Somehow the internet figured out that I’ve been curious about Blender and 3D applications that I got served an Instagram ad for Spline, a collaborative web-based app to create 3D renders.
I’m pretty skeptical about new apps because ya girl is just too tired to learn all the technology that makes us all live and work at the speed of light but this was really easy to pick up. I’d say you need some understanding of 3D planes and the language used to create in some of the OG 3D applications. School of Motion did a pretty comprehensive run-through of Spline in one of their videos:
I casually followed this 3D keyboard tutorial by Spline and made my own 3D interactive keyboard. You can use the keys on your keyboard to play with it, or click around. The caveat is that there isn’t any mobile tap programming (except for orbitting and panning). Strictly a good interactive experience for desktop, and view-only in mobile. This actually only took an hour to make.
https://my.spline.design/untitled-6cbc2a0bcd4d3a262d1f74de7733e4fe/
Naturally the big asterisk is that this could potentially be a really hefty performance issue if you don’t build the thing right. I tried building a better case for the keycaps and made way too many polygons that it just wouldn’t load (it crashed on mobile every time I opened it). I also probably didn’t efficiently build the case so there’s that.
What I’m excited about
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Easy to navigate interface
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Collaborative (I can invite people to mess around)
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“Component”-able styles
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Easy export, hosted for free
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Can import vectors and other 3D application files
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Anything can be made interactive (you can even make a video game)
Challenges
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Mobile interactivity isn’t as robust as I would hope (Mouse Downs are considered taps)
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Performance can be really bad if you don’t build your stuff efficiently (more polygons == slower performance)
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Still some bugs when exporting
All in all, I’m really excited about where this product goes, I think there’s a lot of potential to democratize 3D, making it more accessible and easy to prototype for interactivity. Literally Figma for 3D. For now, I’ll likely shelf this and move towards more Blender stuff since that’s more industry standard. At least I can import it into Spline if I choose to make it interactive.