[HN Gopher] PlayCanvas Launches Node-Based Animation Editor for ...
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       PlayCanvas Launches Node-Based Animation Editor for WebGL
        
       Author : ovenchips
       Score  : 106 points
       Date   : 2021-05-05 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.playcanvas.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.playcanvas.com)
        
       | triptych wrote:
       | PlayCanvas is an amazing engine that is totally underrated.
        
         | juskrey wrote:
         | Probably for a reason of having web editor. I tried to like it,
         | but doing Unity or Unreal editor like things in a browser is
         | just exhausting.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Indeed, one of the best development experience for Web first
         | development.
        
         | chrisco255 wrote:
         | Is it only useful for something like a video game?
        
           | ovenchips wrote:
           | No, it's used for AR/VR, playable ads, 3D configurators,
           | automotive, arch viz and more. See:
           | 
           | https://github.com/playcanvas/awesome-playcanvas#awesome-
           | pla...
        
         | piotrkaminski wrote:
         | I really wanted to like it, but I couldn't figure out a good
         | way to use their (web-only) scene editor while keeping and
         | editing source code on my own machine...
        
           | ovenchips wrote:
           | You just need this:
           | 
           | https://github.com/playcanvas/playcanvas-sync
        
       | dvh wrote:
       | I've recently tested 20 different webgl libraries. I was looking
       | for anything with hierarchical scenes that performance-wise would
       | be as fast as hand tuned vanilla webgl. Only play canvas came
       | close but it has one annoying feature. There is IDE with the same
       | name (from the same company) and every time I searched how to do
       | X in playcanvas, first 10 items in search were always for ide
       | (e.g. go to menu x, choose y, move slider to z), not library (use
       | function fooBar(x,y,z)). This made development extremely annoying
       | so I abandoned it and went vanilla webgl.
       | 
       | They should rename library to something else (libcanvas or
       | something).
       | 
       | Imagine you are deep in the "zone", solving difficult problem,
       | you write search query while still desperately trying to stay in
       | the zone and every time you press enter Google stabs you in the
       | back. It was hell.
        
         | ovenchips wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback! Good to hear that you experienced good
         | performance from PlayCanvas in your tests. The majority of
         | PlayCanvas users to opt for the Editor rather than using the
         | Engine standalone, so yeah, the developer resources are biased
         | a bit in that direction. But we are working hard to rebalance
         | things towards the engine. For example, we're about to release
         | a new engine-only examples browser app that's really cool. Key
         | an eye out for it. :)
        
           | adenozine wrote:
           | This seems really tone-deaf to me, to sorta market a mostly
           | unrelated feature that's upcoming when a developer just
           | decided against using your product for practical reasons.
           | 
           | I suppose it's nice to know that you've at least acknowledged
           | that there's an issue, but it seems weird to take so lightly
           | someone using your product, finding it so difficult to deal
           | with that they dropped it, and then even dropping an emoticon
           | at the end.
           | 
           | Just my two cents.
        
             | ovenchips wrote:
             | No problem! Thanks for your feedback too. The examples
             | browser is really designed to be a vehicle to learn and
             | experiment with the engine run-time. It should be a great
             | resource for engine-only developers - so hopefully the dvh
             | will find it interesting. We've done a ton of work on the
             | API reference recently too
             | (https://developer.playcanvas.com/en/api/). It's a huge
             | task, but yeah, we're working night and day to make the
             | runtime easier to work with.
        
       | andybak wrote:
       | This seems to be mostly about character animation.
       | 
       | I wish people would prefix "character" on the word animation when
       | this is the case. I've noticed "procedural animation" almost
       | entirely means "procedural character animation". As someone who's
       | interested in animation but not particularly interested in
       | character animation it makes searching and browsing for stuff
       | slightly annoying.
        
         | FractalHQ wrote:
         | I was excited until I read your comment. I agree that's a very
         | important distinction.
        
         | kroltan wrote:
         | The examples are for characters, sure, but state machine +
         | blended animations can be used for all sorts of things.
         | 
         | I do agree on the jade regarding the shorthand for character
         | animation. Especially when seeing so many (mostly indie but
         | might just be exposure bias on my part) games ignoring
         | environmental, UI, and camera animation even when they have
         | good animation on their characters.
        
       | rchaud wrote:
       | Is this designed for games only?
       | 
       | If I wanted to create an interactive-type web experience like
       | Adult Swim's Singles series (made with WebGL), could I do that
       | with this tool?
       | 
       | https://www.adultswim.com/music/singles-2018/3) - initial load
       | takes some time unfortunately
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-05 23:00 UTC)