Verge3D 4.3 pre1 available!

Firstperson Camera Demo

We created the 3ds Max and Maya versions of the small archviz demo called Firstperson Camera which shows off first-person controls set up right in the 3D modeling tool. The app also implements a collision material with multiple building storeys, mouse pointer lock, mobile controls, a navigation mini-map, and geometry batching.

Check out the “walk” button which now automatically shows up when any scene with the first-person camera is viewed on mobile.

You can customize the look and feel of this button through its CSS class .v3d-mobile-forward.

There were some minor improvements in the Blender version of this demo as well.

AR/VR improvements

We implemented a new puzzle called camera control object. By offsetting this object (e.g. with set transform), you can efficiently move the camera in the AR or VR mode.

This spares you the trouble to maintain some empty object specifically to parent and snap the camera to, as such the object is created or dropped automatically when entering or exiting WebXR.

To simplify the things further, we added a new entry to the puzzle library called VR controls.

You can use this group of puzzles to bootstrap the walking in VR mode via HTC Vive or Oculus Quest controllers. It also limits the walking space to a pre-modelled collision mesh.

Speaking of VR controllers, we made using them even more easier by adding the mapping option to the get gamepad property puzzle.

This option returns “standard” for a generic gamepad like Xbox / PlayStation’s, or “xr-standard” for those of HTC Vice or Oculus Quest 1-2.

By checking against this property, you can ensure that your logic works with almost all gamepads and VR controllers available on the market.

Finally, we renamed the puzzle end VR session to end AR/VR session for consistency, as it actually works in both modes.

Puzzles Editor

You can now rename tabs in the Puzzles editor through double-clicking on their names, and can also create new tabs faster. When a new tab created, the modal window to type its name no longer appears – instead, the cursor blinks on its default name (‘New Tab’), suggesting renaming it right away.

The Run and Save buttons in the Puzzles Editor are now consistently highlighted/deactivated to reflect new changes in the workspace.

Under the hood, the Puzzles editor was rewritten using Vue.js framework to improve its speed and maintainability.

Blender-specific features

The Holdout shader node now works again. Thanks for reporting this issue on the forums.

We fixed the Clamp node not working properly in some cases, and also supported the Range clamping mode for this node.

We fixed the crash with gltf-compatible materials in older versions of Blender.

We slightly improved the precision of the algorithm for exporting animations from Blender.

3ds Max-specific features

The Jewelry Configurator demo can be downloaded again because of fixed bug with downloading very big files from the Asset Store. Thanks for bringing this up on the forums.

Maya-specific features

We supported additive blending mode for transparent materials.

The node bump2d now correctly works if mesh geometry contains zero-length tangents, which could result in black rendering in some cases.

More improvements

We synced Verge3D with the underlying Three.js library. Version r148 improves stability, performance and cleans up outdated code. Some of the newly introduced features of Three.js will be used in our own development.

We upgraded the puzzle vector math, the second parameter of which can now be a scalar value. This means you can add/subtract/multiply/divide a vector by a number in per-component fashion, thus making your puzzles significantly more compact.

We repaired application templates’ web favicons and Android icons. Particularly, when a Verge3D app link is saved as icon to mobile screen, it now uses a better-looking high-res image.

Documentation and help

You can now provide your own User Manual URL in the App Manager.

You might want to this in the following possible scenarios:

• Replace the English docs by a localized version, e.g. URL for Chinese: https://www.soft8soft.com/docs/manual/zh/index.html
• Read docs offline and faster via this URL: http://localhost:8668/docs/output/manual/en/index.html
• Use docs for an older Verge3D version or a preview version rather than the latest stable User Manual (same link as above).

This will works in Blender, 3ds Max, and Maya menu, in the right-click menu in Blender, and with the App Manager’s help button.

Next, we documented all entries from the Puzzles stock library.

We updated the section about debugging mobile apps, as the modern browsers can now generate QR codes themselves. At the same time, both iOS and Android can now scan QR codes without any third-party apps.

We made search in the User Manual more usable, and the docs now use a cuter social media image.

Finally, we filled some gaps, fixed typos and broken links, and worked out various outdated info.

Fixed bugs

We fixed the bug with the Flying camera which jumped wildly when using keyboard controls.

We fixed the issue with downloading of very big files from the Asset Store.