RapidPipeline
3D Data Prep, Made as Easy as Ordering a Pizza.
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alban

RapidPipeline - 3D data prep made easy

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3D data prep is hard. But ordering a pizza is easy. Through an automated toolchain, RapidPipeline makes 3D data prep as easy as ordering a pizza - helping artists prepare 3D content, at massive scale. Deep tech battle-tested on more than 4 million 3D models.

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Max Limper
Maker
šŸ“Œ
First of all, many thanks @albn for hunting our product! We are big fans of Sketchfab, so itā€™s a true honor šŸ™ 1) WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? šŸ“¢ 3D artists out there ā€“ I guess you might know this problem: ā€¢ You have some amazing 3D models and want them ready for different apps and devices ā€¢ All your use cases have their very own requirements (on mesh resolution, textures, supported material model, draw calls, supported file formats, and so on) ā€¢ You end up spending days on re-formatting, optimizing, and translating your 3D contentā€¦ and then there are tight deadlines to meet, which doesnā€™t make it better! ā—We hear you: 3D data prep is hard, and it takes 3D artists so much of their precious time. Working on many 3D R&D projects together, Miguel, Julian, Felix faced exactly the same problems, until we asked ourselves one day: šŸ¤” What if there was a system from which you could simply order just the right downstream versions for all the 3D models in your database or catalog? 2) HOW DID WE GET THERE? šŸ’” Making the whole area of 3D data prep as easy as ordering pizza (a type of food that saved our lives a few times when being up late and crunching towards the next deadline :), the system would enable 3D artists to ā€¢ save precious time and focus their attention on more fulfilling tasks, ā€¢ create their custom workflow recipes where desired (customizing settings for remeshing, texture encoding, atlas baking, and so on), and ā€¢ get every 3D project delivered, reliably, on time, and in budget ā€“ enabling their organizations to successfully use 3D at scale! āš™ļø We ended up doing did a lot of research to build the technology needed to make this vision a reality (I even ended up doing my PhD on it), founded our own company, and quickly found enterprise partners that helped us battle-test our solution, on several million 3D models. This helped our technology (originally called ā€œRapidCompactā€) to get more mature by the day. Now, we are incredibly excited to finally take it to the next level, making it easily available to everyone: 3) šŸŽ‰ SAY HELLO TO RAPIDPIPELINE! šŸŽ‰ Introducing: āœ… an easy -to-use SaaS interface, along with a REST API and on-prem batch processing tools āœ… subscription plans for individuals and SMBs, letting everyone leverage our automation pipeline for 3D data prep as part of their own projects ā€“ no matter what scale they might be! āœ… visual feedback, auto-generated summaries and QA scores for each output model, making it easy to see how close it still is compared to the original source, and āœ… intuitive workflow controls with ā€œbasicā€, ā€œadvancedā€ and ā€œexpertā€ settings ā€“ making our tool easy to pick up for first-day users, while giving more experienced users full control over their workflows. The team and I are super excited about this launch, and we canā€™t wait to see what people will build on top of RapidPipeline, and which opportunities it will unlock across the industry ā€“ in 3D Commerce, including various verticals such as furniture, household items and apparel, but possibly also in many other areasā€¦ and we are much looking forward to your support and feedback! šŸ˜Š
Antoni Kozelski
@albn @mlimper In fact, the team did a great job! congratulations on the release of RapidPipelinešŸŽ‰
Max Limper
Maker
@albn @antonikozelski many thanks Antoni! You're right, it was a great team effort šŸ¤
Kyrylo Silin
Hey, I'm curious what specific pain points in the 3D workflow you're addressing. How does your automated toolchain work, and what kind of time savings can users expect? Also, with 4 million models processed, what interesting insights have you gained about 3D data preparation? Congrats on the launch!
Max Limper
Maker
@kyrylosilin Great questions! So, on the worklow: * We looked at the steps that artists typically do by hand, and how they do that with several different tools (some examples in my PhD thesis here: https://max-limper.de/publicatio...) * Typical stages for a more complex workflow could include steps like mesh simplification (or retopo, or remeshing), removing small and invisible occluded parts, setting up UVs, baking textures for the lowpoly model, compressing geometry and textures, and exporting to the desired formats - which often involves material translation steps. * Time savings compared to a manual workflow can be anything between an hour and a few days - depending on the input data, and on the requirements of the output app(s). We noted that in many cases, our solution would enable certain apps in the first place - for example, if you want to visualize a catalog of products and only have limited time and budget, so there'd be no way to do what you want for 100 or 1000 digital twin products in this case. Regarding the learnings... I guess some are contained in the above already^^ but apart from that we realized that ease of use is a big pain point in general, as well as QA automation. Last year we processed over 100K models for a client, and there'd be no way to manually QA such a batch, obviously :-D so then it becomes all about flagging assets that look "too different" from the input... and in that context, a couple false positives don't hurt (as long as there are not false negatives - so, using a conservative QA scoring metric). Hope that helps already a bit to shed more light on the topic! :-)
