What is the best 3-D technology for the "Online Room Planner" site?

Question

The main user-case is:

1. Create the 2D floor plan
2. See the 3D view of the room in colors and in dynamic lighting (switching on and off the lamps)
3. Select the furniture from the large library of predefined samples.
4. Change the color and texture of the furniture samples.
5. Create the photos of the 3D room view from different points.
6. Also user can move and turn the camera in the room and discover the view.

Answer 1

Take a look at what some people are doing using Papervision3D in Flash/Flex.

However, if your asking this question, then this is way too ambitious of a project for you.

Answer 2

I suggest you look at developing for the Flash Platform like the guys from Suite75 did when they did floorplanner.com.

Answer 3

While doing 3D in flash is cool and nice, why not use a tool that actually supports 3D acceleration on the users graphics cards, while Unity is a game engine, i think you would be able to create your tool with it, in addition you get support for creating 3D content in a variety of modelling tools, Unity support web plugins. There are also a couple of Java 3D engines out there JMonkeyEngine is only one of them.

I think you would get better performance and visual quality with either of theese than what you can achieve in flash.

Answer 4

This is a very nice Java room planner - http://www.sweethome3d.eu/index.jsp

Answer 5

What about http://www.3decorator.com. Made in Flex/Papervision3D It is fully 3D online room planner. It looks nice!

Answer 6

You can try 3DMLW 3D engine. This will let you do any custom 3D application that is capable running in web-browsers.