#i was super excited to play vr today since I’ve got the day off and then as soon as my mother walked in the door I just like. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

marvelsimp · 3 years

Text

THE NEW KID: Landing

THE NEW KID MASTERLIST Ch. 3

Genre: Fluff Pairing: Peter x Lesbian!reader (Platonic duh), Avengers & Reader Warnings: swearing, Description: Reader has just joined the Avengers so they decide to throw her a birthday party. Reader’s Powers: Healing, telepathy, and empath. Word Count: 2,737

“Peter! You got me into the avengers!” you scream whacking your best friend with a pillow.

“You’re welcome!” he laughs shielding his face from oncoming attacks. You end up tackling him causing him to land on his bed. “Why are you attacking me? This is so RUDE!”

“HAHA! Too bad.”

“STOP. STOP” he laughs causing you to stop almost instantly. He sits up and looks at the clock, it reads ‘3:57’. “How about we go back down to the game floor we can play some more laser tag or mess around with the VR stuff?”

“Sure but didn’t you say earlier that you wanted to show me the lab?”

“I forgot about that!” he stood up and reached his hand out to help you get up, you accept. Peter leads you out of his room at Avenger’s Tower to go to the elevator then up to the lab. “So, this is it!” he says taking you up some stairs.

The space is huge, where you just entered from is where the Quinjet lands, where the med lab is, and where the avengers keep their gear for missions. As you walk up the stairs you see several platforms and ‘bridges.’ To your right you see a platform full of tools and stations cluttered with different projects.

“Most of its taken up by Mr. Stark,” Peter explains, “He’s constantly working on upgrading and improving all of our suits.” He leads you towards the back of the area, “This is where I usually work. I’m usually the one to work on my suit, especially during breaks. I’m trying to figure out a way to improve the capacity of my web-shooters.”

You nod, Pete lets you look at his formulas and blueprints. You give him a handful of suggestions and ask him a few questions. He listens intently to each suggestion and question. He then has a quick ‘aha’ moment and writes a few things down for later. You can’t believe that you now get to help him with this stuff in person.

“Oh,” he says suddenly. He points to an empty part of the lab next to him. “This is your station, you can put anything there and use any of the tools, under supervision. Mr. Stark isn’t a big fan of us being up here without him or Dr. Banner but he made an exception for today.”

“Wait… slow down.”

Peter looks up at you, he’s slightly confused.

“I get to work up here, in the Avenger’s lab?”

“Yeah,” he breathes out. “What did you not understand about the part that you’re an Avenger now?”

“I don’t know… I guess that it just didn’t click.” You look around the space trying to figure out what you’ll do. You then remember some of the old projects that you had to scrap because you didn’t the resources, you’ll probably have to start from scratch… wait your stuff is here. You let out a gasp and your eyes get a little wider. You almost run out to get your old blueprints but Peter grabs your wrists.

“Y/n, slow down. Where are you going?”

“Sorry, I got ahead of myself. I just remembered that I have my old blueprints still and that I can work on that stuff here.”

He smiles at you, he’s happy you can feel it off of him. That was the first time since you got to New York that you had felt pure joy and he could feel it, too. His smile shrinks a little, “Like I said Mr. Stark doesn’t really like us up here without someone with us.” You nodded in understanding.

“Now let me actually take you to the med lab, I think that Dr. Cho will want to meet you.” He took you back down the stairs and opened the doors to the Med Lab. Dr. Cho was sitting down busy at work looking through some papers and looking at something on the screen in front of her. “Dr. Cho.”

She looked up from her work and looked at Peter then at you. Her eyes grew wide, “Oh, I completely forgot.” She stood up walking over to you and reaching her hand out. You accepted it shaking her hand, “I’m Y/n.”

“Yes,” she smiled, “Stark told me about you and your powers. I’d love to do some testing later once you’re settled.”

“I’d love that too. I’ve done a little bit of testing on my own, but I’d love to learn my limits.”

She nodded, she seemed excited. “I have to get back to my work now, but I will see you later.”

You and Peter exited the lab then went back down to the game floor as you had planned earlier. You both walked down the hallway and entered the game room. In one of the corners was Steve and Bucky, Bucky was hunched over on an old arcade version of Mortal Combat while Steve had his hand on the brunette’s back and he was laughing his ass off at the stern face of the “tinman.” Steve almost instantly turned around when you and peter entered but he couldn’t stop his laughing quite as quickly.

You smiled and waved at them. You turned to Peter, “What do you wanna play?”

“Smash Bros?”

“Minecraft?”

‘You always want to play Minecraft,” he whined.

‘And you always want to play Smash Bros!”

He gave you the best puppy dog eyes he could.

“Fine!” you laughed

“Yes!” Peter quickly set up the game.

“FINISH HIM” you could hear from the old Mortal Combat Bucky was playing.

You took that as your cue, “Do you guys want to join us?”

Steve looked a little surprised, he turned to Bucky waiting for his answer. “Sure, how do you play?” he and Steve walked over and joined you and Peter on the large couch.

“It’s kind of like Mortal Combat.” You went on to explain the game and gave recommendations as to who they should pick.

