Our friends at .Net magazine recently asked us to write a feature on our Lights interactive music experience.

The article is a rather technical case study focused on WebGL and how we created the various graphic effects. You can read it online here:

Behind the scenes of ‘Lights’: the latest WebGL sensation!.

We hope you find it interesting!

A couple of weeks ago, Brighton hosted Flash on the Beach, a conference that brings together the best designers, developers and minds in the Flash, design and web community.

I had the pleasure to speak for the fourth time and present the latest work of the studio, including our helloflower app and our new WebGL project Lights.

Judging from the feedback we got, my session was well received. In particular, I love this sketchnote from James Whiteley.

I was also moved by the title sequence for the conference, created by GMUNK. A beautiful piece that marries computer controlled LED light sequencing with an emotional live-action modern dance performance.

In the same way the Flash community has matured and started to make good use of other platforms, Flash on the Beach has expanded way beyond Flash, focusing on design, code and inspiration instead of on a particular technology. The name of the conference is going to change to reflect this, but I’m sure the focus and creative energy will be maintained.

Many thanks to John Davey and his team and congrats for putting together such a great event once more. We look forward to enjoying and being inspired at next year’s edition.

Photo by Les Chatfield.

Simon Parkin kindly asked me to answer a few questions on Web 3D for Edge Online. You can read the article here and the full interview below. Hope you find it interesting.

What are the core web 3D technologies currently available for gaming on the web?

For rendering hardware accelerated 3D graphics inside the browser there are currently two technologies that have significant audience penetration and developer base.

• Unity Web Player browser plugin, created by Unity Technologies
• WebGL, implemented in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox 4 and in development releases of Safari and Opera. Created by the Khronos consortium, made up of companies such as AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Sun Microsystems.

What are the pros and cons of each?

Unity Pros

• Best 3D experience on the web, with sophisticated DirectX and OpenGL support.
• Also includes advanced physics, sound and streaming.
• Multiplatform authoring, not only targets the browser but also deploys as stand alone app for desktop (Windows and Mac) and mobile (iOS and Android).
• Powerful development environment includes 3D editor, Beast lightmapping, language support for JavaScript, C# and Boo, profiler and asset store. All together make for a very productive workflow.
• Proven track record of games for global brands like EA and Disney and indie teams.

Unity Cons

• Requires plugin install, which might limit your audience.
• Although it’s based in many Open Source projects, Unity is a proprietary, closed source technology.
• No Linux support for the Web Player.

WebGL Pros

• Browser native, WebGL doesn’t need any additional install.
• Open source, the WebGL working group has development support from all the major browser manufacturers except Microsoft.
• Accessible directly from JavaScript inside any web page.

WebGL Cons

• Based on OpenGL ES 2.0, a subset of the OpenGL also used on smart phones and tablets.
• Not supported by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
• JavaScript performance has improved considerably, but still slow for complex calculations like physics.
• Being such a new technology, it lacks professional libraries, tools and development environments.

What is Web 3D currently capable of?

With hardware accelerated graphics, the visual limits are imposed by the hardware itself and theoretically there shouldn’t be much difference inside or outside the browser. Having said this, there are certain limitations imposed by the streaming nature of web content and also a much bigger audience that increases fragmentation among many types of computers.

What does it struggle with?

Since content has to be streamed, content needs to be optimised and compressed not only for run time performance but also to minimise download times.
In the Web we also have a more general audience, with an average lower spec machine than the usual gamer audience. Content needs to cater for a wide spectrum of configurations.

Web 3D seems to be closing the gap with PC and console 3D rapidly. How is this being achieved?

For the developer there’s now hardware acceleration with direct access to the GPU, faster scripting and powerful tools. But users also have much better machines, with pretty decent GPUs and faster broadband.

What are the primary difficulties with producing 3D graphics for games on the web?

Content needs to be produced taking into account different factors mentioned before. Also, game developers need to learn how the web works and how users interact with the web and make games accessible to the average web user. On the financial side, monetization techniques are different on the Web sometimes requiring a deeper stats analysis and the ability to adjust the game accordingly.

What will the primary developments in web 3D be in the next 12-24 months?

• WebGL in Opera and Safari upcoming releases.
• WebGL in mobile browsers and web-enabled TVs.
• Flash 11, the upcoming Flash Player version code named Molehill supporting hardware accelerated 3D graphics.
• Unity deployment for Flash 11 will allow developers to use advanced tools to produce content to a wider audience.
• Google Native Client, a browser technology that allows the secure execution of native code without any additional install. Browsers that support Native Client will run Unity content on all platforms, including Linux, without installing a plugin.

