

Show HN: Clara.io, next-gen web-based 3D creation tool. - bhouston
http://exocortex.com/blog/introducing_claraio

======
xutopia
This reminds me of Lagoa ([http://home.lagoa.com/](http://home.lagoa.com/)).
How odd that two companies are doing almost the same thing in two cities that
are so close to one another.

~~~
bhouston
It is a small world in the end high 3d space. I have collaborated in the past
with the founder of Lagoa. But the main thing to remember is that Max, Maya
and Softimage are all developed in Toronto and Montreal. Thus there is already
an ecosystem around 3D tools here.

There is a difference of approach between Lagoa and Clara.io the main one is
the Lagoa is mostly a renderer where as Clara.io is a more general tool, more
ambitious in terms of functionality.

------
treelovinhippie
Looks awesome, is this useful for 3D printing? I noticed it supports STL. I'm
actually hosting a largish (100-150 person) hackathon in Wollongong (hour
south of Sydney) next weekend: [http://hackagong.com](http://hackagong.com)

We're including a 3D printing competition as part of it and will have 8
printers over the weekend for competitors. Would love to somehow get a beta
access hookup for competitors. Surely beats FreeCAD or TinkerCAD

~~~
bryanlarsen
Clara.io is an digital content creation tool focused on animation & rendering,
like Maya, 3DSMax, SoftImage or Blender. It makes no guarantee of solidity or
that its exports are watertight. That's certainly something that could be done
in a post-process step, but Clara.io does not yet support it.

------
stephanos2k
I'm very interested to learn which technologies helped to created the product!
Angular, jQuery, Ember, CoffeeScript?

~~~
bhouston
Highly customized backbone variant (faster + increased flexibility) +
javascript + coffeescript + WebGL + jQuery + ThreeJS + underscore + well a
lot. JavaScript dependencies alone (excluding anything ThreeJS or our own
code) are 500KB minified. :-)

We love ThreeJS. For example, I am third in total commits to ThreeJS:
[https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/contributors](https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/contributors)

------
willvarfar
Very nice, like what I see and like that you show us :)

How is the business side working?

And how do you build a critical mass of users?

I have lots of ideas for you, but probably a distraction. I've always thought
that binary asset mgmt is an unsolved problem and that whilst working with
exclusive locks etc is engrained, diffing and deltas isn't as mad as it
sounds, for example. Also, most exports are very poorly optimised; tight
exports could be a big plus. And so on.

~~~
bhouston
Send me an email, ben@exocortex.com, I'd love to hear your ideas. Be sure to
sign up for the beta as well.

------
bhouston
Just a quick note that I am attending the Start Up Festival in Montreal today
so my answers to specific questions won't be immediate. (SMS me at
613-762-4113 if you want to meet up at this festival.)

------
ph0rque
How close is this to a full-blown 3D CAD program (i.e. Solidworks)?

~~~
bhouston
It is more art oriented than solid modelling. Thus it is best for video game
art, rendering animations, etc. But it can do modelling to a degree but we do
not make solidity guarantees at this point.

