Over the last few months, we’ve been working on refining and improving Ottifox - and today we’re excited to show you the results with Ottifox 2. The release is focused on speeding up your workflow in creating VR designs and prototypes that run in the browser - without coding. It’s out best release yet, and we can’t wait for you to try it - read on for a run down of all the new features and enhancements.
Google Poly Integration
The first big feature is Google Poly integration built straight into the app. Google Poly is a library containing thousands of 3D objects for use in VR and AR. With today’s release, searching and downloading for 3D models is just a click away.
Ottifox will download the 3D model into your scene and also automatically add attribution to your exported project’s splash screen.
Groups and Object Parenting
Up next is a feature you’ve all been requesting, the ability to have object groups and the ability to re-parent objects.
With today’s release you can make any object in the scene a parent of another object by simply dragging and dropping the items in the objects panel. You can also add an empty Group object and drag items into it as well.
Sound Controls
VR is so much more immersive if there’s sound in the scene. Ottifox 2 allows you to import sound files into your scene, and gives you the ability to play and pause the sounds during user interactions, like clicking or gazing at an object.
And best of all, it works on mobile too! We made a lot of effort to get this feature working on both iOS Safari and on Android Chrome on your phones. So connect your Bluetooth headphones and jump into more immersive VR designs and prototypes!
Streamlined UI
Ottifox 1 was inspired by both Apple Keynote and Sketch. While this made the UI look familiar, we saw that there were some areas for improvement for Ottifox’s use case. We also heard from you about ideas to make it more frictionless, and have incorporated that feedback.
The first big change is that you no longer need to expand properties in the inspector panel on the right. Everything is exposed by default so that you can more quickly change object properties.
We also felt like the pattern of having a big tool bar at the top of the app was feeling heavy and taking away from the actual content of the scene. So we’ve streamlined the top bar to be more modern. Now you can simply click the plus button at the top left of your screen to add any of the objects.
We’ve also added a shortcut for duplicating the selected object, just press CMD + D and your good to go.
New Splash Screen
When you preview or export your scene you’ll see the new and improved splash screen. The first addition is the Start button. This serves two purposes. One, if you have audio in your scene, this will allow it to work on mobile. Because on mobile phones, browsers require a user gesture for sound in a scene to work.
And two, animations set to play when the scene is ‘started’ will now wait till the button is clicked. This makes playback of the scene more predictable and controllable. For example if you’ve just loaded the site on your phone and got distracted then you might have missed the initial animations. Now you’ll click the start button and see the animations when you’re ready.
The second addition to the splash screen is automatic attribution to models you’re using from Google Poly. At the bottom left corner of the splash screen, you’ll see ‘Model Credits’ label that allows you to see who created the models, and you can also click the link to go to the model’s page on Google Poly.
New Building Blocks
We’ve added the cylinder object, and the directional light object. Both available from the new plus button.
You can now also lock objects in the objects panel, as well as enable snap to grid in the View menu.
Code Output Improvements
We noticed a few redundant code snippets in output from Ottifox 1 and we cleaned them up. Keeping on our mission to keep the code output from Ottifox clean, readable, and efficient. We’ve also upgraded the exported A-Frame version to the latest. Stay tuned for future releases, we have a few more ideas to keep improving.
Performance and Stability Improvements
Behind the scenes, Ottifox now uses a new database which will make save operations more stable and quicker too. We’ve also fixed a ton of bugs around performance and stability.
Now it’s Your Turn
We think you’re gonna love this release, it makes it even easier for you to step into designing and prototyping VR scenes that run in the browser. Don’t forget to share your projects with us, we’d love to showcase the best work!
If you’re already an Ottifox customer, you can download Ottifox 2 from the email we sent to you this morning. If you’re new to Ottifox, start your free trial today. And if you’re previous trial ran out you can download and try Ottifox 2.
Thanks for helping us push VR (and soon AR) design forward!