Create Your 3D Virtual World for Free

by on 9 August, 2008 - 12:24

by: Rick van der Wal

Pelican Crossing announced their basic version of the web-based virtual world development platform Blink3D is now available for free as of yesterday.

Much like the Quest3D and OGRE platforms it allows you to build a virtual world through a ‘game editor’ interface. These 3D environments can reach almost gaming standards graphic levels, use real time shadows and can be visited through the browser (using a 6MB plug-in).

“We are not talking here about simply customizing a pre-built 3D apartment. With Blink 3D you can create your own virtual world, whatever type you want, quickly, easily and for free.“

One interesting bit of information I wasn’t aware of yet in the press release was the following claim: ‘Pelican Crossing has already demonstrated an alpha version of inDuality and the ability to teleport between different virtual worlds, including Blink 3D, Second Life, X3D and the Flash® based Club Penguin®‘. Though this means as much as ‘having these virtual worlds run inside a browser client through the inDuality Plugin’ and not actual avatar interoperability between worlds. However, the list goes on with other promising interoperability features:

1. The inDuality client allows virtual worlds from different vendors to be embedded in a Web page. The initial release of inDuality supports Blink 3D virtual worlds, subsequent releases will add support for other virtual worlds, such as Second Life®.
2. The digital content creation pipeline has been improved with automatic asset importing and synchronization. Assets can be created with: SketchUp, Blender, 3ds Max, Maya, XSI, AC3D, DeleD and MilkShape.
3. Over forty new and enhanced Behaviors including Google Analytics, physics joints and forces.

The video tutorials give a good overview of the actual application, creation and publishing of Blink3D environments. The new release is available in three editions and price points: Blink 3D Standard edition $399, Blink 3D Lite edition $199 and Blink 3D Ultra Lite edition which is free.

Original Post: http://digado.nl/create-your-3d-virtual-world-for-free.html