
Vim3D – A new 3D vi clone [video] - bkudria
http://www.vim3d.com/
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overgard
The tagline should be:

Vim3d: Because 3d modeling software wasn't already hard enough to use.

Honestly if you want something in the spirit of vim for editing models,
Blender already has a very confusing-but-efficient interface. (IE, pretty much
everything is done via keyboard shortcuts that are optimized for using your
left hand so you can keep your right hand on the mouse).

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angersock
[http://www.wings3d.com/](http://www.wings3d.com/)

Super simple interface, and it's even written in Erlang.

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thangalin
Not really comparable to Blender: Wings3D cannot animate. Part of Blender's
draw (pardon the pun) is its physics engine and animation suite. I cannot say
for certain, but I suspect Blender's Cycles Rendering Engine is vastly
superior to Wings' renderer.

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angersock
Wings has a barely functional GL renderer.

However, for making static meshes quickly, and for doing UV mapping without
wanting to stab yourself in the face, you can't beat it.

Blender:GIMP::Wings::Paint.NET

It doesn't do everything, but what it does do it is great at. Blender is just
too baroque--much like the GIMP.

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pyramation
Super stoked to see this on here (very surprised).

The main idea is to have scripting language and/or scripting interface hybrid
with graphical modeling, animation, and even raytracing. Parameters can even
be controlled by other parameters or channels making this super extensible,
for example, controlling color or position of objects with the envelope of a
music file. Objects are infinitely composable with groups, much like
illustrator or photoshop, allowing you to do interesting transformations as
well.

It's really useful because it becomes a sort of assembly language for working
with files, textures, etc., and saving them as a scene file which aggregates
all of this.

There is more information here: [http://www.vim3d.com/](http://www.vim3d.com/)

Any feedback, thoughts, ideas appreciated. Thanks!

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momerath
I've been thinking about building a 3d livecoding environment centered around
emacs, so this very cool to see!

PS. To build the current source on linux, you have to fix the comment in the
Makefile that starts with '//' and lowercase the 'Primitives' directory.

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agumonkey
Could you share your ideas ? I'm thinking about 2d/3d 'modeling' on a keyboard
centric user interface too; except for the part where analog input is the only
sane way (even though I had some ideas about how to try this keyboard-only
too).

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spion
Really cool, but reading the title I was hoping that someone hacked up a
(console based) vim clone that allows you to have multiple popup/floating
windows (that aren't "buffers")...

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gcb1
100% of this is already common place. i doubt any Maya pilot even has the tool
bar on the screen.

im not even a frequent user and i only move stuff around with hjkl and qwe.
not to mention the backtick (or space bar?) to open up the one liner prompt to
revolve, extrude, etc...

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agumonkey
Reminds me that Maya is a headless MVC `server` program that can be fed .mel
statements. And now I wonder if there's an Emacs mode for .mel/maya.

</smiles>

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qbrass
;;; Rule34.el -- "If it exists, there's an Emacs mode for it. If there isn't,
someone will make one."