“Fuck!” you exclaimed after losing to the two super-soldiers who had never even played the game before today.

“Language,” Steve said nonchalantly.

“Sorry” you squeaked out.

Steve’s eyes widened realizing his mistake, he said it out of habit assuming it was Bucky who said it. Bucky let out an earth-shattering laugh. While you were mortified that you had screamed ‘fuck’ in front of some of the Avengers not once but twice in one day. Once Bucky stopped laughing and caught his breath he turned to Peter, “Do you curse this much? I swear I’ve never even heard you say ‘crap.’” He did, just not in front of the avengers. Peter’s whole face had turned red causing Bucky to laugh again.

“Sorry, Y/n,” Steve said over Bucky’s continual laughing.

“What are you saying sorry for?”

“I thought it was Buck who said it so out of habit I said ‘language.’”

You smiled, “You don’t mind me-“

“Of course not.” Steve looked at his watch and then turned to Bucky who had finally stopped laughing, “Buck, maybe it’s time we head up.”

“It was nice playing with you guys,” you smiled.

“Yeah, we’ll have to do it again,” said Bucky.

“You’re an Avenger now, doll. Plenty of game nights.” Steve smiled walking out the door.

“Bye.”

Peter stood up. “Do yooou wanna play in VR?”

“Yes!”

“I know we’ve only been on this for half an hour but do you wanna grab some food?” Peter asked you.

“Umm, sure I could use some food.”

You and Peter walked back to the elevator taking it back up to the communal living space. As the elevator rose you felt the excitement rise not only in Peter but in some people on the floor you were headed to. When the doors opened it was darker than last time then you heard “SURPRISE” being shouted at you from all over the room and the lights turned back on. You jumped back a little then erupted into giggles. Directly in front of you were Ned, MJ, and May. While the Avengers were spread around the room, which included some of those that weren’t at lunch. There was a large banner on the wall that read “Happy 17th Birthday, Y/n!” There were streamers and balloons everywhere, along with some confetti that was spread along the ground. “Happy Birthday!” Ned, MJ, and May said in unison all grouping together for a group hug that caused you to giggle once more.

“Thank you.”

Peter grabbed your hand and led you over to a group of people near the dining table. There was Pepper Potts with a little girl holding onto her hand, with a man, woman, and a teen girl that was maybe a year or two younger than you and Peter. Pepper was the first to notice the two of you so she turned and smiled at you grabbing the others' attention.

“Hi,” you said looking back over the group.

“I’m Hope,” said the brunette woman reaching her hand out.

You recognized her but couldn’t remember how and as you shook her hand you let out a slight gasp, “Pym?”

“Yes,” she breathed out.

“Sorry, I’m way too invested into sciency things.”

The man next to her let out a chuckle, “I’m Scott.” He gently put his hand onto the teen next to him, “and this is my daughter Cassie.”

She smiled at you, “Hi.”

“Hi.” You were kinda confused as to who these people were, relating to the Avengers.

Peter whispered in your ear, “Think about it,” it was like he was the telepath.

After a second or two of staring at them, you let out, “Oh! You’re Wasp and Ant-man.” Neither one of them were known to the public as that but they were the only masculine and feminine pair, so it made sense. Hope let out a, “Yeah” while Scott just grinned impressed. You finally turned to the woman you were very excited to meet, the CEO of Stark Industries.

“I’m Pepper,” she went for a hug that you accepted. Once you were released from the hug she put her hand on the shoulder of the little girl hiding behind her. “This is Morgan, Tony and I’s daughter.”

You kneeled to be at the girl’s eye level, “Hi, I’m Y/n.”

“Hi,” she said in the quietest voice possible.

You just smiled and stood back up. “It’s an honor to meet you all,” you said turning to each one in the small group, “I can’t believe that I’m even here.”

“Don’t worry,” Scott said, “We’re still getting used to it.” Hope nodded in agreement.

Thank god, that eased your anxieties a little. “Come on, Y/n. There are still more people you gotta meet.” He led you across the room where Tony and Colonel Rhodes, aka War Machine, were talking, Col. Rhodes seemed annoyed. As you walked you passed Bruce, Sam, Bucky, and Steve who waved as you walked by. Bruce stepped forward, “Hey, Y/n!”

You stopped and turned to him.

“Thor wanted to tell you sorry that he couldn’t make it, ya know family business. And he wanted me to tell you ‘Happy Birthday’ from him and Loki.” You smiled and laughed at the “and Loki” part. “Tell them ‘Thank you and that I understand. Oh, and that I wish him luck with his brother’”. Bruce chuckled at your response. He turned and returned to his group while you continued to follow Peter.

“Come on, Tony, another teenager,” you could barely hear Col. Rhodes say.

Tony just saw you two walking towards them, he pointed his head at you which caused Col. Rhodes’ demeanor to change almost instantly.

“Hey,” Tony said smirking at you and Peter, “How you feeling?”

“Uhh, I’m still in stock,” you laugh rubbing your neck.

“Don’t worry, kid, that will wear off.”

“I’m Rhodey by the way.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“I won’t be able to stay for long I was told about this morning. I wasn’t even told there was a possibility of a new Avenger until then either,” he looked annoyingly at Tony.

