Toolkit: Modest3D Editor—Interactive 3-D Without Coding!

Last month, I reviewed Modest3D’sXplorer tool. This month’s reviewfocuses on Modest3D’s other major content development tool, Modest3D Editor. Editor is a tool for creating 3-D interactive training solutions withoutcoding.

Both the Editor and Xplorer tools arepart of the Modest3D Suite, which includes four applications (Figure 1).

Figure 1: TheModest3D Suite

Creating 3-D interactive trainingapplications is very useful when you need learners to focus on a complexprocess that requires a high amount of visualization and interaction. This iswell-suited for training on complex equipment or on tasks that are dangerous orcostly to perform in real-life, and where alearner benefits from visualizing the taskin an interactive environment.

Editor gives you the powerto open a 3-D virtual environment and:

1. Use a drag-and-drop approach to assign interaction nodes to components in the scene.
2. Connect each of the interaction points or nodes to define the path by which alearner will interact with the 3-D virtual environment, as shown in Figure 2.
3. Reuse created strings of interactive sequences; savedevelopment time by using these as templates that you can share with others onyour team.

I’ll touch on each of these featuresin this review and discuss how they allow you to create verycool learning applications. Youcan also check out the creation process in the video:

Figure 2: Modest3D Editor Storyboard—connecting nodes to form a lesson sequence

The approach

We talk a lot in eLearning aboutcreating storyboards. We borrowed the idea, of course, from the film industry.Unlike a movie, though, the storyboards we create are not simple drawings thatshow how a scene will play on screen. Our storyboards tend to be much moredetailed, in fact, because whereas movies are linear media, our eLearninglessons, when done correctly, are highly interactive and often multi-pathed.Movies provide the same experience for everyone; good eLearning should adaptitself to the learner’s needs.

In Modest3D Editor, the Storyboarderis where you create the logic for your lesson, defining how the virtualenvironment responds when a learner interacts with components in the scene. Youstart creating a lesson by first loading a 3-D model into Editor, and thenassigning behaviors based on what happens when a learner interacts withdifferent components associated with the 3-D model or models in the scene.

In the Modest3D Editor there is anEditor window and a Player window, as seen in Figure 3. You can drag components of the scene in the Editor Windowdirectly into the Storyboarder to define the component with which a learnerwill be interacting in the lesson. You can preview the scenario in the PlayerWindow.

Figure 3: Editor and Player windows in Modest3D Editor 

A 3-D model is normally made up ofseveral components. For instance, if you’re having your learners study how toperform a maintenance procedure on a car, you may have a car model in whicheach door, the hood, the trunk, the tires, the components of the engine, andother parts are all defined such that learners can work with them individually.

As stated, to create a 3-Dinteractive lesson you drag and drop different components of your 3-D modeldirectly up to the Storyboarder. For example, you can grab a specific bolt fromthe 3-D model and drag it into the Storyboarder and the Storyboarderautomatically creates a bolt node for you.

It’s a pretty smart system

The Storyboarder has a smart filtering system, onlyshowing you the list of options that can be assigned to the specific object inquestion, or options that make sense, based on the preceding node, as seen inFigure 4. In addition, if you start typing in the storyboard to search for aspecific functionality, the list will instantly use what you type as a filterto eliminate options that don’t match your search.

Figure 4: Example of automatically suggested Interaction Nodes  

Creatingmulti-pathed lessons

The Storyboarder is flexible,allowing you to create multiple paths through a lesson, aligned with how learnerscan perform tasks in different sequences in real life. Each interactivecomponent is defined as a node and, when nodes are connected, they form theflow of your lesson.

To create rich learning experiences, this requiresthat a learner has options if there are alternate ways to perform a task, soyou should provide learners with choices and ensure the learning scenario canprovide feedback on a choice. In some solutions, creating a scenario withmultiple paths can create a lot of additional work, but in Modest3D Editor you createalternate lesson paths through a fork node, which allows learners to select onepath or wait until they’ve completed all paths before moving forward.

Creatinga template to repurpose a sequence of nodes

For times when you are using a similar node sequence,for example, the way you will have a learner interact with a bolt, it canbecome tedious to create the same string of nodes for what could be hundreds ofitems that are all to behave in the same manner in a scene when a learnerinteracts with a component. For example, let’s say that you want the learner toroll over an object to highlight it, roll off an object to unhighlight it, andclick the object to both unhighlight and then animate it. Perhaps you wouldlike to apply the same four actions you see in Figure 5 to other objects aswell. You can collapse the actions and the object into a template that youname.

Figure5: Example of a node sequence to removea bolt

In Figure 6, you can see that we’ve applied the name Bolt Removal to the template and then appliedit to a second object. Now the same actions are applied to two different bolts. If you want to change this template inother courses that have used it previously, you have that option as well.

Figure 6: Templating a nodesequence and applying the template to additional bolts

Creatingrich learning applications

As you add and connect more nodes, youare defining your lesson path. You can continue to add more optionsto give your learners a very rich learning experience. In Figure 7 youcan see a built-out scenario, and the player view of the scenario in Figure 8.The learner can move around the room, make choices in response to prompts youprovide, and get a strong understanding of how to perform those actions in reallife. They can also see the negative consequences of making mistakes, all whilein a safe environment. You can provide the learner with instructions on how toperform a task and have the learner interact directly with the scene to performa maintenance scenario.

Figure 7: Example of astoryboard sequence for a disassembly scenario

Figure 8: Example of Player preview in Modest3D Editor: removing components

To learn more

Ready to jump in and try your hand atinteractive 3-Dwithout coding? Download the trial versionsof Modest3D.Let us know what you think in the comments section below.