‘The Wild’ Is A Platform For Collaborative 3D Design In VR & AR

Powered by VR, The Wild’s cross-platform 3D design platform works much like Google Docs.

Last month, the developer of The Wild finally opened the gates to its cloud platform for collaborative 3D design across VR and AR.

Founded by Gabe Paez, The Wild seeks to do what Google Docs does for collaborative word processing, but instead of fulfilling the role of an organizational tool, this app is meant to serve more creative purposes. 

“The magic of being human is connecting in spaces,” Paez said over a crowd of attendees at Portland’s local monthly Design Reality conference September 24th. “Why not design and experience something not only as we experience spaces by ourselves, but by how we experience those spaces together?”

On the stage, a woman held up an iPad with The Wild app loaded onto it. She pointed the camera directly at Paez, who was then standing off to the side in front of a pitch-black section of wall. On the opposite side of the room, Mischa, The Wild’s product manager, stood wearing an HTC Vive headset and a pair of Wand controllers.

With the app connected between the two devices, Mischa was overlaid into the physical space behind Paez, where he was both designing inside of The Wild’s 3D environment and sharing screen space with Paez in real-time.

An ideation tool for “spatial designers,” as Paez defines his target user base, The Wild is designed to support content hooks from major manufacturers and asset repositories. If you wanted to pull down a specific car model or piece of furniture for scale, you could do that. When importing your own content, you’re also able to port meshes and textures as you would with any other 3D design software.

The Wild even comes with support for PBR textures.

Since the collaborative software platform is targeted towards professionals, it does come with an entry fee, getting a seat.

Seats are referred to as “Editors”, which have the ability to manipulate and directly interact with The Wild’s 3D environments. The Wild’s environments can also be exported for others to view without purchasing a seat.

The primary industry that The Wild seeks to benefit first is AEC (architecture, engineering and construction), where “most of an architect’s job right now is to nail down details that are extremely rote; things that algorithms are better at,” according to Logan Smith of Bevel Space, who also spoke to the crowd at Design Reality.

What happens when architects get freedom to play, create and share in real-time? Where previously, spatial design needed to be communicated in 2D language; with VR and AR, ideas can now be fully formed and natively communicated instantaneously.

Beyond developing a platform for 3D designers to work creatively, The Wild seeks to bridge barriers for more efficient communication.

According to Shaan Hurley, a 21 year veteran of design at Autodesk; 3D spatialization software similar to The Wild is what helped the company refurbish the Towne Storage building in Southeast Portland earlier this year.

“Everything from the reconstruction of the building to the planning process was done in VR,” said Shaan in front of the Design Reality audience, mere minutes before Paez took to the stage.

Even the move from Autodesk’s previous office, in Lake Oswego, OR, was facilitated with the use of VR and AR. Employees could see the refurbished Towne Storage building, explore its hallways, and even visualize parking spots. Unlike in 2D, the spatial communication provided by VR created comfort in all of Autodesk’s stakeholders.

With unlimited 3D cloud storage, real-time collaboration, dynamic lighting/global illumination and more advanced features, The Wild presents a significant contender in 3D spatial design.

If you’re interested in exploring The Wild for yourself, you can set it up today on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Windows Mixed Reality, any AR-ready device, and/or desktop.

Image Credit: The Wild