One small question,
VR/AR tool kit is mainly developed for Unity.
Please give me some updates on Unreal Engine.
Does VR/AR toolkit also work for Unreal? If not then when we can expect its' arrival.
Thanks!
Yes, the AR/VR toolkit server requires a Unity plugin counterpart to parse the server responses, and at the moment there is no official plan to support Unreal Engine.
However, we provide an alternative solution for bringing Forge models to different platforms and environments: https://github.com/petrbroz/forge-convert-utils. This Node.js library/CLI tool converts Forge models into the glTF format which can then be loaded into Unity, Unreal Engine, and other targets as well.
Related
I have seen that the Forgetoolkit is no longer available via beta.autodesk.com .
I would be interested in how the Forgetoolkit will be used in the future. Is there a roadmap, will version 2.0 be released?
I would be pleased about a short statement.
The current beta host - https://developer-api-beta.autodesk.io - is still available, but I can't answer whether or when the version 2.0 will be officially released...
If you're in need of a Forge-to-Unity pipeline, I'd suggest that you look at this library: https://github.com/petrbroz/forge-convert-utils. It converts the proprietary Forge file format to glTF which can then be loaded into Unity, Unreal Engine, as well as other platforms.
In addition to "Model Derivative", is there any tool provided to be installed locally on our desktop to convert models efficiently?
Or is there any plan to do it from autodesk forge side?
Unfortunately our Model Derivative service does not support local/on-premise deployment. Given the complex and resource demanding nature of this service technically it'd be extremely challenging for desktop grade systems to run efficiently.
There's no plan in the foreseeable future to support private deployment to any on-premise/third party platform either - again the technical complexity and licensing complications would be a major hindrance.
But that shouldn't stop you from coming up with your own locally hosted app to facilitate the translation - see our extractor sample here for inspiration.
I have background in Inventor/Revit API development only, and need to learn enough JS to be able to work comfortably with the Forge APIs. I'll be booking myself into a JS training course to learn general skills, but what topics/modules must I definitely cover to have a solid foundation for Forge API development. I'll be working with BOM data, viewers and possibly web configurators.
Many thanks for your help.
We're a .Net shop that recently implemented the Forge Viewer for a client with Inventor Files. We built our service on top of Azure Functions and utilized as much .Net C# code as possible, as it is where we have the most experience and comfortability. The provided .Net SDK is very helpful: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Autodesk.Forge/.
The only API that you can't do entirely in .Net is the Viewer API. However, to get started I was able to use boilerplate code from the provided examples and get the models loading. From there I had our web developers get involved to handle the more extensive javascript programming for me.
Feel free to bounce any questions you may have off of me. We've just finished going down this road and it is very rewarding, but somewhat challenging at times for us .Net developers.
You need the JavaScript, as you already know. Take some time to improve security and OAuth authentication workflow. This sample includes most of it.
In most cases, you'll need a hybrid desktop app that can connect to the cloud, the image below (from the blog post) shows a generic approach for the architecture using Autodesk Forge (or any other cloud APIs).
I'm just in the planning phase of developing my iPhone/iPad/Android app.
Basically the app will query data from remote data sources and store it locally. As data management will be the key feature of this app, so the UI isn't an important factory in this case. I decided to develop a HTML5 and JavaScript-based hybrid application and deploy it with PhoneGap/Cordova.
I'm a .NET developer, I use Visual Studio 11 for web development, so I found the Single Page Application template, which uses Upshot.js by default.
By exploring the alternatives, I've found JayData http://jaydata.org library. It seems to me that it's something similar to upshot.js.
Could you share your opinion, which way should I go to build a cross-platform HTML5 application?
Upshot and JayData looks similar but actually they are quite different, which makes your choice easier. There are things however both provides
Both has pros and cons (as everything in life)
Upshot.js is backed by Microsoft and focuses mainly on oData + Knockoutjs support. It is included in Visual Studio. You can query oData endpoints with it using a procedural query language.Upshot supports read/write operations, and also realtime updates.
JayData supports multiple datasources, among them are oData but also device local webSql as well, plus some other providers too. JayData let's you query oData or webSql on the same with, with sime JavaScript functions, so you dont have to learn sql and oData uri syntax. JayData provide read/write operations but realtime updates require a small user code.
I'm trying to display on the web (read as create a GIS Web app) topo data layers stored in a POSTGIS/POSTGRES spatial database using mapserver. My problem is, although i happened to come across different gis frameworks that I could use, my lack of experience on using mapserver in the first place makes me indecisive of which framework to use. So what is the easiest framework out there to use? I'm using a MS4W pre-packaged mapserver binaries, and i've installed almost all of the additional packages (frameworks) from their site.
Thanks for the help!:) I
Mapfish (I think python and C based and ideal with mapserver)
GeoServer (java based)
Featureserver (RESTful, light and effective)
Other interesting links:
GEOEXT provides an excellent extension for openlayers
Boston GIS provides excellent tutorials so does Paul Ramsey and Chris Schmidt
The mother GIS - Free Open Source Software OSGEO
FreeGIS - Continually updated list of free and related GIS software
I've used Geoserver and Feature server on multiple occasions, and never got deep into mapserver. I know that Mapserver has a big community and they love helping out, check them out on IRC and their mailing list.
We have developed an interface called OWGIS for displaying GIS data.
Website: http://www.owgis.org
Description:
The OWGIS (Open WebGIS) is an OpenSource Java Servlets web application that creates WebGIS sites by automatically writing HTML and JavaScript code. The WebGIS sites are configured by XML files that define which layers will be displayed on the maps as well as the texts to be used on the interface. OWGIS's most notable features include animations, veritcal profiles and vertical transects, various color palettes, dynamic maps, downloadable data, and multilingual interfaces. All these features are created automatically without any additional web programming.
Since you already got MS4W installed. The easiest way to publish a map service from Postgres is from MapServer which is component of the ms4w.
To start publish wms from MapServer,
1) Read thru the documentation of Mapfile which is the service definition file of how the WMS configured.
2) Read the ogr postgis connection documentation. You would be able to write the database connection follow the instruction pretty easily.
3) Once you got the valid Mapfile with correct postgis connection string info, you are able to publish the WMS for your topos.
MapServer is very powerful and easy to use. The file based service provide a lot of flexibility which is critical when you need publish something dynamically.
GeoServer is very popular too and has a gui which is extremely easy to use, by several click and your services are ready to go.
Other solutions are also available as well. But consider the community user base and tech support. I would recommend using MapServer or Geoserver for your case. We had our Mapserver holding USGS topo services as well, which is very stable,flexible and salable so just some FYI.
Hope it is helpful.