“Oh, I... don’t worry it’s an honor just meeting you guys.”

“Y/n,” yelled Wanda who was over in the kitchen.

“Well, that’s me,” you commented pointing your thumb towards the kitchen.

“Happy Birthday.”

“Yeah, Happy Birthday, kid.”

You and Peter headed to the kitchen.

“That was kinda tense,” whispered Peter in your ear.

You nod in agreement as you enter. Wanda is standing next to the counter eating some chips with Nat and a man you recognize as Hawkeye. But more importantly, you spot some brownies. You quickly grab one, “Hey.” Wanda smiles and hugs you before you sit on one of the stools.

“Hey, Y/n/n, adjusted yet?” Nat joked.

“Nowhere close,” you breathe out.

Nat elbowed the man standing next to her. “I’m Clint.” He put a fist over the chip bowl.

You let out a chuckle and returned the fist bump. “You’re Hawkeye, right?”

“Yeah,” he laughs at the codename.

You continue to eat the brownie and happily smile at your best friend. He takes a seat next to you and spins your chair as you take the last bite of it. When you look up, there she is Captain Marvel with a gift bag in her hand. You choke on the brownie spitting it out in your hand then throwing it away. Peter looks up in concern at you, you simply point at her and he erupts in laughter. Nat, Clint, and Wanda were first concerned when you choked on your food but are now very confused. You turn around away from the center of the room, putting your face in your hands.

“Y/n, you okay?” Wanda asks.

“Oh my god,” you breathe out.

Clint throws a chip at Peter, “Bug, explain.”

Peter calms down. “Y/n has a hu-“ he corrects himself, “is a huge fan of Carol.”

Nat catches on instantly, the other two don’t but are accepting of the answer.

“Peter!” you say shoving him almost causing him to fall from his chair, but he holds on to the seat. “You’re a fucking psychopath,” you whisper angrily in his ear, “Are you trying to kill me?” He laughs looking behind you, so you turn around and to your surprise, Captain Marvel is right behind you. You open your mouth opens but nothing comes out.

Y/n.exe has stopped working.

Reboot?

Rebooting.

Peter gives you a little shaking you a little. “Earth to Y/n,” he whispers in your ear. Everyone, EVERYONE takes note of this. Some understanding your behavior instantly while others put it down as you just being a “big fan.”

“Hi,” you blush.

“Hi,” Captain Marvel smiles at you.

“I, um, I’m a, I’m Y/n,” you finally stutter out.

“I’m Carol,” she smirks. You put your hand out for her to shake but instead of returning the handshake, she puts the gift bag she was holding into your hand. “Peter told me you were a big fan, so I got you something.”

You smile and hit Peter for telling her. “Thank you,” you barely get out as she walks away.

“Hey!” you hear from across the room. “Since everyone’s met Y/n let’s sing happy birthday!” you finally recognize the voice to be Tony’s, “Head to the Dining table!”

You’re still standing there stunned, “Did that just happen?”

“Yes,” Peter says grabbing your arm, “Now let’s get some cake.”

Peter leads you to the Dining Table and then to a cupcake tower full of different types of cupcakes with a lit candle on top reading ‘17’. You take a deep breath to collect yourself. You look around you and you’re overwhelmed with how much you can feel all of them caring for you even though you just met most of them today. You wish your parents could see this… no you wish that your parents loved you enough where you wouldn’t even be in New York right now, but they don’t, and you have to live with that. “Thank you, for all of this,” you say looking mostly at Peter but also at the others. “Usually, I would spend my birthday with just my parents and this year I thought it would be Peter, May, MJ, Ned, and I. But I never could’ve predicted to be with any of you much less as your new teammate. I don’t know what else to do besides saying thank you.”

Next Chapter

Arrived

#the new kid #the avengers #peter parker #peter parker x platonic!reader #avengers x lesbian #avengers x reader #avengers x platonic reader #marvel x reader #marvel #self insert

97 notes · View notes

smokeybrand · 4 years

Text

Infinite Crisis

DC Fandome is in the rear view and there have been a few legit reveals. I'm not a massive fan of the DCEU, mostly because of how disrespectfully mishandled everything has been, but I wanted to see if they could right the ship going forward since ATT is in charge now. I've seen some stuff i liked and some stuff I didn't but, so far, these are the reveals that have impressed in one form or another.

Didn't know i wanted another Arkham game until i saw the trailer for Gotham Knights. Even then, it was a hard maybe until the end with the Owls. Fully on board now, even if the adaption of Court of Owls might end up being wonky. That arc is so intrinsically linked to Bruce. Kind of hard to imagine them executing it well since he's "dead." Still, that Talon stinger as tasty.

Not sure if this is going to be a next-gen game or one of those enhanced ports, but that game play first look was nice. I like how Batgirl plays and the particle effects are gorgeous. They hinted at leveling enemies as you level, which means there's levels and customization in this one, which I absolutely love. I'm an RPG guy. Hen Assassin's Creed went full ARPG, I was fully on board. Looks like the Arkham franchise might be going that route to.

