Quality BabylonJs Demos

[amarneethi]

Hi All,

I'm a fan of opensource technologies and softwares. I have been using BabylonJs for 3-4 weeks now and it's an awesome framework and nothing short of any other webgl frameworks out there. I have just released the alpha version of my site, it's not much but it is something. You can take a look at the attached screenshots from the site below.

I'm a Designer, Art Director and Creative Director from India, I also do a little bit of programming. I always wanted to give back to the open source community (after having enjoyed open source softwares for over 5-6 years : ) ), but I'm limited by my programming knowledge. I can contribute in terms of creating demos for BabylonJs but I will still be limited by my development experience, I will need someone who is good at programming to create quality demos which we can add to BabylonJs's showcase and make it more desirable than other frameworks like "threejs".

As far as my experience goes, any new potential user of Webgl will start looking for frameworks as Babylon and threejs. Even though threejs is old (no offense) and not as fast as babylon most of them if not all will end up choosing threejs over BabylonJs because the kinda demos they have at threejs site is kickass and highly polished. When I look at the demos in BabylonJs's site in comparison with the demo's at threejs the quality of BabylonJs demos are far far less polished (no offense again). This doesn't mean that there are no quality demos in the site, there are great demos like The Dino Hunt, Sponza, SPS. But we are easily outnumbered by more than a 50 demos at "threejs". I think the first step to fix anything is to acknowledge that there is a problem and I think we do need at least a dozen quality demos to showcase at the home page of BabylonJs, the rest will follow as the users favour Babylon over other frameworks looking at the demos we create. But I can't do this without help from a good developer who is willing to contribute in their free time just like our friends developing BabylonJs, it's a great way to return the favor. What do you get in-return? You will have a set of polished demos to add to your portfolio and also I'm sure this will be a tremendous opportunity to learn from each other.

You can take a look at my works in the links below if you would like to know more about me and my work.
Portfolio: http://retrocurator.com
Dribbble: http://dribbble.com/amarneethi

And it definitely is gonna take time to create those dozen demos, atleast 8-10 months or so if it is only a 2-3 of us are going to work on it. We can take simple ideas which can be done in like 4-5  weeks of time and launch them.

@Deltakosh : Let me know what you think, I will most definitely need your help in getting help from developers to get these demos done. If you are already working on any demos already, I can contribute in terms of modeling and user interface design for the demos.

Cheers Guys

[jerome]

2000% agree !

[NasimiAsl]

nice work

[GameMonetize]

I'm completely with you!!!

How do you want to proceed?

[amarneethi]

Awesome! We can start by identifying people who are willing to contribute and what kinda contribution they can make. Like I can contribute on the demo's user interface design, 3D modelling and texturing. We will need a couple of guys who has experience developing using BabylonJs, someone who can write production ready code unlike me.  

From there we can start by brainstorming the idea for our first demo. I dunno how you guys collaborate for BabylonJs development, I have heard about things like IRC, mailing list and so on. Ideally I would like to keep the development of demos in a closed environment until we have something to showcase to the public, just to stay focused. Once the demo is done, we can release both the demo and source to the public so they can learn from the source code and adapt.

we can think of simple to execute ideas but still has a lot of scope for interesting visuals like this one rather than elloborate sets and models.

http://www.species-in-pieces.com

and this

https://youtube10.withgoogle.com

let me know if this works!

cheers!!!

[GameMonetize]

Ok first let's identify motivated people!

I can certainly help a bit mostly regarding the engine

 

Who's else??

[amarneethi]

@Temechon I have seen your game demos and they are really nice, we can certainly use your expertise here. Let us know if you can contribute to this : )

[jerome]

I could be in :-)

[Temechon]

Thank you  

I'm in!

[amarneethi]

Awesome! we can get started, we need a place to whisper and brainstorm the ideas privately.

I created a gitter chat room to discuss the ideas and a github repository to code.

@jerome I'm not sure if you are on github, you can join the discussion in the following link. Please sign-up if you are not on git-hub so I can add you as a collaborator in the respository.

@Temechon I have added you as a collaborator in the github repository, I'm new to github but I think I can pick it up quickly enough.

https://gitter.im/amarneethi/babylonJsDemos?utm_source=share-link&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=share-link

Cheers and let's rock on!

[JohnK]

Brilliant idea and would like to make a small contribution. My skill set is not up to joining the team but would like to contribute an idea for a demo. Since @amarneethi sees it best to whisper and brainstorm the ideas privately ( and it is his concept) presumably to add to the surprise when done I will message it to the team.

[Flomotion]

My background is motion graphics and general creativity. So for animated things and modeling I could help out.

My old showreel and a website example.

 

[GameMonetize]

Lovely! Let's create our first community demo!

[Wingnut]

Or, we could all work on the docs.   Longshoremen needed!  (oh, that's the other kind of docks, sorry).

I hate to be a stick in the mud, but these things rarely work.  Time problems, scheduling problems, differences in goals, differences in "good enough" vs "this isn't working right yet".  Everyone could hate each other at the possibly-never-ending end of this.

I love the enthusiasm, I really do.  But it might be time to pinch ourselves and ponder "get real". 

Now, how about those docs?  How about a book... Everything You Ever Ever Ever Wanted To Know About The Scene Object".  Or about mesh.  Or about cameras.  Or about lights.  Or about the physics engines.  We need long-term dedicated custodians of these docs, too, because they are ever-changing.

