Womp 3D – The New Way to 3D

https://www.womp.com/

by danboarder • 4 years ago

152 98 4 years ago

womp.com

armchairhacker• 4 years ago

This looks really pretty.

I assume it uses SDFs, though there isn't really any technical explanation for how it works.

dlivingston• 4 years ago

I really wish I could try it out without having to sign up for an account. I understand compute costs for that would likely be high, though.

throw_m239339• 4 years ago

I mean where is the app executed? on the client or on the server?

A bunch of JS on a CDN doesn't cost that much to serve, if it's running on a remote server Stadia style than yes, but then what is the goal here? User/Customer acquisition always costs a lot of money...

At the very least, let me test the editor quickly, and prompt me to register upon saving a project.

edit: I always thought it was stupid that Stadia didn't provide tools like Blender, Gimp and co, it would have been a huge avenue for user growth. Then strike deals with Maxon for instance and run Cinema 4D in the cloud, that's a missed opportunity.

Colab allows that, you can run Blender in the cloud and basically use the service as a rendering farm, and it's damn fast. No GUI obviously...

kelsolaar• 4 years ago

I haven't checked but considering the display artefacts and latency, it seems like it is actually streamed.

pjmlp7• 4 years ago

Google just doesn't know how to talk with game developers.

Even on Android, it took them 10 years to provide what is basic tooling for game development on other platforms.

Games succeed on Android because of the game development community standing in for the lack of motivation and tooling support from Android team, not thanks to them.

pjmlp7• 4 years ago

Same here, I never bother if I can't try out with some kind of demo account.

dmitriid• 4 years ago

From the video intro this looks like Kai's Power Tools, but for 3D

gardaani• 4 years ago

YouTube has better videos, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DnRehtfCbo

Womp looks like https://www.vectary.com with few additional features.

Caduceus1• 4 years ago

Only works with Chrome..

systemvoltage2• 4 years ago

For some reason, any app that only works with a certain browser truly grinds my gears. It is the antithesis of the free web and standards. It is the antithesis of what the web stands for. It is the antithesis of why we have to fight for more than one window into the internet. It just brings the whole game back to square one erasing years of progress.

keyle• 4 years ago

Especially for an app that claims "no downloads, no gray app" ... dude the arrogance.

hurtuvac78• 4 years ago

Yes, but it is frustrating to limit yourselves and your users because Safari or Firefox does not support some Canvas features, some voice recognition ones, bluetooth or localhost interactions for example.

I really don't like the idea and the practice of helping a Google monopoly, and I am guilty of it at times. But on the other hand, using such features is a way to encourage Apple to upgrade their browser... which they have little incentive because they want apps.

mat_epice• 4 years ago

Gosh... I use Firefox, and it didn't even try to let me know before it asked me to sign up. Now I'm twice as glad I didn't.

andybak7• 4 years ago

It's worth it if you happen to have Chrome installed. (I keep it around for times like this)

badpun2• 4 years ago

I hate this trend of where you go to some product's website and, after visiting it, you still don't know what it does and what it's for.

peterpost2• 4 years ago

Same here, for the longest time I thought this was a parody.

badpun2• 4 years ago

When I came to think of it, it's possible that the website is not botched. It oozes "coolness" and "innovative tech", while being completely vague on specifics, which means it's probably just targeting VCs and the next round of funding?

andybak7• 4 years ago

You might not be the target market? I knew immediately what it might be and had a good sense of how it might be useful.

danybittel• 4 years ago

Seems to be using similar tech to https://ephtracy.github.io/index.html?page=magicacsg

Razengan• 4 years ago

Signing up before trying an app = Instant close & forget.

At least support something like "Sign in with Apple" so I can forget about you later.

DrSiemer• 4 years ago

Sign up == skip. The "don't spam me" option is always hidden or simply ignored. Got enough crap polluting my inbox already.

jb19912• 4 years ago

Here is the very welcoming website of the creator: http://www.abductee.org/

gt5854• 4 years ago

this is true.

preommr2• 4 years ago

It's funny comparing the reviews on product hunt[1] to HN. The former has average people and artists - probably the target audience - favoring the product and then there's HN where people are so low commital that they don't even want to sign in or try a different browser.