Wonder Woman 84 looks cute. Gal Gadot still can't act her way out of a sack but she has great chemistry with Chris Pine and anything Kristen Wiig stars in, I'll see. Finally got a look at her in full Cheetah. Better than i thought, less than i hoped. Why is Maxwell Lord in this again? Overall, I think this will be decent. It feels like the first, like a mid grade Phase one Marvel flick again, but we'll see.

Gunn's version of Suicide Squad is starting to feel a lot like Guardians with a DC coat of paint. If that means we get better, comic accurate characters and costumes, like the new Harley getup, i am okay with that. I shill hard for Marvel and they're the only ones who have a handle on this whole cinematic universe thing. Makes sense you'd want to have a run at one of their principal contributors, especially one of the better ones.

Okay. I'm not a fan of the DCEU because it's more trash than good and I'm not a fan of Zack Snyder because he doesn't understand how to get out of his own way as a creator, but this Snyder Cut looks pretty f*cking dope, man. This flick, of course, has the benefit of hindsight and an entire company who has enough loot not to panic about box office bullsh*t. I mean, this thing is going to be four hours long so Snyder will get both films like he wanted. That alone might allow him to deliver his actual narrative. Plus, i mean, look at f*cking Darkseid, man! And that's not even his final form! Look at f*cking Desaad! Look at proper monster Stepennwolf! Sh*t, we might get that lantern they hinted at. I'm actually excited for this movie and i technically don't like anything about it. The f*ck, man? 2020 and it's backward, chaos magic strikes again.

The Black Adam trailer is kind of corny. I already know about dudes origin and there have been leaks about this movie for months. Show me something, not a motion comic, you know?

That The Batman trailer was super dope. The leaks that dropped were chuckle worthy but, in context, that sh*t was kind of surprising. Bat Pats looks the part and I liked what I saw out of Rush. The Batmobile is absolutely sexy in action but it as the Riddler that surprised. This motherf*cker is mildly terrifying. Dude gives of The Collector vibes and I'm here for that..All in all, I am pretty okay with everything. Not too hype but not really underwhelmed. Should be an interesting flick to see at the very least.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is the best thing to come out of this Fandome sh*t so far today. I love the look of this game and the feel of these characters. The Arkham games capture Batman perfectly and this version of Task force X has that same energy. It's weird that the SKWAD is getting such a forceful push but, if the sh*t plays as dope as this trailer looks, I can forgive it. I didn’t watch the second day action. Literally everything i as curious about, was demonstrated on the first. Overall, it was a decent show.

I wasn’t mad by the presentation but it did come off as real try-hard at times. Like, all of that overly produced, VR stage nonsense seemed a bit much. Outside of that, it was pretty alright. DC looks like they have handle on the future of their cinematic productions. I wasn’t impressed enough to say I’m a fan but i liked what i saw enough to dice back into it whenever the Snyder cut and The Batman drop.

1 note · View note

theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

Link

Alice Lloyd George Contributor

Alice Lloyd George is an investor at RRE Ventures and the host of Flux, a series of podcast conversations with leaders in frontier technology.

More posts by this contributor

Thomas Reardon and CTRL-Labs are building an API for the brain

Solving the mystery of sleep

Last week Sketchfab, the 3D content hub, shared an exciting milestone — the company has just crossed 1 billion cumulative pageviews. Taken with the community’s growth — they just surpassed 2 million users, as well as the 200 million people that have experienced content via Sketchfab more broadly, this makes it one of the platforms with the largest reaches for interactive 3D content on the web.

With Google’s Poly turning one and Microsoft’s Remix 3D turning two, it’s an interesting moment to reflect where we are in the trajectory of the 3D web.

Alban Denoyel, the CEO of Sketchfab has watched the industry and community evolve in the six years since he founded the company. In an interview for Flu I sat with Alban and we got into the history of the business and how he’s built a team between Europe and the U.S., what the company has learned from Youtube and why they are pursuing a distributed content strategy. Alban also shared details on how power creators are using the platform to monetize content, the powerful role 3D plays in cultural heritage, and the importance of figuring out standards and formats in 3D. An excerpt of the conversation can be found below and the full transcript is on Medium.

AMLG: Our guest today is Alban Denoyel. He is the founder and CEO of Sketchfab a hub for 3D content on the internet. The company was founded in 2012 and is based between New York and Paris. I haven’t caught up with you for some time, it’s great to see you again. I believe you had a baby girl in the last few months?

AD: Three months ago.

AMLG: Congratulations. Maybe we can start with a bit your history, how you got into graphics, came over from France for Techstars and the origins of the company.

AD: Sure. We started the company back in 2012 in Paris. I actually had a business background so for the first two years of the company I was the only non-developer in the team. I do sculpture as a hobby and was commissioned to make a large piece. I was trying to figure out what was the most efficient way to make it. That’s how I heard about 3D printing. Back in 2011 in France it was very new. I found it fascinating and was telling everybody about it — “3D printing, that’s the future if you haven’t heard about it.”

AMLG: Clay sculptures?

