Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Equimake is a new indie platform which enables live, multi-user collaborative 3D building on the web. Just launched in early beta, it's the passion project of Canadian developer Alexander Yevsyeyev, who recently gave up his day job in tech to create a new, delightfully accessible means of social creation online. (Watch the demo above!)

"Over the last few years," as he tells me, "I spoke to users of Second Life and other creative platforms, and many have stopped creating. Why? Some said it's too expensive to host their 3D worlds, some found that the learning curve is too steep, and others thought that learning 3D art and coding was too intimidating."

Built in Three.js, Equimake runs completely on the web, designed for anyone from students/novices to seasoned artists and gamers to use — on the web, in groups, with an embedded text chat window for communication/collaboration:

"My goal is to help non-technical people become more technical and make technology more affordable. I want to give everyone a fair chance and opportunity to connect, create, and learn with others. In Equimake, you can create your 3D experience and share it with anyone for free, all from your PC, mobile, or tablet. You can communicate and collaborate with others and explore their creations." It's also integrated with Discord, to foster a community of users and developers.

The platform comes with various templates to use Equimake for architectural visualization, interactive instruction, even games and social hangouts. Unlike some virtual worlds, creators only pay for hosting 3D content when/if there's user traffic to it.

Here's Alex's tips for getting started:

For explorers, there is a Community page with a list of 3D experiences built by the community. You can jump into any of the 3D experiences you like. You can talk to other people in those experiences and see authors creating something live. You may also ask for Editor permissions that will give you access to place, delete and manipulate 3D objects with the owner of 3D experience.

For creators, you can upload up to 15 custom 3D models from platforms like Sketchfab and you can create up to two 3D experiences. There is also a library of public 3D models for those who don't want to upload anything yet. You can invite your friends to build something with you in those experiences… all for free!

More info here. By way of full disclosure, I had a short consulting session with Alex last year, because he wanted to know what lessons from my book could be applied to Equimake. (So clearly he's brilliant.) We haven't spoken since then, but I know from that meeting that he's passionate about empowering grassroots social creativity, and I hope something like this project succeeds.

Questions? Post in Comments, and I'll nudge Alex to reply!