Thought I would add a wishlist to the mix

[tedvitale]

It might be cool if you guys put together a public Trello board, that way users could upvote development tasks they think are most important? Could be a good way to gauge what the user community really wants and what development items are less important.

[bray]

I would like to be able to add annotations to the views

[jan]

@tedvitale: Trelo board is a great idea, but I would wait until the new forum gains some popularity before we introduce one more communication channel.

@bray: By annotations do you mean some additional text attached to each view? Where would you like the annotations to appear? Looking at the screenshot that you have posted in this thread: Black background you used the default view names ‘view’, ‘view2’, etc. You’ve probably discovered this, but you can change these names to something more meaningful.

[tim]

I think it would be great to have a marker for annotations. An icon that can be placed on a surface/object which provides further information by clicking on it.

[bray]

annotations to add more description to the elements of the design, dimension, materiel,etc.
similar to the sticky notes in PDF

[jan]

I’ve just noticed a new item:

@tedvitale

Ability to change font, and button styles: It would be nice to also have more control over the button shape, style, font, and location.

Technically this is already possible because you can upload a scene with custom index.html, which allows to change the viewer styling in many ways. But the feature is hard to use in practice, so I would rephrase this request to ‘Make it easier to customize scene’s index.html’.

[tedvitale]

I wondered if that was a possibility, but hadn’t explored it. Time to start experimenting again!

[tim]

With a growing amount of projects and tests, the start screen of Shapesparks gets a bit unclear now. I think it would be nice to have the option to add folders or something to give more structure to the project overview.

[bray]

It would be nice to be able to change navigation from orbit to walk without having to make a new view, or having the orbit camera stay on view without changing position to the sky

Also having a still shot generator without the overlays of the view menus

[jan]

@tim would a filter input box be sufficient, so if you type something only scenes that match are shown?

@bray Until we directly support generating a still shot without the overlays, you can hide the overlays with the m key, switch to full screen with f and take the screenshot with the Print screen key.

or if you need a different resolution, the newest Firefox has a nice way to take a screenshot of any part of the browser window: Take screenshots on Firefox | Firefox Help (also use the ‘m’ key to hide the overlays).

[tim]

@jan A filter would be a nice addition, I think.

It would be nice to store scenes in a folder, like “Client A”, “Test exterior”, …
I think with more than 20 or 30 or even more projects it will be hard to remember a name. Especially when they were done a year ago. But maybe you have a better solution.

[bray]

is there a way to produce Non perspective views? like top, front,back left and right

[Kuba]

Lots of interesting ideas that I agree with. I would add 2 more:

1. Normal maps/bump maps that influence lighting - an efficent way to add more detail to the surfaces

2. VR mode in the editor - now it works only on a published project in VR capable browser

From the mentioned above the biggest time savers for me would be a color picker and transform gizmos for lights, light probes and if possible also for geometry and ability to add to and remove individual meshes from the scene.

[jan]

@bray no, only perspective views are supported

[bray]

It would be good to be able to turn off shadow casting and receiving per object or group
like you can in sketch up

[jan]

@bray shadow receiving can be turned-off by setting Custom lightmap resolution to 0 in the Objects tab. Disabling shadow casting can be achieved but only per material, not per object. You can make a material fully transparent (Materials tab, Opacity setting) for the time of baking and after the baking you can change it back to opaque.

What is your use case for such two options?

[ntxdave]

@tedvitale I think this is an excellent list and would like to add my comments…

@tedvitale

Important

Undo command: I find myself making regular mistakes that could be avoided and I cant undo

@tedvitale

IES Light Support: For better realism this will be really helpful.

Although, I do not use this much myself, I think it would be great for many other users.

@tedvitale

Tool-Tips (for beginning users): Currently, there are no tool-tips and some of the functionality is not as obvious as it could be regarding what different values correspond too.

@tedvitale

Collision detection from surface to eye level: As it stands now (and please correct me if I’m wrong) it seems the collision detection is limited to just around the camera. It would be ideal if the collision detection for the user extended to the ground/floor surface area. I can currently hover over objects when I navigate, which is odd at times but also convenient in some cases. It could be as simple as adding a fly/walk mode switch similar to what Enscape has.

I agree with the ground in particular, there are times when I would like to restrict the user from going “below ground”. May there could also be a restriction on how you can orbit (setting limit so you cannot see the bottom as an example).

@tedvitale

Material color picker: Currently you have to manually enter your RGB value. This can be cumbersome and tedious to get the color you’re looking for. ← Heard that this is in the works!

To me, this is one of the weakest points of the exiting UI. It would be nice if there was a popup screen to allow you to pick the color visually.

@tedvitale

Ability to add light probes in SketchUp (similar to how lights are placed)

@tedvitale

Nice to have:
Audio support: Ambient sound, the sound of footsteps as you navigate. Audio hotspots so you can hear certain sounds when navigating to a specific area.

Interesting suggestion. Not sure how I would use this one.