AD: Initially wood sculpture, then for this piece it had to be clay because it was too big for wood and I had to do a mould. A lot of that would have been easier if I had known about 3D scanning and all that stuff. Then in 2012, I left my job because I wanted to start a company. I was trying to meet as many people as possible. I went to a party where I was preaching the 3D printing gospel again. Someone told me, hey you should go talk to this guy back there he’s a 3D guy. So I went to Cedric who is now my co-founder and CTO. He had never heard about 3D printing. But he told me, “I’ve been working on this prototype around 3D. If you are interested I’d be happy to talk more. Let’s have lunch.” So we agreed to have lunch the next day. Then he showed me what was essentially the first web-based 3D player to have ever been built. He had been a 3D programmer in the video game industry for 15 years and was hired by Mozilla to make the first demo of WebGL for the launch of Firefox 4 back in 2011. He built the first WebGL framework — so WebGL is now standard but wasn’t standard back then to display 3D graphics in the browser. He showed me the prototype which was really just an upload button, you uploaded a 3D file and got back a URL and saw the 3D file in your web page. No user interface, no nothing.

AMLG: So he had built the core idea already a bit, tinkered with it.

AD: Yeah. He kind of built it as a tool for himself. He was working with 3D artists in the gaming industry and they were sharing screenshots of their work, which sucked. He said hey maybe I can find something better. So he built it for himself and had told nobody about it.

AMLG: Did you convince him to leave his job?

Sketchfab co-founders Alban Denoyel, Cédric Pinson and Pierre-Antoine Passet

AD: He had already moved to full-time freelancing around WebGL. He was super happy as a freelancer, he had no intention to build a business. And I initially had no sense as to whether this would be a sustainable idea. So I just started helping out on the side. It immediately took off because we were the first platform to do that. Then our third co-founder Pierre-Antoine joined us a few months after. We quickly realized we’re the first mover in the space. And that if we wanted to reach our ambitions and find funding and get partnerships with the big tech guys we had to move to the U.S. fast. If you look at other media platforms — we had DailyMotion for video in France, we had Deezer for music. They both got doubled by U.S. companies because it was harder back then to move to the U.S. So very early on I started applying to the U.S. accelerators. We first got into Web Forward which was Mozilla’s accelerator, so we spent Q4 of 2012 in San Francisco and then back to Paris. We knew we had to go back to the U.S. as fast as possible and we applied and got into TechStars New York in spring 2013. So that’s how we came back.

AMLG: Ok. So to get into what is Sketchfab—it’s essentially a platform for creators to publish and users to consume 3D content. There’s an embeddable player that displays 3D content across the web. So much of the 3D landscape has changed in the six years since you started the company. What is the biggest difference now?

AD: There’s been shifts on the two sides of the platform, both creation and consumption. When we started there were only professional people creating 3D content. You needed advanced professional tools like 3ds Max or SolidWorks and AutoCAD. The crowd of people who could become Sketchfab users was limited to 20 million or so 3D professionals. Then on the consumption side, there was no VR or AR. 3D printing was very early and there were fewer ways to consume the content. Six years later — the iPhone 10 has a depth sensor, which means you can do 3D capture on the spot. That means that anyone with a smartphone will become a 3D creator moving our target user base from 20 million to 2 billion people. Then on the consumption side, 3D used to be meant only for background work, back office stuff like manufacturing. A lot of ads are done with 3D assets but the result is 2D and its the same for movies. Whereas today you can consume stuff that is made in 3D in a 3D form which is VR or AR. So the appetite for 3D content is exploding and there are more and more ways to use and leverage that content. So it’s become increasingly important to be able to share and find that content.

The evolution of capture

AMLG: When it comes to those two sides of the marketplace it feels like on the consumption side we’re at this turning point with VRAR, that we’re about to have all these different ways to consume. But the creation side still feels like a bottleneck. I mean I’m trying to learn Unity so maybe that’s my own personal struggle. But when we talk about how creation has evolved, we started with cave paintings and then went to regular paintings, then photography, then video, and now we’re going to 3D. We’re starting to learn how to capture in 3D.

You mentioned Intel RealSense. Obviously, there was a lot of excitement with Google Project Tango — RIP. I still have my Lenovo Phab. I was very excited to get it, it took such a long time to come. But I was hoping we’d see more uptick in capture and content growth from that. My understanding is that the Tango team rolled into AR Core anyway so that’s been a positive. That’s capture. There’s also Tiltbrush and other tools for creating. But overall, is there still a bottleneck?

AD: It’s definitely true that for the average person there aren’t a lot of seamless ways to create content. But the thing is you don’t need a crazy depth sensor to make 3D capture. Most of our 3D captures on Sketchfab are coming from photogrammetry. It’s an older technique stitching a ton of images together. The downside is that it’s much less seamless than depth sensors because you have to take a lot of pictures. But the upside is that the result looks nicer because the tech is more evolved. I would say about half of our uploads are coming from 3D capture. More and more is coming from drones. We see new use cases for 3D captures every day, we see new solutions coming to market every day. I guess for the outside world it may seem like a bottleneck. But for us, because we have become the go-to place to publish that content, we see a lot of volume.