Anyways, I actually tried it out and... I don't really get it. I would find it frustrating to use when blender is so much snappier and more powerful. I do like the process of using metaballs for design and a lot of whatever the tech is. But I am also surprised at how much effort went into this when this seems really really niche. Someone else linked a video [2] where there's a project with so many layers... bro just use an actual 3d app at that point.

Also that landing page is horrible.

[1] https://www.producthunt.com/posts/womp-2?utm_source=badge-fe...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DnRehtfCbo

MathYouF• 4 years ago

The main value of using SDF shapes for 3D modeling workflows is you don't have to worry about topology (the vertex, edge, face graph structure which has to be formed over the surface of all 3D models) which makes a lot of modifiers (like boolean combinations of intersecting objects) vastly less tedious (Womp calls this feature "goop").

Right now Blender work still involves a lot of tedium, mostly related to topology. A lot of upcoming 3D ML applications also work considerably better when using SDF instead of mesh representations. I wouldn't be surprised to see this form of 3D modeling take off to a significant degree because of those two factors.

dorkwood4• 4 years ago

You can throw a voxel remesh modifier onto your model in Blender to get the same functionality. It will convert your model from polygons to SDF and then back to polygons.

preommr2• 4 years ago

Blender sort of has them...

There was the original metaballs. But more recently there's also been sdf addons using geometry nodes [1] that mimic the same workflow - with my guess being that it uses voxels to generate the final polygon mesh that blender needs since it's not a fully sdf editor. Although, while I was googling this, I did find someone that managed to do it by using pure shaders [2] which is pretty cool.

Also, thanks for actually explaining that. I've seen a few examples of this kind of "clay like" sculpting approach that tries to make it easier for artists. Adobe's Modeler uses sdfs for example.

[1] https://blenderartists.org/t/geometry-nodes-in-3-3-sdf-prese...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqDCPW85tuQ

LarsDu88• 4 years ago

Blender already has metaballs. It's just not user friendly or multiplayer

Interestingly most folks think of 3d modeling as quad modeling/subdivision surfaces, but Toy Story 1 was done completely with NURBs (also supported by blender)

jb19912• 4 years ago

That video is rather illuminating that this is definitely not an application that my grandmother could use.

Closi• 4 years ago

Anyways, I actually tried it out and... I don't really get it. I would find it frustrating to use when blender is so much snappier and more powerful.

Why would anyone use Canva when there are plenty of other more powerful options?

I believe the answer is that it is simple and not scary for people to learn, and that there is a large number of people who could use this and create something that looks pretty good but that would be intimdated with Blender and have no clue where to start. Blender isn't really designed for a casual user to be able to pick it up and understand it in 10 minutes.

animal531• 4 years ago

I briefly tried it (as an indie game developer). It's basically taking a metaball approach to modeling and performing some form of real time rendering so you can see what the result will look like. It also allows you to add some animation and what-not.

Overall I don't see it replacing any serious tool at the moment, its quite slow in modeling (because of the rendering) and precision.

What it can be useful for is if someone doesn't have the necessary tools/skills and they just want to make a basic and quick 3d shape like a smiley face, have it bounce/animate and export that to a little gif or whatever.

FormFollowsFunc• 4 years ago

I agree, using SDF for everything is probably not a good idea but it can be useful as a feature along with standard modeling tools. I sometimes use SDF volumes in Houdini to get that blended look. nTopology which is a specialised standalone 3D software use it for advanced 3D printing. You can do things like blend two different infill patterns.

But as a webapp, it is cool looking. I'm curious how he managed to get it to work in a browser.

andybak7• 4 years ago

Overall I don't see it replacing any serious tool at the moment, its quite slow in modeling (because of the rendering) and precision.

Signed Distance Function modeling has different strengths to other approaches. It's one more tool in your toolbox. One could just as easily say "I don't see [insert other paradigm here] replacing implicit SDFs".

In terms of "serious" usage Inigo Quilez did a ton of incredible work on Pixar's Brave using SDF techniques.

https://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2012/Volume-35-Issue-4-...

Roark66• 4 years ago

It is moderately annoying one has to sign up (and give one's email etc) to even see the product in action. Why couldn't they put up a public demo where all your work is shared/can't be saved just to check it out.