[http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/etom.el](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-
en/etom.el)

~~~
Cogito
[http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/Rule34.el](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-
en/Rule34.el)

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Aqueous
To me vim means 'text editor.' This is a really awesome command-driven 3d
Modeller. It's great but is it really a vim clone?

It offers a big improvement over the GUI of 3d modellers. 3d modellers
interfaces are way, way, way, too complex because they are trying to stuff
wayyyyy too many parameters into standard UI controls (i've used mostly
blender, but way back in the days of 3d studio, infini-d, and ray dream the
interfaces were also very complex, to the point of having a very steep
learning curve). It makes more sense and is much more expressive to interact
with the modeller via commands

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pyramation
You are right about the vim clone being the wrong description. That was a
mistake on my part. A vim-like command interface to creating 3D scenes is more
appropriate.

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fijter
If you like the concept of scripted 3D modelling check out OpenSCAD. Instead
of entering commands you create a script that build your model for you,
including the option to use variables, loops and conditions to adapt your
model to certain parameters. I use this for creating customisable 3D printable
models and it works great if you know the basics.

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Crito
The concept of OpenSCAD is great, but I think it is in need of some
modernization. The last time I modeled something with it I discovered how
inconvenient it is to do things like create threaded bolts/nuts... it may just
be my inexperience with it, but there don't seem to be straightforward ways of
creating basic shapes like helixes.

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dirkk0
I think so, too. I was just browsing and came along this:
[http://www.pythonocc.org/](http://www.pythonocc.org/)

But it would be great to have a concept where you create a model of a table by
creating a cylinder, copy and translate it three times, add a flat cube,
connect these 5 pieces, and name them table. Then you would have another
(non-)primitive that you can instanciate and maybe have some parameters to
change it.

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StavrosK
Isn't that what SketchUp does?

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dirkk0
Which is cool, and that's why I like SketchUp. But AFAIK you can't switch to
'text' mode in SketchUp where you can edit the history and rebuild the scene.

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nyir
Given that e.g. Blender has modal editing and single key operations ('s' to
enter scale mode, then 'x' to scale along that axis) I imagine more commands
along the path of Vim/Ex would be beneficial for fast mouseless input. And of
course macros and such.

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perlpimp
yeah my first thought this was was a reconfigured blender3d

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JabavuAdams
This is kind of neat.

Here's what I'd like to see: libvim. Vim has already been ported to iOS, so
it's obviously embeddable. I'd like to have an instance of vim running inside
my program, and to be able to scrape the tty/screen.

That way, if I want to make a fancy Oculus VR editor, or any other IDE
experiment, I don't need to re-code basic editor functionality. Yes, I know
about Scintilla.

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snarfy
Vim will need a lot of code rewritten to support being embedded. This is a
problem that has been worked on by many, and all have pretty much failed.

[http://www.freehackers.org/VimIntegration](http://www.freehackers.org/VimIntegration)

The best we have is vim as separate process in a client/server type
environment, using sockets or some other non-ideal mechanism.

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jmickey
I find it hard to see who this tool is for? 3d artists seem to prefer more
graphical ways of interaction as opposed to scripting/entering commands.

Perhaps developers/statisticians/scientists looking to visualise their data?

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Bradenski
I'm thinking storyboard artists for 3D animated movies would love this.

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JabavuAdams
I doubt it. Think of the difference between someone who's unfamiliar with vim,
versus an expert. I'm the former, so it ends up feeling too meta. I.e. I'm
thinking about how to enter commands to do my work, instead of just having the
work flow with no perception of tooling between me and the work.

Consider that artists have already become experts at sketching, at visual
design, etc. For them, a pen or stylus or 3d program doesn't feel like
tooling, but give them an unfamiliar tool and it will totally get in the way
of creative expression.

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dasil003
On the other hand, even designers who are adamantly non-technical and refuse
to get into any code ala HTML/CSS often still learn keyboard shortcuts very
deeply in programs like Photoshop / Illustrator / InDesign.

The question to me is whether Vim3D is actually bringing significant
improvement over whatever shortcuts exist in current 3d modeling software.

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gnarbarian
"use j and k to select between objects in a scene" reminds me of this:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA)

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pyramation
In case anyone is interested, I just put the project on github:
[https://github.com/pyramation/vim3d](https://github.com/pyramation/vim3d)

It was originally in svn on google code since I wrote the code 3 years ago :)

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kbenson
Very cool. I'm not sure I would call vim a "bare bones" text editor though.

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gnarbarian
It is compared to emacs.

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gcb1
so are most OSes...

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arsemouflon
Site has been successfully Hacker News'd.

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wololo_
A 3$/month server can serve hacker news traffic fine (~100 realtime visitors).
They usually sell with unlimited bandwidth..

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orf
more like ~250 online visitors at any one time from what I have seen

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oelmekki
It probably depends on timezone. Friends posting here told me it's no use to
post anything when US are asleep.

(edit : and btw, I've noted myself it's no use to post comments when I wake up
from France, since it's already old news for US and they are asleep as well ;)
)

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john2x
I think Wings3D[1] is a better fit for 3d editor with Vim-like semantics, with
a much more intuitive UI/UX for 3d modeling.

[1] [http://wings3d.com](http://wings3d.com)

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srahul07
I do find this one a cool way to show usage analysis of system, such as
commands like top, free, mtop, etc. which are currently giving reports in
terms of numbers.

~~~
ilaksh
That sounds awesome. Can you post some example scripts? It outputs pngs or
just loads up vim3d reading commands from stdin or something?

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chromanoid
For additional I/O
[http://assimp.sourceforge.net/](http://assimp.sourceforge.net/) is a nice
option.

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pyramation
I added the .obj limitation as an issue,
[https://github.com/pyramation/vim3d/issues/2](https://github.com/pyramation/vim3d/issues/2)

Thanks!

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wiresurfer
Even though I am amazed by this, I am still not sure how usable this would be.
don't get me wrong, its probably my lack of experience with 3d modeling in
general. But good to see a somewhat off the track use case for vim

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samograd
[https://plus.google.com/107658132793132845562/posts/ANMCqxcB...](https://plus.google.com/107658132793132845562/posts/ANMCqxcBNYj)

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pyramation
Hi, I'm the creator of vim3d. Let me know how I can help collaborate in anyway
shape or form. I just posted on your google plus page.

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erikb
The tool looks really cool. But I don't know if it is awesome enough to earn
the name of my favorite text editor.

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samograd
Not yet. Why don't you work on it?

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tambourine_man
I thought we would see perspective text editing and cube transitions for
changing buffers.

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FrankenPC
I wish there was something like this for Minecraft world building.

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banachtarski
How is this more like vim than any other 3d modeling software?

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codehero
I'd like to see it do CSG before I download it.

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johncoltrane
Instant checkout.

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thenerdfiles
A thousand times: yes!

(This makes me incredibly happy. _Now_ I can enjoy scripting models. Just
imagining Web Service API to Vim3D, or dare I say DjangoGraphviz to Vim3D.)