AMLG: In various talks you’ve said that 3D is eating the world. I think that’s true it’s just, along what timeframe? Is it nibbling, is it taking a large chomp, where are we in that… What do you think will be different about 3D and where are we in format standardization?

AD: It’s important to make a differentiation between the formats and the platform to host it. There’s been a lot of technical discussions around which 3D format should be the holy grail of 3D formats. It’s an ecosystem that is much more fragmented than sound or video. But even if we do get to an agreement around the best 3D format you still need a platform to host it, publish it, share it, embed it, display it. That’s where we come in and where YouTube comes in for video. Today you can display a video on a web page without Youtube. It’s part of any normal html5 markup. We’re going to get to the same state for the 3D world.

ugh

AMLG: I remember the days of “please make sure you’ve downloaded Adobe Flash plugin” — like, what.

AD: Yeah so Youtube made it easy and then reached critical mass, and at that point there was no reason not to use Youtube because it made it easier. That’s what we want to do.

AMLG: And you’ve done that with the embedded API right? You have that built-in capability now, to view Sketchfab content across the web? Through your partnerships.

AD: Yes. We’ve spent a lot of energy on that. The main difference when it comes to consuming the format is it’s a very different medium. Even if now we’re able to support many volumetric movies which are closer to what a video is, a lot of the content is more like objects or scenes. And while a lot of it makes sense to be consumed as is, there are a number of assets that make more sense combined or reused in a different context. So maybe it’s just because the Web part of the ecosystem is too early to do this efficiently. But what we’ve come to realize is that while YouTube is fully optimized for content being consumed within the Youtube player, we’re just starting to see that there is more value in letting the content go, letting it leave the Sketchfab player to be reused in different contexts.

AMLG: So it’s distributed consumption rather than a destination.

AD: Exactly.

AMLG: Which is why it’s such a feat. I saw pinned to the top of your Twitter that “it took six years but I’m proud to say we’ve been able to partner with Google Apple Facebook Amazon and Microsoft.” Slow but steady. I can’t imagine what kind of work that took. I guess it comes back to what you were saying with WebGL. Curious to get into that — it’s really the first web standard that allows you to display 3D graphics in a browser without a plugin. Mozilla has been driving that and you have DNA from Mozilla in your team. What is it about Mozilla? I mean they’re a free open source browser, but why are they such a critical role in this ecosystem? They seem very forward thinking.

AD: They’ve always been pushing for content openness and distribution. A lot of previous formats were quickly grabbed by large tech companies and then locked into proprietary formats like Flash. So they felt this shouldn’t happen for the 3D world. What’s interesting is that they pioneered WebGL back in 2011 2012 and they did it again with WebVR WebAR webXR. They were actually the first browser — Firefox — to launch with built-in WebVR support out of the box a few months ago, ahead of Google and any other browser which is impressive.

AMLG: So how does this all relate to WebVR?

AD: Well VR is just another screen, another way to consume the content. We are the repository and then you can consume it on mobile on desktop in VR in AR. What I like about WebVR is that instead of having people needing to go to one of the VR destination sites like the Oculus store or the Steam platform — people don’t have the habit to do that. We’ve been betting heavily on the concept of embedding content anywhere on the Web. Our content is traveling across e-commerce websites, news sites and so on. Then you run into the Sketchfab player wherever you are — in your Facebook feed, in a tweet. You can consume it the way you want. If you have your VR headset plugged in you can just jump into it in VR without having to worry about anything else.

AMLG: So it’s hardware agnostic right? And the API works for this. That API essentially gives developers access to your 150,000 3D models?

AD: So WebVR lets you consume our entire library of 3 million plus assets straight from our player. Our player is VR enabled for the web. And then our download API is a pipeline to get the content outside of our player to be used natively inside any other — well it can then re-end into WebVR but in another platform —

AMLG: I may have to draw a diagram for listeners. But what you’re saying is you’ve made it really easy for people to access.

AD: Yeah to search — the concept is a search bar for the 3D world. Just like when you are in Photoshop or even Google Slides, if you want to get content, they have integrations with guys like Shutterstock or Getty or Fotolia . It’s just a library of 2D stuff. We want to do the same thing for the 3D world.

November 13th 2018 announcement

AMLG: To get into the numbers and give listeners a sense, as of July you have a community of over a million and a half users who’ve published close to 3 million 3D models, which I believe makes Sketchfab the largest library of 3D volumetric content online?

AD: We’re close to 2 million users now and we just passed 3 million assets.

AMLG: Can you get into uniques per month — you said a few months ago maybe five million. I’m guessing it’s somewhere near 10 million now?

AD: Yeah we’re in between that.

AMLG: OK. I want to get a bit more concrete around the types of content. Initially you were targeting 3D artists, animation, gaming studios — it seems like over time use cases and content types are much broader than you thought?

AD: We’ve had this kind of tension, in terms of market and even in terms of co-founders. I wanted to get traction and critical mass and volume and go for like Youtube model. My co-founders were more like, we need to serve the artists and make a solution for the best content, and having the best content will reflect positively on our platform. So do we go after less great content? We quickly became the market leader and so we decided we might as well go for every type of 3D content. So today we managed to grab the high end of the market. If you go to Sketchfab, the curated part is really high-end stuff that takes a month or six months to build. Then we have the long tail of things that are drawn by kids in Tiltbrush or 3D capture. Like I make portraits of my son, it’s not great content but it’s great content for me.