The fact one has to sign up to see the product in action says to me they either lack confidence in their product, or are desperate to monetise everyone who wants to check it out.

I've been waiting for some product to invent a painless way to sketch 3d objects with a touch interface for years.

tkk23• 4 years ago

I've been waiting for some product to invent a painless way to sketch 3d objects

Do you know https://stephaneginier.com/sculptgl/? It is open source [1] so you could adjust it to your needs.

[1] https://github.com/stephomi/sculptgl

kuroguro2• 4 years ago

The only thing worse than that is discovering you need chrome after you've given your email away.

gt5854• 4 years ago

I know- we hate it too. But we had to double down on the browser our userbase uses. We’re working to get it to more browsers as fast as we can!

FractalHQ• 4 years ago

Just use Brave (and don’t press any crypto related buttons if they offend you for some contrived reason)

moron4hire• 4 years ago

Because, if they did that, they wouldn't get your email address.

How could you even consider such a thing? /s

funstuff0073• 4 years ago

For a consumer product this practice is indeed annoying. For a B2B or B2B2C product, it helps weed out the hobbyists and nosy competitors.

pjmlp7• 4 years ago

Competitors don't have an issue creating dummy accounts to test who they are up against.

wolframhempel• 4 years ago

This attitude really bothers me. I have no affiliation with Womp, but from the looks of it, it's a cool product made by a small team. And they are giving it out for free - literally for free. But free still isn't enough. Even the notion to get some contact data in the hope that some subset of subscribers might be willing to pay for it in the future is somehow insulting to you. Instead, you want the transaction to be completely one sided: "give me stuff and get nothing back".

"But if they had confidence in their product, they would just make it open and people would try it out. And if they like it, they might buy it later!" - Right? Wrong!

People have increasingly short memories. Even if they like it now, by the time it makes it out of alpha, they'll long be chasing the next, shiny thing. So you have to keep the link alive to follow up on it. That's just good business.

So how about you have some sympathy for the talented people who put this together and give them the chance to follow up in a few months on the off chance that this is something you might be willing to use properly?

Firmwarrior• 4 years ago

How about they make the app completely frictionless to try out, and then charge money for it? I don't want to sign up for something before I try it, but if I'm using something I don't mind paying for it

Problem solved

scsh2• 4 years ago

I felt the same about having to signup to even see it do something. It's really not about THIS particular product or the people behind it. It's just that I'm expected to do this with seemingly ever new thing that I want to interact with. It's become so common that, for me, the signup gate becomes a decision point where I ask myself "Do I really care/want to see this?". The answer is no a non-zero amount of times and I do bounce off it at that point.

I do get the desire for them to want an audience to give updates to and try to have a consistent user base. The thing that sucks is that not only do they want to email me, so does everyone else. I've never been very protective of my inbox but the volume has gotten crazy recently so that's had to change. If they let me in and then asked for my email to continue after a couple minutes I'd be more inclined to provide it.

ekianjo2• 4 years ago

And they are giving it out for free - literally for free.

Not free of friction, that's for sure.

Do you want every service out there, free or not free, to ask you to sign up to access everything?

supportlocal4h• 4 years ago

"Free" means different things to different people. For instance, a free phone that records everything you do (not just phone calls) and posts the recordings to soyouwanttobeastar.com might appeal to some and horrify others.

If this free 3D product only required a DNA sample, the group who considers it free might change. Or if it required your signature. Or your corporate username.

It clearly is not free. It has a price. The question is how much different people value that price.

missosoup• 4 years ago

On what planet is it 'free' if it requires you to hand over some of your most abusable info?

The thing that really bothers me is the normalisation of 'hand over your credentials' which inevitably maps to data leaks and identity theft. For what, trying out a product that you may or may not use?

abeppu• 4 years ago

Roark66 described it as "moderately annoying", not "insulting", so let's please not start an escalating chain of reactions to stuff that hasn't actually been expressed.

But I'm on the same "mildly annoyed" page, because with the large majority of "it looks cool" new products or services I try out, I know within 5 minutes that it doesn't actually meet my needs and I know I'm _not_ interested in it, but I still have to trust that this organization both today and in perpetuity (or as long as I keep that address) will be well-behaved and technically competent in using my information.

