6 ms·

Clara.io Shutting Down

78 points by tarr11 4y ago

Received this email today: Hi Clara User, This is a notice that we are retiring the Clara product and services on December 31, 2022. If you have files that you would like to continue using, please download that content before December 31, 2022 because it will not be available after. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for using Clara. Sincerely, Clara Admin Team

AgusEchenique 4y ago
Upon receiving the email, I google it and then got here. This discussion is sad but very informative for me because we are building a platform for users to create, share and embed web based 3D experiences. But based on the experience we had in the past with clients, we stablished some main rules: - it has to be simple: users don't need to be well versed in 3D. - it has to be complementary to well stablished 3D tools: blender, maya, etc. - it has to be, whenever posible, engine agnostic: three.js handles the import/creation stage, but from there, you should be able to populate experiences in any web based engine or framework. After reading this insightfull discussion, it's clear that we're walking a thin and blury line. We're still in early stages, so I would be gratefull if you guys could tell me what you think about our project. Thanks in advance :)
badungus 4y ago
Man, that’s a real bummer. This is the website I would always use to model things with on the crappy school computers. I’ve made lots of things with clara.io and it’s sad to see it go.
- Jaki-Z 4y ago
  same.
bhouston 4y ago
This is true. I will post a post-mortem on it as some point in the next month. But I can confirm that we are shutting it down: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@BenHouston3D/109445706917253009 https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@BenHouston3D/109445706917253... We (Exocortex.com) started Clara.io in 2012, launched it in 2013. But we stopped work on it in 2015. We then launched Threekit.com, which was originally built upon Clara.io tech, but then we rebuilt the tech stack to better suit the commercial product visualization market needs. Eventually Exocortex renamed itself Threekit as it was a viable future. Under the Threekit brand we have raised $65M and have grown to 100 employees. So the company behind Clara.io, Exocortex, has grown and is succeeding, but Clara.io never really made any money in its original mission as an online 3D editor. It is filled with +1M free users. We kept it running for 7 years after we had stopped development, but at some point you have to call it. It is hard to keep such an old tech stack running (it used pre 1.0 Node.js originally and still uses a highly modified 2012-era Backbone.js as React hadn't been invented yet.)
- famahar 4y ago
  So every 3D model not downloaded by the end of the year will disappear? 100000+ models that can help hobbyist creators build their dream project. I'm sure there are archivists that would gladly save them all so others can use them, but 1 month is quite a deadline. It's sad to see such a large amount of resources just disappearing
- tomcam 4y ago
  Reading through your answers I’m hugely impressed by your honesty and forthrightness. Hoping Threekit gets huge.
- tomp 4y ago
  Why not open-source it?
  - Benjamin_Dobell 4y ago
    Nothing to add on Clara.io. However, just wanted to state that Ben Houston is/was one of the more prolific three.js contributors (https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/graphs/contributors https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/graphs/contributors) and consistently pushed three.js in a better direction. Thank you!
    - bhouston 4y ago
      Thanks! In many ways Mrdoob's Three.js was critical to Clara.io working. His leadership of Three.js over the past decade has transformed online 3D. And the community around Three.js was critical to it actually working. WebGL was so buggy on devices in 2013-2015 that it was only through joint community effort that we were about to work around those device-specific bugs.
      - techsavygamer0 4y ago
        Hey Ben - thoughts on WebGPU support, and the potential for a web-based metaverse?
eerikkivistik 4y ago
Sad to see it go, but I perfectly understand. You may or may not remember, but we had a chat about some of the backing tech about 5 years ago. I am one of the founders of 3dc.io and we are shutting it down for similar reasons. Ironically our tech stack behind both products is pretty identical.
- bhouston 4y ago
  Yeah unfortunately nearly every company that tried to be a general web based 3D editor failed to find a market. There is a new generation now out so it will be interesting to see how that goes: womp, spline.design and I guess vectary is still around. I think there is another recent one as well but I can’t remember the name. I think the AI driven tools is the next hot area personally. I think Blender is the real 3D editor that won over the last decade.
  - sandkoan 4y ago
    Is there a particular reason that web-based 3d editors failed to find a market? Is it just that those working in the modelling space are already well-versed in actual editing tools, so they don't really have a need for something like this, while the average nontechnical/nonspecialist consumer has little reason to edit 3d? Because Figma seems to have taken off despite having largely a similar model. Would a collaborative version of the 3d editor concept be more of a success?
    - bhouston 4y ago
      One major limitation is memory. The browser only gives you about 1gb of memory to play with. But blender lets you play with as much as you have on your device. As well multithreading is limited or very difficult in the browser. On desktop it is a lot more flexible. Also we are competing now with Blender which is fast moving and free. Blender is now a seriously alternative to 3Ds max and Maya. A web based editor is at many disadvantages. Figma isn’t competing with an effective open source tool. Also its resource requirements are much lower so it isn’t limited. Its market is also larger. Not saying it is impossible to compete but it isn’t simple. Even if you are feature competitive, which is hard, you are likely slower and more resource constrained and also how can you charge much if Blender is free? Paying for an inferior experience? That is a hard sell.