It seems like shoes come up a lot. I saw your Balenciaga partnership for their trainers, it’s high-quality stuff. You’re into shoes and have uploaded shoes. What is it with 3D shoes and e-commerce, and when is e-commerce 3D going to start penetrating for the average person?

Brands Sketchfab has worked with

AD: It always sounded crazy to me that when you buy your product you go to the product page and then you have 10 pictures of 10 angles of the product. We can do better than that. Then, of course, you think about AR and VR and the day that we will have Apple AR glasses on our head. Every brand will need a virtual version of their products. The good news is that most brands manufacture physical products, and they start with a 3D design because they need to manufacture it. So a lot of them already have 3D files of what they sell. But most of this content doesn’t look good and isn’t meant to be consumed that way.

Sketchfab collaboration with Balenciaga

We want to help 3D get into e-commerce and we’re starting with verticals where 3D is the most relevant and already present and accessible. Those categories are typically things like furniture. We work with brands like made.com. Shoes is an area where 3D is very present in innovation, just to design a shoe, and it’s also easy to 3D scan a shoe and has a great result. Often we combine both. I guess I also have a bias because I’m a shoe person —

AMLG: A sneakerhead.

AD: Yeah. I really want to get all the, well we actually already work with Adidas, Nike, New Balance and Crocs — I want to work with the shoe brands. It also seems like the type of product like you care more about seeing in 3D than a T-shirt. It’s more expensive. And then there are so many differences from one shoe to another. So many components and technical features.

AMLG: Do you think any businesses are proving out an ROI with 3D yet when it comes to e-commerce?

AD: Well we’ve started experimenting with free advertising, partnering with Google and programmatic networks to get our player to run 3D ads. We’ve seen a much better ROI than 2D ads. Like for a jewelry brand we did a case study. But to be honest, when I pitch an e-commerce brand I’m not pitching the ROI angle first. It’s a byproduct and I expect it to be ROI positive. But 10 years from now you will need to be ready for when virtual content is seamlessly shared with physical content. So what do you do today to be ready for that?

AMLG: Get ahead of the curve.

AD: Yes and today it starts with a web-based player of your products on an e-commerce site, and then tomorrow, I don’t know what the user interface is going to be for AR VR —

AMLG: Why am I not seeing more 3D on Amazon . Are they going to do it?

AD: That’s a long conversation but yes they’re working on it.

AMLG: I would think so. They’re usually ahead of these things. I guess to get more into a random question for you— if you could go back in history and 3D capture any human or any place, what would it be?

AD: Well my last grandmother just passed away. She is the only one I was able to capture in 3D four years ago because she came to visit me in New York. It sounds silly but I would love to have 3D portraits of all my grandparents. It’s as close to who they were and who they are.

AMLG: Yeah it’s powerful stuff.

AD: I take 3D portraits of my kids. It sounds silly —

8i’s “mom-and-baby” hologram

AMLG: No not at all. We have a company called 8i and one of the first things they did was capture a mother holding a baby. It’s been one of the most popular assets. She came back a year later and stepped into herself again to hold the baby. She couldn’t believe how much her child had grown, stepping back into her own hologram and holding the baby. It was an interesting moment. That’s what they’ve found in capturing these human moments. I’d be curious to hear what was the first thing you ever uploaded or sold on Sketchfab?

AD: The first asset I sold was a 3D capture of a chocolate croissant. It sold for $4.99. What’s interesting is that first, we had no idea if 3D captures would sell on our store because traditionally it’s an industry driven by high-end computer graphics and 3D captures are usually not optimized, the content doesn’t always look as good. So I was not expecting to sell it. Also, I had no idea who would have use of a virtual version of a croissant that costs more than the actual thing. Then I did a bit of research. It turns out it was an entrepreneur building an AR app to give nutritional advice on food. He’s doing machine learning on virtual versions of foods, so he is able to look at any actual food piece and say, hey —

AMLG: I think I’ve come across this guy. I remember someone doing this.

AD: There are probably several people doing that. But what’s interesting is, don’t assume that things won’t sell. Because you never know how they are going to be used. It was just a great surprise for me and for Sketchfab as a platform.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes

ethereal-aeitherea · 6 years

Text

1.30.2018

Today was a day, but really critical in speaking-up and making efforts to be more of the person i’d like to be..... Super anxious and feeling bad rn tho so i’m writing this.

Started with pulling an all-nighter to finish my first ever VR game.

I decided to skip my 3D modeling class to get some 2.5 hour sleep.

I wish I had gone to that class. Our teacher actually took roll today. I’ve been going to every class (which was my way of getting myself even enrolled in the class and off the waitlist) but the one day I don’t show up my attendance grade is affected. Now i have 0% for attendance. My friend who has been sick the past three classes went today and has 100%. My friend said I should def email the teacher to say I was sick or something and it’s totally unfair the way the attendance grade got recorded (although he’s happy lol).