In what ways do you think this will affect production of games on the web?

The generalisation of Web 3D technologies will allow developers to create better games, with richer visuals and deeper gameplay. This will attract higher budgets to build bigger and more ambitious projects.

To reach wider audiences, games will need to adapt to the Web, become accessible to the average Web user and develop alternative forms of monetization. The advertising industry will also take advantage and will create or license their own content.

Finally, 3D will be used for more than games, in areas like visualisation, education, simulation and creative apps. 3D will become a more familiar technology for users who never played games before, and in the same way it’s happening with smart phones, will create a wider and more varied game playing audience.

Can I just check: is Papervision3D now defunct? If so, could you just let me know the reason for this?

I assumed you were interested in hardware accelerated 3D, so I didn’t mention non accelerated Flash 3D like PV3D, which isn’t really suitable for games.

I moved away from Flash in late 2009, and now work with Unity and WebGL. I look forward to Flash 11 Molehill, but probably will use Unity for that too.

Once you use a professional 3D development toolset like Unity, Unreal UDK or CryEngine you can’t go back to doing everything in code any more. These engines also license technology from third parties like Autodesk Beast for the lighting, PhysX for physics and Substance for textures to create a state of the art workflow and high-end results.

Open Source 3D engines for Flash are now in a completely different league and can’t compete with professional solutions. In this league it makes little sense to develop PV3D.

We are thrilled to see our little iOS app featured in the latest issue of Computer Arts (189).

In an article titled New Experiments in Digital Design, Nick Carson explores how new technology can help turn your creative visions into reality.

He kindly asked Carlos to discuss the future of 3D technology, the potential of creative apps and the ideas behind helloflower.

We really enjoyed the first Mobile Creatives Group, meeting great people from the London mobile industry and presenting helloflower.

Alvaro Arregui put together this video where you can see a compilation of the three talks, short interviews with the speakers and get a feel of the great atmosphere during the drinks afterwards.

Many thanks to ubinow for organising the event, and to all attendees who helped make it a success. We’re already looking forward to the next one!

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking at the Thinking Digital conference at The Sage Gateshead, in Newcastle.

The location alone is worth the visit, but what impressed us most were the presentations we saw. Truly inspirational talks from some the world’s greatest minds about their respective fields and careers, ranging from data visualization to cancer research.

The vibe of the conference was really positive, everyone was there to learn and be amazed at what the future holds. We enjoyed hanging out with speakers and attendees.

Our session was well received by the audience, with helloflower driving enough attention to jump 194 places in the Entertainment category of the iPad App Store just after our talk. New Media Monthly were covering the event and posted a nice article about our app.

Special thanks to Herb Kim, Ellie Silson, Heather Peacock and everyone who made this event not only possible but a wonderful success.

Great news. HelloRacer WebGL has been awarded the FWA Site Of The Day for today, June 5th 2011.

FWA is an industry recognised award program, established in 2000, showcasing projects which use cutting edge technology, together with inspirational ideas, that lead the way for future generations.

HelloEnjoy is proud to add this award to our treasure chest, and we’re really happy to see that WebGL is getting so much traction.

Exciting times await us!

What a great time we had presenting helloflower at the London Unity User Group!

It was a fantastic opportunity to go into detail and discuss not only the technical aspects, but also our experience evolving the app based on the user feedback. We also enjoyed the usual drinks with fellow members of the group, very cool people from different backgrounds, but similar passion.

The video recording of our session has been published in the Unity blog. We wish to thank Will Goldstone for his hard work making these presentations available to the Unity community.

You can also download the slides in pdf format.

Hope you like our presentation.

I’m delighted to be speaking at the inaugural Mobile Creatives meetup alongside Dylan Banarse and Dan Beasley.

The event will be held at The Albert and Pearl in North London next Wednesday, June 8th 2011 and I will be presenting our helloflower app.

Look forward to see you there!

I’m delighted to be speaking at the Thinking Digital 2011 conference to be held on May 24-26 at The Sage Gateshead in North East England.

Bringing together innovative ideas, technologies and people, Thinking Digital is focused around digital media, science, art and music. The conference features two days of talks grouped in sessions with themes as diverse as The Future of Media, Mind over Matter and From Data to Wisdom.

My presentation is included in the The Medium is The Message session and will focus on my interactive 3D work using different technologies.

The conference kicks off with Thinking Digital University, a day of inspirational workshops before the main event. Being great fans of his work, we are thrilled to be attending Jer Thorp’s Introduction to Processing workshop.

It’s going to be an amazing event. Hope to see you there.

Photo by Phil Brown.