Clara.IO is an online 3D DCC tool. It runs in your browser with webGL and enables you to create 3D content, collaborate, render, animate and share online. It’s rapidly developing and features are being added regularly.
Clara.IO’s vision is to be a full replacement for desktop based solutions, such as 3ds Max. Since I’m a 3ds Max user and scripter, that’s not a comforting thought. Although I figure I still got a few good years ahead of me, I started on a Clara.IO connection script for 3ds Max anyway.
Basic uploading and downloading
Version history
- 2014-04-04: new version 1.18: better renderer detection, material names fixed
- 2014-03-21: new version 1.16: added support for vrmats. Check this article
- 2014-03-07: new version 1.11: Mainly updated the gui and added more feedback on the upload and download process
Upload download
Clara.IO allows you to upload and download 3D models to and from its servers. This means you could work on a scene in 3ds Max, upload it to Clara.IO for some collaborative tasks and your colleague on the other side of the office (world) downloads the model for further use. Being able to get data in and out will surely help with the adoption of Clara.IO and similar platforms. Nobody wants to jump on the wrong train and not be able to jump off when the time comes.
This is the 3D file inside Clara.IO
Connection
I’ve written a script which connects 3ds Max to Clara.IO and lets you perform some tasks which makes it much easier to adopt and incorporate Clara.IO in your existing workflow. The script enables you to upload and download models to and from your account. Besides that you can do a batch upload, where you upload a list of 3ds Max models to Clara.IO in one batch operation.
The script is in beta which means that there’s limited error checking and features might be removed and added. Also, keep in mind the script alters your scenes in Clara.IO and your 3dsMax scenes. Always make backups!
Documentation
Batch uploading
4 Comments
Join the discussion and tell us your opinion.
this looks like an excellent script (just from watching the video). I’ll be testing it soon. I love both Clara.io and 3dsmax so this will be perfect for my needs 🙂
Btw. You don’t have to make your script multithreaded to not freeze 3dsmax. Use windows.processpostedmessages() command to get the ui responsive again.
Hi, installing and testing the script worked good. I was able to login, add scenes, upload and download objects. Thanks a lot.
A couple of things are bothering me, though. My uploaded model looked great at first, but unfortunately the mesh is not really identical anymore. It is triangulated and all vertices are broken. So all triangles are in the right place, but not connected. This way it’s impossible to use subdivision in clara.io.
Also, could you add an option to update scenes in both directions? It would be a lot more comfortable than constantly be deleting and adding objects…
Other then that, really nice 🙂
Hi David, thanks for the feedback. I’ll look into the triangulation. I’m using fbx as the exporting file format, so there should be options to fix that.
About the 2-way updating, that’s a whole different story. How would you approach that? If I’d want to replace an object in a scene in clara.io from 3ds max, I somehow need to know which object that is and delete it. Keeping track of objects by name is risky. I’m not sure the API offers a file tree of some sorts. I’ll take it up with Ben from clara.io. Very interesting indeed.
Great!