As announced during the Web3D conference, the X3DOM team is happy to announce the launch of an open-source component editor project, which is now being hosted on GitHub. The component editor is based on X3DOM, and it shows how to create a  simple Web-based editor with X3DOM and jQuery.

Current Features include:

• Alignment tool for primitives, using reference points / reference vectors
• Snapping data to grid during editing
• Support for different units (meters, centimeters, inches, …)
• Exchangeable UI styles
• Import / Export using JSON

If you are interested, feel free to check it out, or even to contribute to this project!

Researchers at the Advanced Community Information Systems (ACIS) Group at RWTH Aachen University use X3DOM to realize a collaborative 3D viewer for teaching anatomy.

Aim of the project is the creation, deployment and utilization of a pool of digital 3D anatomic models for accessing them anywhere and anytime over the Web using a standard Web browser.

You can give it a try by checking out the prototype!

We are proud and glad to announce the release of X3DOM 1.7 – as always, thanks to all contributors that made this great achievement possible!

Besides our new, fresh home page, these are the most important changes:

• CommonSurfaceShader now also supports object-space normal maps (in addition to already available tangent-space normal maps) – demo here
• ExternalGeometry node now has a multi-field for the data URL (of type MFString), multiple URLs can be specified as fallback. This is fully backwards compatible with old scenes that specify only a single string.
• Basic TriangleSet implementation, interesting for testing non-indexed rendering (thanks to Yvonne Jung, Fulda University of Applied Sciences)
• alphaClipThreshold attribute in Appearance node to adapt the threshold for X3DOM’s alpha test (for textures with transparency)
• Improvements in geospatial components (support for easting_first, thanks to Andreas Plesch, Harvard University).
• If a viewpoint gets transformed, its center of rotation now gets transformed accordingly (thanks to Andreas Plesch, Harvard University).
• Runtime documentation made available (see here)
• New tutorial about runtime configuration (see here)
• New tutorial about the experimental SSAO implementation (see here)
• Some smaller documentation updates
• Several fixes (thanks to Ander Arbelaiz, Andreas Plesch and Yvonne Jung)

With the VolumeRC page, X3DOM developers at vicomtech have created a gallery of volume renderings, using the X3DOM volume rendering component.

Check out the demos, which include switching between different volume rendering styles and interactive editing of transfer functions.

3D-ICONS is another noteable example of a cultural heritage project that uses X3DOM technology.

The models have not been converted to X3DOM’s optimized binary geometry format yet, so the transmission currently takes some time.
However, after loading you will get rewarded with really beautiful detailed views of architectural cultural heritage objects!

To realize their CREALIS® 3D product configuration tool, ORISA Software GmbH uses X3DOM.

Check out a demonstration video here!

Product Configurator CREALIS® is the well-proven configuration system for manufacturers of variants in mechanical engineering, plant construction, and automobile industry as well as in automation and ancillary industries. CREALIS® has a clear and user-friendly interface and serves as an optimal and efficent sales and marketing instrument in the sales department. CREALIS® 3D supports the illustration of the product to be configured in realtime 3D within the web browser. The software tool can visualize large models three-dimensionally in all web browsers on computer or mobile devices and no additional plug-ins are required. The visualization shows the current configuration status at any time and supports the sales of products requiring extensive consulting.

think project!, the provider of the project platform by the same name and expert for cross-enterprise collaboration, has developed a solution for the quick utilization of digital building data. In terms of visualization, think project! is now supported by Fraunhofer IGD. To allow for high-performance visualization of BIM data, while still providing fine-granular user interaction, X3DOM is the framework of choice.

Check the official press announcement here!

Shapeways uses x3dom already for years for different visualisation aspects and introduced now a new set of tools to illustrate the printability of 3d objects 

shapeways printability center

The 3D Scene Search Engine (3DSSE) by the Multimedia Research Group of Athena Research Center uses X3DOM for visualizing captured Scenes.

Dive into it by searching the database – an empty query will show all available content – and navigate through the scenes here. (You can, for example, use X3DOM’s fly mode by pressing ‘f’)

Just another example of what people do with X3DOM:

Available through Mathworks’ MATLAB Central, the function FIGURE2XHTML exports your 3D Matlab figure to an X3DOM scene, which can directly be viewed inside your browser!

3D printing can be an expensive process, and simulation models exist to predict how a printed object would look like. To visualize such simulated objects, the cuttlefish 3D printing project uses X3DOM.

Check it out here!

Fraunhofer IGD uses X3DOM / POP-Buffer this year for their first 3d digital x-mas card!

X-Mas card

As a special holiday gift, we are happy to announce the release of X3DOM 1.6.2! We would like to thank all users and, of course, all the contributors, that make X3DOM such a great project.

New Features

• Add SplinePositionInterpolator
  Thanks to ankit1089, Toshiba Corporation
  Example here

• Simple SSAO implementation
  Thanks to simonthum and fbrandherm
  Example here
  Tutorial upcoming here

Fixes and Enhancements

• Runtime Documentation updated and new screenshot tutorial

• Many VolumeRendering improvements
  Thanks to aarbelaiz from Vicomtech

• Many Geospatial improvements
  Thanks to andreasplesch from Harvard University, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

•  CORS improvements
  Thanks to sharian

• … plus a lot of smaller fixes and enhancements by the X3DOM core team and the X3DOM community 

Grab the frozen 1.6.2 version here. The cutting-edge development version (nightly build of git head) can be found here.

Getting CAD models visualized on the Web usually requires some work, as CAD representations, such as BReps, differ from visualization formats, such as X3DOM’s BinaryGeometry or the X3D IndexedFaceSet.
To solve problems like this, you can use PythonOCC, a python package that comes with powerful CAD functionality. This includes, for instance, exporting STEP to X3D with just a few lines of code.

For a quick look, check out some simple examples here!

A fresh update for the powerful 3D content authoring tool BS Content Studio by Bitmanagement is now available.

This also includes an improved support for exporting scenes to X3DOM.

With the experimental Chromium support for the new WebVR API, we are pleased to showcase the first Oculus Rift 2 demo using X3DOM with a Leap for hand tracking!

Here, you can enjoy a short video.

Check the demo out here!

We are happy to see the first X3DOM Demo running on a Google Cardboard VR device, using a regular Nexus 5 smart phone. Many thanks to Manuel Olbrich for providing this demo, which is solely built with standard browser technology – no external services are necessary. Check it out here.

We are glad to announce that colleagues from Toshiba have just provided an implementation of the SplinePositionInterpolator node, which is already available in the current development version of X3DOM.

Check out the example here!

We just updated our browser support page to include the recent changes with Safari on iOS8 and IE11 on Win7/Win8. The intermediate solutions (such as Chrome Frame) are not necessary any more and both have great support for WebGL natively. 2014 is really a great year for WebGL based system and we have come a long way in five years!

One week until Web3D 2014 and SIGGRAPH 2014 in Vancouver! Meet the X3DOM and InstantReality team at both conferences and on the exhibition floor in the Web3D Consortium booth #1045, where we will present the latest features of X3DOM 1.6.1 and InstantReality 2.4.0. This year brings a major step toward a service oriented architecture for web-based applications, both rendered on a client or streamed from a server from different back-ends, and we’re thrilled to show you all of it.