I've been testing this tool this afternoon.<p>It's surprisingly powerful. The scale-shifting means it's very easy to work on something at toy soldier scale, and then shift it to be an epic hall or similar. And being able to immediately visualise the space you've created in VR, without having to work on a 2D screen then throw a headset on, is a major improvement on current VR authoring.<p>(I'm the developer of Left-Hand Path, a VR RPG that's been in production for a year or so, and so have authored rather a lot of VR content.)<p>Blocks is obviously not trying to be a pro modeling tool, but it might still end up being useful for some professional applications. And it certainly shows just how powerful a pro modeling tool in VR could be.
I used this tool to create a 3D model of a rack deployment. It was quite intuitive and I finished my model in an hour or so, which was way less than using traditional tools like sketchup (I tried before and gave up frustrated).<p>3D modeling really is an area where VR is just way more pleasant to use than any other option, at least for beginners :)
Disappoints me that major creative tools for VR are mostly being pushed out by the likes of Google and FB who are extremely likely to drop the projects within the next 2 years as their objectives shift because they're not creative tools companies.<p>Would be much happier if some indie devs took up this space.
Idea is great, dying to try it out. The cost of getting 3d content has been growing more and more cost prohibitive every year. Does it export ot a fbx or obj format?<p>Interesting that it is a mesh building tool with a voxel representation.<p>Can you do any type of scripting or animation with it? So many things needed. I want displacement maps, and collision hulls, and ...
Should I be surprised that this doesn't work with Google's own Daydream? I would have assumed support for that before Vive and Rift. I'm assuming there are technical limitations to doing this on Daydream but is it just not doable at all on it? Is the control not precise enough or do you need two?<p>Edit: Okay thanks for the clarification! I guess I wouldn't be surprised if Google has it working internally on their own standalone Daydream hardware.
1992 is here again <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTjB4fCPpaM&t=6m38s" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTjB4fCPpaM&t=6m38s</a>
Can't wait to try this out. Better UIs for 3D modeling is at the very top of my software wishlist. Personally, I've always thought that an "art" 3D modeling tool (eg Blender) with a parametric/sketch-and-extrude modeling interface (as in CAD software like Inventor) would be an interesting direction for this.
Imagine coupling this with a structural code editor like Lamdu: <a href="https://github.com/lamdu/lamdu" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/lamdu/lamdu</a> (but in 3D)<p>Then I would spend my days waving my arms around to make code instead of typing on the keyboard. It'd be great.
Why does VR on the PC always seem like vaporware? It is prohibitively expensive and that does not seem to change year on year, I don't even really think I have seen a news story or anything about VR for the last 18 months apart from Sony's crappy offering.
3D modelling is no easy play. I bet this tool is just a fun to use app but can't be utilized for serious work as navigating in VR with controllers in a heavy headset is extremely tiring. It's done in 2D screens because that is way more effective way as of now.