Release October 26th, 2011

Nice! The new 3D viewer loads faster than Java, but it doesn't let you zoom in to see details on the part. Is a zoom in/out feature planned for the future?

This has broken my menu and the specific descriptions of the category pages.
Will you propose an alternative?
It would be easy to move the javascript I wrote (or a better version you can wrote ) in your side, and give us access to some IDs or CLASSes to get an equivalent result. This would furthermore bring some consistency to the shop.
You can also have alook at what Mctrivia did here.
What do you think?

The 3d viewer is not as good as the previous one.. ok it loads faster, but the functionality (zoom & full step by step rotation) is gone... one of my models Ring & Link garlic bulb hanger jumps about when spining. (actually all of the models that I checked jump about when spining)

[edit] another thing... colour models show up in the 3d viewer

I really like the speed that the new viewer opens at. I actually found the smoothness of model rotation perfectly acceptable for my use.

I agree a zoom function would be useful, but only if it doesn't slow it down at the initial load stage.

Andrew

I understand the reason to get rid of javascript. It really is not a big problem though as almost no one ever goes to the shop page. But for those that do if you have a large shop something is needed.

How about the option to define an offsite shop? I plan to make my own portal to shapeways now that I know I can transfer people to shapeways with stuff in there cart. would be great if I could define 4ddice.com as my shop and the see my shop link went there.

Maybe to prevent abuse you make it a manually checked thing first off and I can write you a spider that can periodically check peoples web sites for stuff you don't want to be linking to.

I only tried it on one model, but it gets my vote of approval. Would be cool if you could pick a material for it to be rendered in.

I like it, but would also like to see a zoom function.

But it is really pointless to upgrade this if you guys don't make the button to switch to 3d view MUCH more obvious. New visitors to this site do not notice the small cube and have no idea they can view these models in 3d. Even just putting a "3-D view" label next to the button would help.

Really great work guys. Thank you.

Do everyone so far thinks models jumping about as they're spinning looks ok?

Try looking at a tall model like the one I posted earlier, & then say it's ok... might work for small models, but not for the large ones

The background blue colour is too dark for proper contrast too, but that's probably just me.

Hey ho.

It spins to fast for my liking. How about adding a slider to control the delay between picture changes. It is a pretty smart way to do it. Never would have thought of just using a series of still pictures rapidly switched.

Good job.

Since months ago all my models have a rotating "3D" Gif
ex:


- i've posted about it many times - it helps customers grasp and visualize the design better and FAST.


The new viewer -

Pros:
* Fast loading - extremely better then the old Java viewer
* Fast rotating - a bit jittery but ok by me.

* Zero risk to our STL files against hackers (a set of pictures is loaded not the actual stl data)


Cons:
* No zoom
* White is rendered as gray when viewing full color sandstone design


I still think the icon for the 3D viewer should have a text "3D viewer" - first time visitors/search engines traffic dont dwell on every link on the model page they find and this could help the spontaneous buy mode.

why not make this default if no picture has been uploaded?

Pete, I use IE8.0 - I have just checked using Firefox, and there's no jumping about... so same as the model page again, IE users get alienated

Paul

Same issue with IE9 (under Windows7).

Just one thing I don't like so much, there is only a very short moment to view one angle before the model suddenly starts rotating again. It would be nice if it didn't rotate again after clicking, or at least delayed for a minute.

I have generally two renders for my models, an 'as delivered' render (the models come in three parts) and a fully assembled render. Would it ever be possible to choose a different render for 3D viewing? The fully assembled render would look better, in my particular case.

@pet renders in different materials would be awesome for customers but probably a server-intense job

@stop4stuff: Although this does not excuse proper verification on all platforms (It sounds like an effort was made, however), IE has been notorious for standards incompliance. I have not done any web development for a while, so I am unaware of the status of 8/9. However, I would not be surprised to find that Microsoft managed to disregard the web standards for some reason or another.

@pete: You might try the Blender Open Material Repository - I have not used it extensively, but it may be a good jumping-off point. http://matrep.parastudios.de/