, and dispatch event – were added to the Advanced category. These work in the same fashion as the corresponding JS methods, and can be used to facilitate complex dependencies in highly interactive apps such as games.

New puzzles to access the local storage are available in the System category: storage set, get, remove, and check. By using these puzzle you can preserve data when the user closes or reloads the page – e.g. contents of the ecommerce cart, current configuration, or progress in a game.

Blender-specific

Bezier curves can now be used with the Follow Path constraint. Before this update only Nurbs were supported.

White Noise node is now supported.

We fixed vertex colors which were broken due to changes in Python API of Blender 3.2.

New demo called Follow Path is now available in the Asset Store.

New demo called Ambient Occlusion is now available in the Asset Store.

New demo called Postprocessing is now available in the Asset Store.

3ds Max-specific

The Constant Velocity parameter is now supported for the Path constraint.

New demo called Follow Path is now available in the Asset Store.

New demo called Ambient Occlusion is now available in the Asset Store.

New demo called Postprocessing is now available in the Asset Store.

Maya-specific

Parametric Length setting is now supported for the Motion Path constraint.

We fixed rendering of Verge3D objects – Reflection Cubemap, Reflection Plane, and Clipping Plane – on AMD GPUs.

New demo called Follow Path is now available in the Asset Store.

New demo called Ambient Occlusion is now available in the Asset Store.

Other improvements

We introduced a series of performance optimizations for the Puzzles editor. The feature is still experimental and can be enabled by adding &perf to the end of the URL. As a result, it significantly speeds up scrolling and dragging of big scenarios.

The Puzzles editor now generates cleaner JS code.

We fixed small UI issues in various puzzles. Particularly, the right-click feature collapse/expand now works better.

Desktop builds will always use high performance GPU if user computer has more than 1 GPU.

The load data puzzle can now disable caching of loaded files. Also .json files are automatically converted to dictionary when loaded.

The search filed in the App Manager now supports special symbols.

The puzzle zoom camera now supports Ortho cameras as well. This feature was requested through the Enterprise support channel.

Fixed bugs

🐞 We fixed a bug with constraints assigned to multi-material objects.

🐞 We fixed the bug with annotation visibility. Thank for reporting it on the forums.

🐞 We fixed a crash occurred when editing argument names in a procedure puzzle, which happened if the procedure is used in 2 or more tabs.

🐞 The puzzle unbind element now properly works in all cases.

🐞 We fixed some issues with the multi-line text puzzle observed in Firefox and Safari.