After I got up I did my makeup because I looked dull and dead and my expression looks shitty when I’m sleep-deprived and I wanted to pull myself together in preparation to speak up today during critique. Makeup is confidence for that. Also just feeling more set in your self helps with composure etc...

My VR game doesn’t work the way I want it to. Instead of being in the middle of the world, you’re floating off to the side looking in. The person test-playing my game just stood facing the wall the entire time because that was the closest she could get to my game space. I felt so bad, it was not the experience I envisioned at all, and it was due to a tiny error I had even made a point to document in my notes.

At the end of crit my teacher asked if I had final comments or things to say and I mentioned my problem with the positioning of the player and he said quite clearly to next time fix those problems right away. Someone near me was currently fixing his game after his game didn’t work initially, his crit was postponed and we moved on to the next person. I instantly felt a pang of (shame/guilt/regret/oh-no/fuck/heart sinking idk how to call this) and I felt so disappointed, like after mentioning the issue with the viewpoint why did I not further suggest that I postpone my crit to fix the problem...?

One of the things I thought my teacher would be impressed with was I added a secret to my game which took me forever to code. I realized understanding the syntax of code is not my strong suit at all..... I was finally able to get it, but we couldn’t even access it to unlock it (or even be close enough to see it) so it was obsolete.

Today marked a shift in behaviours for me. Rather than working all night on a class (3D modeling) where projects can be turned in late, and then subsequently scrambling to construct a haphazard project for my first ever VR game which is to me more exciting and groundbreaking, I chose 1. HEALTH, and 2. MY INTERESTS. I decided to sleep so I could wake up and go to the VR lab early (I was hoping I’d get to test my game but the professor wasn’t in the classroom to set up the hardware) and then I didn’t even touch the 3D modeling projects and invested all my time into making a conceptually thought-out virtual reality game.

Choices were made that differ from my usual, typical course of action. I have noticed especially recently that showing up early reveals a lot and allows time for collecting composing and preparing oneself for success. Also, conversations happen during this time which can be useful; I’m usually the one to show up right on time or late and then stay afterwards... But today actually during that time before class where I WASN’T able to test, instead I was actually able to write the code I had been stuck on the night before! The one to demonstrate the *secret* I had envisioned for my game. So that was great, I jsut couldn’t see it during play-testing.

I absolved the issue.... admittedly I am kicking myself for it a bit because I had even known about how to avoid this problem occurring but during actual game dev the problem was never an issue to me. This is a result in the difference between the Steam VR [Camera Rig] asset versus the Unity FPS Controller PreFab. The Main Camera (automatically interjected into a scene when a Unity project is created) needs to be turned off when using the [Camera Rig]. Makes sense. However when testing my game myself, without a VR headset I needed to use the FPS (first-person shooter) and not the VR thing, and the Main Camera does not affect the display of this.

So in the actuality of my own experience I did not anticipate that problem. I located and fixed the problem during class even. But I was proud of my game, that I felt like I included the baseline of everything I wanted to have, nothing serious or crucial was lacking, I gave myself enough time to work it through to a good enough stage.............. My efforts were not quite illustrated although I was able to speak about them, it’s not quite the same as showing your work.

Letting my work speak loudly enough for itself is something I am striving for. I am tired of having incomplete projects I am embarrassed to show as an example of my work ethic. I would like to have a finished, working portfolio to demonstrate my capabilities and creative process. Learning to speak up is part of that journey.

After class I was walking with the classmate from earlier, and I wasn’t sure if he was busy and needed to work on his project or if he was fine if I tagged along. I asked to go check out the work room with him and I got to explore a new area of the Art Building on campus. I have never actually had a class in that building, they’ve been in the design area or otherwise... I got to see some of his sketches and work 8To see his process of creating 2D stop-motion animation was fascinating and inspired me to try out new processes of working, and to work diligently and fruitfully at them.

After hanging around in the art building for a bit, I went to a club meeting for people who like tea. I socialized more and tried to learn names again. The meeting concluded rather quickly but I stayed to socialize afterwards. It was a bit scary but I tried to act relaxed in that environment, which was a bit awkward already due to the short nature of the meeting and the guest presenter who was asking for volunteer help and people didn’t seem too enthused... I tried my best to socialize and as usual I defaulted to talking about school and classes. Whenever possible I try to diverge into study abroad because that leads into travel, language, culture, backgrounds, etc. but someone did that for me, by mentioning they had studied abroad themselves. The girl kind of reminds me of myself, the long dark hair with golden amber ends, the pale skin and “I-rushed-and-didn’t-have-time-for-full-eye-makeup-but-I-can-definitely-do-my-own-face-skillfully” look, with ripped denim jeans and all white skate shoes, calm voice and funny jokes here and there told while maintaining the same voice volume. I wonder if I looked like her a year ago when my hair was like that.

Later talked to someone i had met last school year right after i transferred. He was a tall asian but born in europe, with a european accent. I was so interested. Reconnected with him on a dating app, but I so want to be his friend. I remember him being attractive since he was SO TALL and had nice shoes but I’ll see how much a year has changed things around. Coffee tomorrow. Keep it short and sweet.

0 notes