78 points by tarr11 4y ago

AgusEchenique 4y ago

Upon receiving the email, I google it and then got here. This discussion is sad but very informative for me because we are building a platform for users to create, share and embed web based 3D experiences. But based on the experience we had in the past with clients, we stablished some main rules: - it has to be simple: users don't need to be well versed in 3D. - it has to be complementary to well stablished 3D tools: blender, maya, etc. - it has to be, whenever posible, engine agnostic: three.js handles the import/creation stage, but from there, you should be able to populate experiences in any web based engine or framework. After reading this insightfull discussion, it's clear that we're walking a thin and blury line. We're still in early stages, so I would be gratefull if you guys could tell me what you think about our project. Thanks in advance :)

badungus 4y ago

Man, that’s a real bummer. This is the website I would always use to model things with on the crappy school computers. I’ve made lots of things with clara.io and it’s sad to see it go.

Jaki-Z 4y ago
same.

bhouston 4y ago

This is true. I will post a post-mortem on it as some point in the next month. But I can confirm that we are shutting it down: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@BenHouston3D/109445706917253009 https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@BenHouston3D/109445706917253... We (Exocortex.com) started Clara.io in 2012, launched it in 2013. But we stopped work on it in 2015. We then launched Threekit.com, which was originally built upon Clara.io tech, but then we rebuilt the tech stack to better suit the commercial product visualization market needs. Eventually Exocortex renamed itself Threekit as it was a viable future. Under the Threekit brand we have raised $65M and have grown to 100 employees. So the company behind Clara.io, Exocortex, has grown and is succeeding, but Clara.io never really made any money in its original mission as an online 3D editor. It is filled with +1M free users. We kept it running for 7 years after we had stopped development, but at some point you have to call it. It is hard to keep such an old tech stack running (it used pre 1.0 Node.js originally and still uses a highly modified 2012-era Backbone.js as React hadn't been invented yet.)

famahar 4y ago
So every 3D model not downloaded by the end of the year will disappear? 100000+ models that can help hobbyist creators build their dream project. I'm sure there are archivists that would gladly save them all so others can use them, but 1 month is quite a deadline. It's sad to see such a large amount of resources just disappearing
tomcam 4y ago
Reading through your answers I’m hugely impressed by your honesty and forthrightness. Hoping Threekit gets huge.
tomp 4y ago
Why not open-source it?
- Benjamin_Dobell 4y ago
  Nothing to add on Clara.io. However, just wanted to state that Ben Houston is/was one of the more prolific three.js contributors (https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/graphs/contributors https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/graphs/contributors) and consistently pushed three.js in a better direction. Thank you!
  - bhouston 4y ago
    Thanks! In many ways Mrdoob's Three.js was critical to Clara.io working. His leadership of Three.js over the past decade has transformed online 3D. And the community around Three.js was critical to it actually working. WebGL was so buggy on devices in 2013-2015 that it was only through joint community effort that we were about to work around those device-specific bugs.
    - techsavygamer0 4y ago
      Hey Ben - thoughts on WebGPU support, and the potential for a web-based metaverse?

eerikkivistik 4y ago

Sad to see it go, but I perfectly understand. You may or may not remember, but we had a chat about some of the backing tech about 5 years ago. I am one of the founders of 3dc.io and we are shutting it down for similar reasons. Ironically our tech stack behind both products is pretty identical.

bhouston 4y ago
Yeah unfortunately nearly every company that tried to be a general web based 3D editor failed to find a market. There is a new generation now out so it will be interesting to see how that goes: womp, spline.design and I guess vectary is still around. I think there is another recent one as well but I can’t remember the name. I think the AI driven tools is the next hot area personally. I think Blender is the real 3D editor that won over the last decade.
- sandkoan 4y ago
  Is there a particular reason that web-based 3d editors failed to find a market? Is it just that those working in the modelling space are already well-versed in actual editing tools, so they don't really have a need for something like this, while the average nontechnical/nonspecialist consumer has little reason to edit 3d? Because Figma seems to have taken off despite having largely a similar model. Would a collaborative version of the 3d editor concept be more of a success?
  - bhouston 4y ago
    One major limitation is memory. The browser only gives you about 1gb of memory to play with. But blender lets you play with as much as you have on your device. As well multithreading is limited or very difficult in the browser. On desktop it is a lot more flexible. Also we are competing now with Blender which is fast moving and free. Blender is now a seriously alternative to 3Ds max and Maya. A web based editor is at many disadvantages. Figma isn’t competing with an effective open source tool. Also its resource requirements are much lower so it isn’t limited. Its market is also larger. Not saying it is impossible to compete but it isn’t simple. Even if you are feature competitive, which is hard, you are likely slower and more resource constrained and also how can you charge much if Blender is free? Paying for an inferior experience? That is a hard sell.