Hubs is the talk among several communities who organize virtual conferences (Of course there are other platforms as well), as it allows participants with VR headsets as well as those who don’t, to be immersed in the virtual scene. Accessibility and experience are key in drawing people towards this technology. On top of all, you can create your own virtual spaces (like a building, lecture hall, etc.). This article has been sitting in my drafts for some time now but thought of giving it a go as many people (@ANU) show interest and me about this.
This article, as indicated by the topic, will help you to get an understanding of Mozilla Hubs and how and where you can use it and for what. Additionally, I will share my experience using Mozilla Hubs via browser and VR headset.
Introduction to Mozilla Hubs
For those who do not know what Mozilla Hubs is, it is a virtual collaboration platform. Other teleconferencing tools such as WebEx, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc offer similar features. The best part of Mozilla Hub is that it runs in your browser without any installations and anyone can create their own 3D spaces. There are already ‘pre-build environments’ which you can use with a single click and invite others to join using a URL. Additionally, you can use Spoke (an online 3D scene editor), which is super simple and requires no coding skills, to create your own space as you please. See a quick video below.
Can I try this right now?
Yes, it is as simple as clicking here https://hubs.mozilla.com/G729HTM/never-never-land/
Screen captures in this article are taken from a scene that I created using Spoke for an event. Once you go to the above URL, you will see an interface as shown in Figure 1 below. Click on ‘Enter Room’.
Once you enter, you will be asked to pick an avatar. Well, this is the 3D character that is going to represent you inside the scene. (You can change this at any point so don’t worry). I found a cool avatar from Sketchfab done by MatthewAFisher and that is shown in figure 2 below. You will get this same window to pick your avatar.
If you do not like the one that is shown there, click on ‘Browse Avatars’ and you will get a bunch of pre-designed avatars as shown in Figure 3 below. Pick one of those. If you do not like any of them, either you can create your own or find one online from various sources and copy-paste the URL to the GLB file. Or else download and upload if you already have GLB file clicking on ‘Create Avatar’. Do not spend too much time on this if this is your first time and just want to experience Hubs.
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Once finished, click Accept and click Enter on Screen if you are using your computer. See Figure 4 below.
Test your microphone and Audio and that’s it. Click “Enter Now“.
In Hubs, you get the first-person view on the browser as well. In order to give you a quick understanding of what is first-person vs the third person views, I have included the image in Figure 6 below. I extracted this figure from Oshita et al.’s [1] paper on the Motion-capture-based avatar control framework in third-person view virtual environments.
Back to Hubs. Once you enter the room you can copy-paste URLs (e.g. youtube videos), 3D objects (in .GLB formats) on the screen and it will be shared with all the participants in a room. You can download free .glb files from many online sources like CGTrader, Clara.io, Grabcad, etc. or create your own (Blender is a good tool for this and it’s free) and add them. Optionally, Hubs allows you to browse and add 3D objects within the Hubs window from the 3D asset stores like Sktchfab, Google poly. So there are plenty of options for you.
Alright, you are all set now and inside the never-never land scene that I created. Figure 7 below shows how it will look on your screen/browser. If you followed the URL I shared above (here the link again https://hubs.mozilla.com/G729HTM/never-never-land/) and followed all the steps mentioned, you will get here.
Source: https://arvrjourney.com/hubs-lets-meet-virtually-c9646f7a00ad?source=rss—-d01820283d6d—4