Recently on vacation I bought tickets to a museum in a country I was visiting, and in the process shared my email in order to receive a QR code for entry. They have a legitimate use case which involves sending something to me; fine. To my knowledge the ticket sales service involved does not operate in my region, and I would really prefer never to hear from them again after this one useful interaction. Only a couple of weeks later, in the space of 30 minutes I receive _dozens_ of marketing messages from them, each in a different language I do not speak, all promoting the same 10% off sale _for something I cannot make use of_. I assume some bug didn't associate a specific language with my record so they decided to send me messages in all of them. Their "unsubscribe" link was broken, perhaps for related lack-of-competence reasons. There's literally no way for me to tell them I am not in a position to buy anything further from them. But we've totally normalized online interactions that require (potential) customers to trust that an unfamiliar organization with be both well-intentioned and skillful in their handling of your contact info.

Imagine if receiving a free sample at a grocery store of a new product that might be appealing to you but might be entirely not to your taste required you to first give the company your contact info. Or if trying on a garment in a department store required the same trust. In a non-online context, this behavior would be creepy and intrusive. And you know that you might realize in seconds that you hate the mouthfeel of their product, or that the cut of those pants just doesn't work for your body, and no you won't be buying their product -- but you can't claw back your email.

I think in online contexts we should normalize at least one of two other patterns:

- Let people try it for k minutes/actions/new objects without a sign-up, after which the UI is blocked by a modal asking them to create an account. The customer gets to establish whether they actually want to use the product, and the company still gets info about people who are actually interested.

- Rather than relying on _emails_ specifically, account setup could rely on _revocable_ access to any other service that allows sending/receiving messages.

hoosieree• 4 years ago

I think this attitude is a consequence of (a) so many things vying for our limited attention, and (b) people using your contact info in ways you don't want.

It's a reasonable response to the environment we live in, not necessarily a criticism of this specific app. Unfortunately it seems like the OP has wanted something like this for a long time, but their knee-jerk reaction to its outward appearance will prevent them from even trying it.

Like how an allergic reaction is our body's immune system over-reacting to something that may actually be benign.

dkjaudyeqooe• 4 years ago

When I got to the signup, I just closed the window. How does that help them? You want as few possible barriers to experience of your product. It's not about denying them some sort of monetization, but incrementally that's what happened because of the signup.

It should be:

- I got you to click my url, here's some screenshots and a description.

- Looks interesting? Try it yourself.

- Like it? Sign up for an account to save your work, or maybe submit an email for announcements.

chronogram• 4 years ago

I can part with a few monies, I'd rather not sign up to some newsletter though. Different free for different folks.

hansworst• 4 years ago

If the creators are reading along in this thread, I’d be very interested in an article or even a short explanation with some pointers on how they got this to perform well enough to render in real-time. Every time I’ve tried to create SDF based shaders with many Boolean operations, it kind of starts slowing down to the point where it’s unusable.

ttoinou• 4 years ago

Is it using metaballs ? Does that mean rendering this with a shader should be ultrafast without any complex triangle geometry ?

andybak7• 4 years ago

Raymarched SDFs: https://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distan...

KaiserPro• 4 years ago

Interesting, looks like a web based Mudbox clone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_Mudbox

jameshart• 4 years ago

You can’t just turn 3D into a verb without explaining what you consider to be in the scope of ‘3Ding’.

It seems to be 3D object/character modeling? And maybe a little bit of rigging?

Because there are plenty of other things people want to do ‘in 3D’ that are excluded from that very narrow field - like scene modeling, CAD, motion graphics, Sfx, game development, visualization, capture, etc…

ekianjo2• 4 years ago

Sign-up before trying the alpha? Sorry, no go.

aliqot• 4 years ago

requires signup.... womp womp..

singularity2001• 4 years ago

"Welcome to WOMP alpha" … and nothing happens (noscript ALLOWING hotjar, still…)

Anyways switching to chrome and disabling all security it worked.

Why do models take many seconds to load?

