3d graphics editor in Julia coming?

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First, let’s address the elephant in the room. 3d graphic editors like Blender are difficult.

And I do have an idea on a 3d graphic system in Julia, though it’s probably stupid, and even if not, who am I to make it done? Not gonna happen. (But hey, if you don’t promise anything, nobody gets disappointed right?)

But why 3d graphics editor in Julia?

Well, Julia has many simulation tools, finite element analysis, best differential equation solver, a few other things I might know, and a bunch that I do not know.

But well, to model the physical world, you need to… uhh… have a model of how a physical world is… right?.. Like, if you want to simulate how a teddy bear doll would fall to the ground, catch on fire, etc, you need a model on how that doll is right? And how would you manage to get the 3d doll?

In another term, if one were to simulate and observe physical objects or phenomenas, editing them in a graphical editor probably works better than in code.

Well, again, it is difficult.
But maybe weird miracles happen?

It would be nice if we could have a 3d editor that could do physics simulation, 3d printing, etc… would unlock so much potential. But again, there is likely no resource.

I’d rate this thing as good to have, but don’t wish on it. But again, there are many luminaries in Julia. Perhaps someone can pull off a miracle?

Or do you think otherwise? Do you think it’s actually coming?

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My long term Plan for Makie is to cover those use cases, but the progress towards it is pretty slow, but noticeable.
I know at least of a couple of small projects that want to add more features to Makie like you talk about:

  1. @ffreyer wants to add bone trees to Makie, which is required for rag dolls simulations and may also work on some better asset loading (e.g. gltf, which allows to import whole 3d scene graphs)
  2. @KevinMoerman, @termi-official and quite a few others have been improving Makie for FEM simulations and more complex geometries like nurbs
  3. @sjkelly has been working on GitHub - JuliaGeometry/Descartes.jl: Software Defined Solid Modeling for solid modeling
  4. WaterLily is quite nicely integrated with Makie, offers some form of parametric modeling.
  5. People have been using Makie for 3d printing debugging and creation
  6. There are many more project which use Makie for visualisations of particle/FEM etc simulations, which hopefully in the future will be more nicely integrated
  7. I’ve been wanting to create a little 3d modeling app prototype based on Makie, when I have a bit of time :wink:
  8. I’m working on improving the ray tracing backend for Makie, enabling more blender like advanced use cases
  9. There are a couple of robot projects using Makie, which should push Makie for 3d modeling use cases and complex scene graphs

So, a lot is happening, and a lot more will need to happen to get all of it packaged up with a nice GUI etc to allow for blender like workflows :wink:
But I’d say its definitely on the horizon!

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Oh, so it’s happening after all? I’m glad we don’t have to wait for miracles.

BTW, I think I’m learning blender so I could understand the wanted features. Julia was started by a culture where you had a long list of demand and people came together and work toward it. I’d be glad if the spirit is not dead.

I had a silly (silly as in it likely wouldn’t work as is) plan to make a Julia 3d graphic software that excels at everything from sculpting, animating, texture, VFX, simulation, etc… at a “small” price that 3d artists using the program know how to code. Maybe I could share it later if you think it’d be of any use, but it’s quite silly.

Again, I’m not promising anything, anything that makes anyone think so is a misunderstanding. That being said, I may not be very capable, but if you want somebody’s wish or idea to help shape the projects further, I’d gladly pass the baton.