alban
Hunter
šŸ”Œ Plugged in
Congrats for the launch, we've experimented with it at Sketchfab and are fans!
Rafa PagƩs
Amazing tool and amazing team!
Max Limper
Maker
@rafapages Thanks much - I should say the same to you! We're big fans of Volograms for several years already :-)
GermƔn Merlo
Hey Max! As a former Designer can see the amount of hour you've worked on this and how it's gonna change designers journey. Happy to see you helping on this and wishing you all the best here!
Max Limper
Maker
@german_merlo1 Thanks so much GermƔn! Happy to see you find the product idea helpful, and hoping to help as many 3D designers as possible down the road! :-)
blank
šŸ’Ž Pixel perfection
Congrats on the launch of RapidPipeline, @mlimper! šŸŽ‰ As a fellow 3D artist, I can definitely relate to the struggles of preparing data for various applications. Itā€™s inspiring to see a solution that not only simplifies the workflow but also saves valuable time for creatives. I really appreciate the customizable settings you've includedā€”this flexibility is key for artists who want to maintain their unique touch while utilizing your automated pipeline. The visual feedback feature is also a game changer, ensuring that the output meets quality standards without endless back-and-forth adjustments. Looking forward to exploring how RapidPipeline can enhance our projects and streamline our processes! Also, itā€™s amazing to see such dedication to research and enterprise partnerships that have helped refine your technology. Can't wait to see where this goes and the potential it unlocks within the 3D space. Keep up the great work! Upvoted!
Max Limper
Maker
@blankwebdev Hey, thanks for the kind words! And happy to read you like it, coming from a 3D art background - @julian_n2 is our tech art OG and we are really trying to build something that helps artist avoid the annoying work, so they can focus on the art... (and not replace them). We believe that this will also create more opportunities for artists, as - by empowering them to deploy their work to more apps easily, resulting in cost savings that make it economically attractive for big companies to work with 3D at scale - so, we hope to help the whole industry scale up their 3D workflows this way, eventually helping 3D to become a new medium for many applications!
Ghost Kitty
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Max Limper
Maker
@zulkarnaim Thanks much Zulkar!
Ghost Kitty
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Jayanth R
This is exactly what good tech is. Removing the drudgery from painful workflows XD Working with 3D itself feels like some legacy system compared to how much easier our lives are getting in other areas. Tools like this are definitely a step in the right direction. Great idea, and all the best on the launch!
Max Limper
Maker
@jayanthr Thanks a lot Jayanth! Yeah it's true - 3D data is so much more complex than images or video... and the problem is not even clear to many who aren't so familiar with the medium. Therefore, it takes quite some heavy lifting to make it easy... but it definitely feels rewarding to see that vision come to fruition!
Chris Schagen
Already thought RapidCompact was a game changer. But this is making an awesome product even better. Congrats on the launch!
Max Limper
Maker
@cschagen Many thanks Chris - it's an honor to read this from you šŸ™
Peter Victor
It's impressive to see such a comprehensive solution for 3D model optimization. Adding more details on supported file formats and conversion options would be beneficial.
Max Limper
Maker
@peter_victor My pleasure! We support most common 3D graphics formats, including glTF, USD(Z), FBX, OBJ, PLY, etc., but also STEP / IGES for CAD files, as well as 3dsMax scenes with V-Ray materials, within our uploader and on-prem tools. Getting the v-ray to real-time conversion right was a heavy lift! We have more of that coming for Modo, Blender, and other native DCC tools. What kind of formats and conversion do you think would help your business the most?
Austin D
This is really cool! I'm a big fan of BabylonJS, love seeing it in a product.
Max Limper
Maker
@austin_dudas Their team is great to work with, and I love how they always keep up to date with the latest glTF extensions, for example - it's an amazing partnership!
Toshit Garg
Congrats on launch of RapidPipeline.....
Max Limper
Maker
@toshit_garg Thx! : )
Ben Rathi
Congratulations on the launch, Max and team! The need for 3D content is only increasing and RapidPipeline is a core part of modernizing that infrastructure
Max Limper
Maker
@therealbenrathi Thanks Ben! Hope we can help to scale up 3D content processing by making it a robust, simple and affordable process
Giuseppe Della Corte
@mlimper I am only an hobbyist with 3d modeling but this looks great. Congrats!
Max Limper
Maker
@gdc thanks Giuseppe! :)
Petra Mo
Congrats @mlimper and team!!!
Max Limper
Maker
@petra_mo Thanks Petra!! :)