Hi all, i need to build a 3d interactive (on web player) virtual tour of a cathedral and i’m searching for the best real time rendering engine.
Until now i’ve found as best alternatives Unity3D and 3DVia (others?).
I’m concerned primarily of quality of rendering, so can you tell me, based on your experience, what platform could be suggested (please be objective, i know i’m in the Unity3d community)?
3DVia would have the best free engine / renderer that has a web player, you get a multi-threaded deferred renderer with soft shadows and MLAA and good qualilty shaders and post processing… Bigest downside though compared to Unity is lack of in engine baking but you have full support for lightmaps…
Thank you,
this would sound strange to me, since i was thinking that unity3d has a better rendering.
So unity 3d does not support:
-soft shadows
-MLAA
-post processing
Is this correct? If i’m not wrong feature 1 and 3 are already present in unity.
Not in the free version Pro unity has those capabilities to some extent I believe but 3dvia studio is fully threaded which I believe unity isn’t at this point… Also 3dvia studio has occlusion culling and path finding as well in the free version.
Try both I guess 
and see what suits!
Does 3Dvia work on anything other than Windows?
Not yet but I hear Mac and “others” quiet soon!
The Pro version is 64 bit as well if your doing really big visualisation stuff but that is well not free by any means!
For anyone wishing to publish something to a mass audience, that would be a problem.
3dVia web player does support mac:
Doesn’t work on Chrome for Mac, just tried it. Have to say, the examples on the 3D Via website aren’t very impressive. Looks to be on par with demos created with Java (no plugin required) or Flash 3D several years ago. I don’t see 3D Via as being even close to competing with Unity. There are other engines out there that include webplayers, such as Shiva3D and DX Studio. Shiva supports Windows, Mac and Linux but doesn’t have the market penetration that Unity does. DX Studio is Windows only (although they are planning wider OS support).
Have you tried http://billions.3dvia.com/
Although I agree the demo’s they have don’t do the engine justice its a very capable engine and the rendering / performance side of things are very very good there just no public / web demo’s demonstrating it…
Check out some of these videos
The biggest difference really between 3dvia and the other technologies you listed is 3dvia is a part of a VERY big multi billion company (Dassault Systemes ) they specialises in 3D software development so its not a tool that might disappear tomorrow and its developed with long term goals in mind… The downside of course is big companies are not anywhere near as agile as the Unity’s of world…
@kabab - The videos look nice, but I didn’t see anything that couldn’t be done in Unity (or the others I listed for that matter). The -big- difference for me is that 3D Via didn’t work on my machine (Mac running Chrome) whereas Unity does. That’s a big deal for a webplayer. The fact that 3D Via is owned by Dassault Systems doesn’t really change anything IMO. If you look at what their development packages cost, Unity Pro looks like a bargain. Although not as big as Dassault, Unity Technologies seems to be doing pretty well economically.
Unity’s not perfect, there’s lots of room for improvement. But 3D Via’s not even in the same ballpark as Unity when it comes to development for the web.
Yes for sure on the end run time situation Unity is miles ahead! From what i understand full blown Mac support is on the near horizon and support for other devices which means the runtime side of things should even out soon…
Normal 3DVIA Studio is completely free and has a lot of features more then Unity free (run times aside for now), the Pro version is really intended for industrial use buy big companies like the boeings/fords/etc which are traditional Dassault customers so that business model / features set means very little to majority of unity users…
Studio actually comes from the Virtools guys it was made to be the replacement for Virtools which was the first application to do a good 3D web player (still widely used today) so its being made by a very experienced team in that regard…
Don’t under estimate how important strong finances / backing is why do you think Maya, XSI etc etc all fell into the hands of Autodesk 
Anyway I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it they have a bit of work to do on platform support but the core tool is really well designed, in fact if you look at many of the unity 3.4 - 3.5 roadmap features these are things studio already has…
Anyway i’d keep my eye on Studio it has some ground to catch up on runtime support but it is a great tool and it never hurts to have a few more tricks up your sleeve
IMO it’s always a good idea to stay on top of what other technologies are doing. I’ll be watching 3D Via also, who knows what the future may hold?