@tedvitale

Animation or GIF support: It would be great if you could animate something on a tv or computer monitor either as a gif or a full animation.

I have some situations where I would like to be able to show some water or foam spraying.

• Animation I would also like to be able to animate the model. This would include needing the ability to animate at multiple levels (i.e. animate components and subcomponents).

@tedvitale

Interactive Materials | Objects: I’m aware this is a big ask, but I am constantly asked by clients if the we can make the objects and materials in a scene interactive. For example, Having the ability to change countertop materials from quartz to marble, or a dark wood floor to a light wood floor. I’ve somewhat developed a way to do this in this scene https://tedvitale.shapespark.com/nursery_12_30_17 and https://tedvitale.shapespark.com/meridian_unit_d2/

There are some drawbacks to this method:

• Its scene dependant and not interactive
• In larger scenes it becomes cumbersome with lots of options
• Hard to manage
• Not actually that interactive
• Requires full scene update.
  I’m imagining this as being managed by the user as a simple click of the object (in VR it could be done through a steady gaze at an interactive object).
  On the artist/designer end it could be managed similar to the visibility options in the scenes. I haven’t fully fleshed the idea out in my head yet, but Im sure its possible to do in a simple way.

I think for any kind of product presentations or for interior decorators (as just 2 examples) the ability to interactively modify a material, or even replace an object, this is very important.

@tedvitale

Bloom, Glare, Lens Flair: Bloom, Glare, and Lens Flares all add to a sense of realism or can create a warm inviting look to a space.

No comment on this one.

@tedvitale

Depth of Field and Autofocus: To get that next level of realism it would be nice to build out some depth of field controls and an auto-focus. For non-VR walk throughs it looks really nice to have a slight blur to things in the distance and for a nice sharp image at the center of the user’s gaze.

Sounds interesting…

@tedvitale

Object gizmo: Currently you have to manually enter values to move objects like lights and Light Probes. This becomes very time-consuming.
vs

@tedvitale

Placing objects just in front of the camera: As a novice user the first time I tried to place a light in my scene I was confused as to what happened because the light is placed at the camera location. It might be nice to have the light placed just in front of the camera (a gizmo to move the object would come in handy here as well).

@tedvitale

Auto-Start Shapespark from host App.: I have a tendency to forget to have Shapespark running when I try to export my model. It might be nice to have an auto-start or a pop-up that lets the user open the application from inside the host app if it wasn’t already running.

This would really be a great update to the SketchUp plugin.

@tedvitale

Ability to add individual objects to a scene: This will come in handy with larger scenes, the ability to import individual obj, fbx, or other objects into an already prepared scene. It’s time-consuming to re-upload an entire scene if the client wants to see a piece of art on the wall or another piece of furniture. It would also be great if you could start creating libraries of objects so that you can populate a scene quickly with other items/objects you’ve prepared in the past.

Could not agree more.

@tedvitale

Ability to Move Objects: Ive had a couple instances where a light is floating just off the ceiling. It would be great if I could move the object in Shapespark, rather than re-export an entire scene.

I think it would also be interesting if you could click on an object and then have the ability to move or rotate the object with the cursor. Resizing/scaling and object would also be a valuable asset.

@tedvitale

Ability to composite an AO pass: It might help with areas like where wall and floor meet and look a little floaty, though not accurate, it’s an easy cheat.

No particular comment.

@tedvitale

Ability to change font, and button styles: It would be nice to also have more control over the button shape, style, font, and location.

Additionally, I would like the ability to have interactive objects that could trigger “popup” windows to further describe something in the model (i.e. manufacturer, options available, more details about the object, or even a link to an external source).

@tedvitale

More control over logos on a per project basis (currently a global option): I would like to be able to control the logo that’s visible in the upper lefthand corner of the screen from the editor on a per scene basis. This would be ideal when a client wants to see their own logo on a walkthrough.

Cloud Custom Scene Names: In the cloud, it would be nice to be able to re-name a scene to a new custom name without underscores or limitations on capitalization.

Custom Hosting Names: It was mentioned there was some consideration for support for custom domain names. Initially, I didn’t think I would use it but in retrospect, I think it might be very useful!

So, these are in no way demands, or absolute necessities so far, but some things I noticed overall that might help improve usability. So far I’m loving the speed and ease of this tool so far and look forward to pushing it even further!

Thanks again for a great new tool!

Again, I think you have a very good list and hope Shapespark will take not of your suggestions.

[tim]

It also might be a cool thing to connect models with hotspots. So I can, for example, enter an interior from an exterior scene. Kind of loading a new level into the scene. Or have a multi-storage house where I can load apartments as required.

[tedvitale]

You know, we do this in Unreal all the time, and that would be incredibly useful! Great suggestion Tim!

[ntxdave]

When you are viewing a scene/model that has multiple views, it would be nice if the “view” that is selected (the one you are viewing) was highlighted in some way. Just looked at a post in another thread that had a lot of views. When I went from one view to another, I could not tell which view I was viewing.