Clara.io is web-based

freemium Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium", is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical ( ...

3D computer graphics software 3D computer graphics, sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for the purposes of perfor ...

developed by Exocortex, a Canadian software company. The free or "Basic" component of their freemium offering, however, places severe restrictions, such as on saving models and importing texture maps, which are undisclosed in the company's own descriptions of their plans.

History

Clara.io was announced in July 2013,Clara.io: The Power of Desktop 3D Software in the Cloud.
CG Channel. 2013-07 and first presented as part of the official

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...

2013 program later that month. By November 2013 when the open beta period started, Clara.io had 14,000 registered users.The future of 3D creation: on the web?
FXGuide. 2013-11-04 Clara.io claimed to have 26,000 registered users in January 2014,Clara.io gets an update, funding, and guidance
/ref> which grew to 85,000 by December 2014. Clara.io was permanently shut down on December 31, 2022, but the site is currently still partially functional to logged-in users.

Features

Polygonal modeling In 3D computer graphics, polygonal modeling is an approach for modeling objects by representing or approximating their surfaces using polygon meshes. Polygonal modeling is well suited to scanline rendering and is therefore the method of choice for ...

* Constructive solid geometry *

Key frame In animation and filmmaking, a key frame (or keyframe) is a drawing or shot that defines the starting and ending points of a smooth transition. These are called ''frames'' because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of f ...

animation *

Skeletal animation Skeletal animation or rigging is a technique in computer animation in which a character (or other articulated object) is represented in two parts: a polygonal or parametric mesh representation of the surface of the object, and a hierarchical set ...

* Hierarchical scene graph *

Texture mapping Texture mapping is a term used in computer graphics to describe how 2D images are projected onto 3D models. The most common variant is the UV unwrap, which can be described as an inverse paper cutout, where the surfaces of a 3D model are cut ap ...

Photorealistic rendering __NOTOC__ In computer graphics, unbiased rendering or photorealistic rendering are Rendering (computer graphics), rendering techniques that avoid systematic errors, or Bias (statistics), statistical bias, in computing an image’s radiance. Bias ...

(streaming cloud rendering using V-Ray CloudCloud-based Interactive Rendering with V-Ray within Clara.io.Chaos Group
2013-08) * Scene publishing via HTML iframe embedding * FBX, Collada, OBJ, STL and Three.js import/export * Collaborative real-time editing *

Revision control Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code ...

(versioning & history) * Scripting, Plugins &

REST REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of ...

APIs *

3D model In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical coordinate-based representation of a surface of an object (inanimate or living) in three dimensions via specialized software by manipulating edges, vertices, and ...

library3D Model Library
/ref> *Unlisted and Private scenes (paid subscriptions only).

Technology

Clara.io is developed using

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

WebGL WebGL (short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript Application programming interface, API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-in (computing), plug-ins. WebGL is fully integra ...

and Three.js. Clara.io does not rely on any browser plugins and thus runs on any platform that has a modern standards compliant browser.

Screenshots

References

External links