Interesting rendering algorithm: You see it converge from low res to high res within a few seconds after rotating:

https://alpha.womp3d.com/preview/45050

Pretty good end results I guess? No expert on ray tracing or whatever they use.

gt5854• 4 years ago

Founder here! happy to see people loving the sign up process. We are coming up with different options- but we were against a deadline and had to choose a browser and didn’t have time to do a no- signup experience. We’re working on it, we aren’t Adobe :) - We are a small startup trying to do something new for folks who aren’t into blender (despite it being the most powerful 3D software- its fucking intimidating and hard to use) - that’s it- please proceed to shit on this :) :heart: gaby

panzerboiler3• 4 years ago

Thank you for the nice tool, and for all the nice things released by Mercury. I loved ["On"](https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65350) so much, and [hg_sdf](https://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/) is a very nice library.

blooalien• 4 years ago

Blender isn't hard to use … It's hard to learn. Important difference. Once learned, you can do amazing things with it that many other similar 3D software is either incapable of, or far more complex to accomplish the same task. As to Blender being "intimidating", that much is absolutely true. It's also "overwhelming" at first. It helps to focus on smaller tasks when first learning, because it's easy to get sidetracked by all the many buttons and that is where "overwhelmed" and "intimidating" begin.

I highly recommend Blender Guru on YouTube as one of several great places to start for anyone interested in learning Blender. He's got a couple beginner tutorials there that'll get one up and rolling in no time at all. It's well worth the effort to learn for those who have an interest in 3D graphics or game development. Having said all that, I'm always in favor of more new tools / toys appearing in this space, and I thank you for adding to the mix.

TheRealPomax• 4 years ago

They're the same thing to someone thinking about starting with 3D modelling/sculpting. Learning and using aren't two discrete steps that follow each other: you decide to give Blender (or anything else) a try and your use of it guides your learning which guides your use which guides your learning on and on until one day you sit down and realise you're actually pretty good at using Blender.

Someone saying "use" instead of "learn", to people who've never used blender, is fine. IF you've never used blender, everything in blender is hard (except maybe deleting that cube) because it's good software, with a rock solid elaborate UI that follows (and shaped) industry-conventions. This tool doesn't, it's much easier to use if you come in knowing nothing.

smoldesu• 4 years ago

Hey! As a 5-year Blender user I'm pretty hyped to give this a try and see how it competes. You talk a big game, and I'd love to test your mettle!

As-is, I can't appraise Womp3D as a Blender alternative since it requires me to create a user account. If you ever drop this requirement (or let people self-host the app) let me know and I'd be happy to compare the two and potentially even recommend it as a Blender alternative.

richrichardsson• 4 years ago

Anyone as clueless as I seeing SDF littered throughout the comments :

Signed Distance Functions

Nice explanation (with some code) : https://www.alanzucconi.com/2016/07/01/signed-distance-funct...

portlander52232• 4 years ago

Love a lower barrier to entry for 3D. “A new way to 3D” gets the point across. Just evaluating the homepage, I like the fun aesthetic a lot. However, a large proportion of the examples on the homepage have a slight horror/gross-out element to them. E.g., does the cowboy dude have to have his torso swelling and undulating? I think this comes from trying to demo the SDF model overtly, whereas some demos should just be of cool stuff you can make that doesn’t look like it’s made of gooey balls.

speedgoose• 4 years ago

I watched some timelapse and it seems to be a neat tool.

Before clicking I though it would be about these new AIs that convert text to 3D models.

Example : https://dreamfusion3d.github.io/

leiserfg• 4 years ago

Firefox user here, changed my user-agent to the chrome one and the app works fine (just a bit slow).

alpaca128• 4 years ago

This horizontally scrolling text is so damn distracting and doesn't respect the 'prefers-reduced-motion' flag in the browser.

thot_experiment• 4 years ago

I'm always super skeptical of these types of things, of course I've been into 3D graphics as a programmer and an artist for a quarter century now so I have some domain specific brain rot for sure.

That being said, I believe in conservation of complexity in these highly technical tasks. Complexity cannot be removed, only moved around. 3DCG is an incredibly deep field that necessitates 1000 button apps for good reason.

Not to say you can't get cool stuff done in a toy metaball modeller, but it's also not an alternative to blender in the exact same way that you can make glorious paintings in mspaint and it's still not a substitute for Photoshop.

Womp 3D – The New Way to 3D

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