Hello everybody, Murat (wolfmanfx) here:

Last year at CodeRabbit GmbH (my own company), we started a project called “Distributed Viewer”.

Distributed Viewer is an editor where users can upload models and edit materials in real time from any browser and instantly preview the changes not only in the browser, but also in all connected devices such as desktop PCs, Android and iOS devices at the same time.

Early in the development cycle we have realized that the current Ogre material system was too limiting and too complicated to do something like this. So after many discussions we came to the point where we decided to fund the initial development of the Ogre HLMS “High Level Material System”. More details about the HLMS can be found in this post from Matias.

With HLMS in our bag we have created PBS (Physically Based Shading) materials for the uploaded models. Our PBS shader is based on this moving-frostbite-to-pbr (the HLMS files will be released with the upcoming backport). The following image shows a screenshot from the material designer.

Distributed Viewer supports all the features HLMS does, which means:

  • One diffuse texture
  • One normal map texture
  • One roughness map.
  • Up to 4 detail diffuse maps, overlaid with Photoshop-like blending modes
  • Up to 4 detail normal maps, one for each detail diffuse with separate blending weights
  • A detail blending weight map, for fine control of how detail maps are blended together
  • One cube map for reflections


For the following platforms we currently provide native viewers:

  • Android
  • iOS
  • Windows

We have also planned to add Linux and OSX support. Furthermore we support WebGL. I have prepared a few online samples here using the online viewer.

The great thing is that, once we released it to the public (probably end of Q2/2015), we can push notifications to every platform who is currently viewing a model which is edited. That means you can change the material (appearance) within the browser and see the same model updating on the Android device without any manual refreshing.

Our plan is to release this service for free with no strings attached. That means you can create teams and share your models privately and view on all devices without any hassle. Also its possible to upload models and make them available for everybody (like the screenshot below).

 

overview_models

We certainly hope you will like this new platform when we release it to the wild. In the meantime, all the paid work we have founded is released to the public (HLMS / Ogre 2.x) so you can enjoy the greatest and latest tech. Also we are currently back porting HLMS to OGRE 1.10 and aim to release it probably end of this month.

More to come, so stay tuned.