That doesn't sound like as much fun as the original idea, eh?  *nod*.  Sorry, but we got priorities that need attending-to, in my opinion.  Can we garner similar enthusiasm towards those?

With love...
Threadkiller
 

[amarneethi]

Hey Wingman, you are probably right!!!! But why kill something without giving it a try, if it doesn't work it doesn't work there are no hard / bad feelings  . I also considered the possibility of it being never ending and that's why wanted the demos to be super simple to execute. And being a project manager myself over 2 years, when you follow the process and identify the requirements and scope of it and plan for all the activities in advance it should be a cake walk mostly. But still there are all the possibilities to fail, but again we don't wanna stop because we "think" it might fail do we  ?

[Wingnut]

Yep, well said.

1 hour ago, amarneethi said:

when you follow the process and identify the requirements and scope of it and plan for all the activities in advance

Yes, this will eliminate quite a bit of potential head-butting.  But everyone MIGHT have a different opinion about "process", "requirements", "scope", and "plan".  We're talking decisionS by committee, which is one of the slowest, taxing, fairness-needing, emotion-causing, meticulous, frustrating things... that mankind ever invented.    Do you LIKE pain?  heh.

But actually, we do collaborative stuff in the playground, quite often.  We never really have a project lead.  Much of the fun... is the freedom to free-fly.  If participants "have-to" follow too many guidelines, or if the project doesn't allow forks when someone disagrees with the direction, then it creates friction and ship jumpings.  The primary team will "faction" into warring tribes, and the loss of life could be tremendous!   Ok, maybe not.

If you did project management, you know all about this stuff.  Project managers usually get beat-up in the parking lot, day-one of the project. 

Assignments.  There's a rough one.  Resent-promoting... one person doing more work than another.  Erf.  I'll go buy bandages and Bactine right now.

Go for it.  I'll watch and giggle... and attempt comedy along the way.  Let me have the "emotions cop" slot.  If someone gets whiny and frustrated, I'll tell them stupid jokes until they laugh milk out of their nose.

"If it doesn't work, there are no hard / bad feelings?"  Or... there is massive suffering, long-term resentments, scars, brain damage, and Dutch Elm Disease.

[amarneethi]

Hey Wingman! Conflicts and friction are bound to happen when you are in a group. I think we all can handle it like mature adults.. And you are more than welcome to be in any role in the group as you are one of the first people to start a conversation with me in this forum..!! I will add you to the private chat... Cheers buddy!!!!!!

[Wingnut]

Private chat?  I thought it was going to be a public community project.  I already have issues with the process, scope, and plan.  Did I miss a planning vote?  Is there a out-of-the-public-eye steering committee?  Somebody is calling shots already.  Are there already empowerment-starved control freaks involved somewhere?  I'm jumping ship.  (hooray, eh?)

What a jerk I am, huh?    Nah, I don't want to be involved, and I'll quit party-poopin', too, now.  I got docs to write, new systems/features to test, and forum duties to perform.  Thanks for the offer and kindness, though.  Good luck.

Any chance that the project will be "The Ultimate Super-Hand-Holding Shaders Workshop"?  Physics workshop?  Animation workshop?  Tiled Ground SubMesh and SubMaterials workshop?  Importing workshop?  An inputDevice/Controller patch panel that allows users to easily re-route, branch, and cascade controller values?  An easier way to activate keypresses, with automatic eventListener onDisposing?  ANYTHING that teaches?  That would be great.  Thanks for taking those things into consideration.  Those are things that I THINK we really really need.

[adam]

It would be nice if the demos that are created can all have a link to the playground where users can easily view and experiment with the code.

[Pryme8]

I would be interested in hearing more about if this idea is developing into anything?

[RaananW]

And I wonder - why is this tagged with "threejs" ?

[jerome]

"The Name That Can't Be Pronounced Here"

[Eric McG]

Hi,

Honestly, speaking from experience, last fall I had to choose a 3D graphics framework to teach my college students.  I visited both three.js' and babylon.js' web sites over and over again.  I noticed the three.js demos and noticed all of the books on three.js.  But despite this, the capabilities of babylon.js led me to choose babylon.js.

With that said, continual improvement of a website is wise, and I applaud amarneethi for his generosity and believe it is a worthy endeavor!

But I also have to sympathize with Wingnut.  As I am teaching the course, I have found that the documentation is lacking.  My students and I are learning how to use the framework by reading the tutorials - which are awesome by the way!  But when we have questions, we have scant documentation to work with.  Most of the class properties and functions do not have descriptions - and many are not discussed in the tutorials.  Is there a plan in place to address the documentation?

My best regards!

[Temechon]

<selfishpromotion> You also have a wonderful book explaining all you have to know to start Babylon.js : http://learningbabylonjs.com/ 

 

[qqdarren]

Just a couple of thoughts on this:

1. Don't be afraid to copy three.js demos!! If someone is 80% decided on library A, but then see a demo in library B that is really cool, their most important question is "How/Can I do this in library A?". Resist the temptation to make your version "better" by adding a nicer texture or particles in the background; make that another demo, that you link to. There are lots of rumours flying around that Three.JS is quicker/lighter or that Babylon.JS is quicker/lighter: being able to side-by-side compare them on the same demo makes it easy to see the truth. (Which will typically be that the performance is the same ;-)

2. Commented/annotated source code. It is very frustrating to see a demo that kind of does what you want to do, but then no idea how to go and modify it. Three.js is particularly bad on this, compounded by their disregard for backwards-compatibility (so when you finally track down a r69 tutorial you can find it doesn't work with r73, etc.)