The term “3D Modeling” refers to two different things, depending on whether you are speaking to a Design Engineer (Mechanical Engineer, Product Designer), or a 3D Artist (3D Animator, Digital Content Creator, 3D Game designer). These two types of 3D Models saw little overlap 10 years ago, but today, engineering designs are often used in marketing materials, advertising, training, documentation and serious gaming. The problem is converting the engineering designs into a format that is useful for 3D Artists. This video illustrates the differences in 3D models for Engineers and Artists, and includes an explanation of how 3dvia hosting eliminates this issue issue with an automatic COLLADA (.dae) conversion so that engineering designs can be reused for sales, marketing, and training materials.

To get started with your 3DVIA hosting account, click here.

3DVIA is also running a promotion: anyone who signs up for a premium 3DVIA Hosting Account by September 15th, 2011 will have his/her online storage doubled for 12 months! Here are the details.

In recent months, Team 3DVIA has received numerous success stories from Google SketchUp users who have made our 3DVIA Mobile product a vital part of their workflow process. 3DVIA Mobile allows users with an iPad and/or iPhone to easily display their work in a stunning and interactive 3D viewer. This engaging viewer presents work as it was meant to be seen, often reducing the need for costly physical prototypes and renderings.

This video demonstrates the simple process of creating a 3DVIA Hosting account, uploading your 3D assets to 3DVIA.com and displaying them on your iPad with 3DVIA Mobile HD.

After you’ve watched the video, download the 3DVIA Mobile App and see your Google SketchUp models come to life today!

If you are looking to share your Google SketchUp designs in a virtual environment, which you can share and walk through with others, 3DVIA Scenes is the quickest way to accomplish this…and its FREE! In this video, Cliff walks you through the process for uploading and sharing your SketchUp designs online, and in 3D with 3DVIA Scenes.

Try 3DVIA Scenes for Google Sketchup Free Here:
http://bit.ly/kShyU6

If you have seen a modern movie in 3D, you know how cool stereoscopic 3D is, and that stereoscopic 3D sells in the box office.  Cool is one thing, but, “can we use stereoscopic 3D to promote products?”  Answer:  Yes.

Recently, we announced simple drag-and-drop Stereoscopic 3D for apps built with 3DVIA Studio, which can be played online.  And you may be thinking, “neat!…But what can I do with it?”

Here is a perfect example.  Dassault Systemes partnered with Nestle to create a game for breakfast cereal consumers.  You may have seen this announced in this 3D Perspectives article, but I had to try it out for myself.  I wanted to see this in action.

What’s so compelling about this game is:

• No game player console is required.  You don’t even need a keyboard or mouse to play.
• Anyone can play online with just:  3d glasses, a webcam, and a simple 3D plugin.

And to think, when I was little I was excited about a silly plastic toy in my cereal box…A stereoscopic 3D game would have been much better!

A few of us from 3DVIA had a great opportunity to team up with Jeremy and the entire Let’s Go Design team at SolidWorks, on their Ultimate CAD Chair project. We were very impressed at the amount of work that was involved in not only building this custom chair, but documenting the progress, taping the video, and coordination with vendors.

This video is a bit of “behind the scenes” footage of the creation of Episode #5 of the Ultimate CAD Chair.

Jeremy asked us to help out with building “easy to understand” assembly instructions with 3DVIA Composer, to assist in communicating the design intent of how all the pieces of the Ultimate CAD Chair went together. We also put together a virtual scene, where you can walk around the Ultimate CAD Chair yourself. This was easily built by just uploading SolidWorks CAD files to 3dvia.com, then drag-and-dropping them into the scene. Check it out here:  http://www.3dvia.com/scenes/4243AC784A5C6E40/ultimate-cad-chair

Stay tuned, as we are also building a realistic Let’s Go Design Studio room, so everyone can see Jeremy’s great work area at the SolidWorks office.

3DVIA Mobile for the iPhone, just got better, or LARGER.  As awesome as viewing any 3D model uploaded to 3dvia.com was on your iPhone was, it’s now much better.  The combination of 3dvia.com and the touch-screen technology for the iPad make it the easiest 3D model viewer…EVER!

Watch this short video to see the iPad app in Action:

What makes this app so compelling is that you can upload any CAD part, creative model, or quick 3D concept to 3dvia.com for free, then view the model in 3D on your iPad.  A great tool for showing off your work!

This is the Best CAD or 3D Model viewer for communicating in 3D!

For more details, go to the 3DVIA Mobile page here.

To download now from iTunes, click to go here.

“3D Modelers” usually fall into three major groups:

• 3D Design Engineers (CAD design)
• 3D Artists/Animators (Digital Content Creators – DCC)
• Architects/Interior Designers

However, all three groups of “3D Modelers” use very different software tools, and rarely do you see much overlap, as 3D software is built specifically by industry.

HOWEVER…when it comes time to communicating these designs, that’s when we can see these groups collide.

Typically we see the second group (3D Artists/Animators/Game designers) using Gaming technology to create, well…games.  But 3DVIA Studio is an excellent tool for anyone who needs to:

1. Communicate their design intent online
2. Produce realistic visualizations
3. Give customers a lifelike, interactive (game-like) experiences
4. Realistic online 3D training

And now it’s easier than you think to create these interactive apps.  So what can you create with your 3D (CAD) Data, and gaming technology?

…watch this video, then  tell me, what YOU can create!

Last week, 3DVIA announced that you can now create personalized Avatars on 3dvia.com, and use them in your 3DVIA Scenes.  See the announcement here.

We partnered with Evolver to bring our users this functionality, for FREE!

However, there has been one problem, we have created an AVATAR INVASION!  Traffic to 3DVIA Scenes has risen, and all sorts of mischief has been happening within your Scenes.  Everyone has been turning into Avatars, and we can’t stop it!!!

Seriously, the project has gone well, and 3DVIA, once again has offered our users new 3D functionality, for free.

So, login today, and start creating your Avatars.

Be sure to visitt the Dance Party Scene, which contains the dance floor used in the video.  The Dance floor functionality was created using 3DVIA Studio.

If you want to add the “I look better in 3D” shirt to your avatar, download the shirt here.

I recently traveled to New York City, and was reminded of the great architecture in the city.  A clash of modern and traditional architecture on every corner.  As you are probably aware, can take a virtual tour of New York using Google Earth, or Bing Maps online, however, if you wanted to take an online tour of buildings, interiors, and take a closer look at buildings, Google and Bing Maps do not provide an answer.

I had a recent email conversation with an architect, who was interested in doing just this.  She had created a Sketchup 3D model, and wanted to be able to walk through the model, and show her customers.  I told her that you can not only walk-through the Google SketchUp 3D model, but you can do this all online, in a virtual environment, and it’s FREE!

This video shows you the few steps it takes to take your Google Sketchup (or other common 3D Architecture models) and create a virtual world (or room) using 3DVIA Scenes, with these five easy steps:

1. Upload your Sketchup Model to 3dvia.com (.kmz or .dae format)
2. Send uploaded design to a scene (click the “SEND TO” button on the 3D model view page)
3. Adjust the scale of the model within Scenes
4. (Optional) Add other 3D models (i.e. plants, furniture, people
5. Walk through your design online…AND share with others via email, or embed the scene within your own site like a YouTube Video

It’s really that simple.

Click Here to Try 3DVIA Scenes Now

Try it today, and be sure to let us know of your uploaded Sketchup designs by posting a comment on this page.

Last week Adobe promoted our 3DVIA plugin for Photoshop video on the 550,000+ strong Photoshop Fan page.  New functionality within Adobe Photoshop CS4 and CS5 allows Photoshop Extended users the ability to create a virtual photo shoot, and this is easier with the direct download from 3dvia.com.

That video, shown here, shows how simple it is to create a great looking poster within minutes using the 3DVIA plugin and Photoshop CS5 Extended.  Most of this can also be done within CS4 as well.

Also, The Plugin now exists for Mac users as well.

• To download the plugin today, go here: www.3dvia.com/photoshop.
• To see the video on the Photoshop Facebook Page, click here
• To be a fan of 3DVIA on Facebook, click here.