I’ve been meaning to check out Spline since it slipped into my Instagram algorithm. I’m also making a 3D scene builder/WordPress plugin, so it served as a bit of competitor research (lol). It could show me what points of difference I could focus on. I played around for about an hour, so this won’t be an in-depth review by any means, just a general first impression/intro to Spline post.
A quick 30 minute build. Embed code pasted directly into WP post html widget.
Home
You’re greeted with 3 main cards: the library, community files, and tutorials.
Library
A bunch of useful scenes, 3D icons, basic environments, mockups, etc. These are also accessible within the builder to use while building your own scenes.
Community files
A gallery of scenes built by the community. Popular ones are shown on the front page, and everything is fully remixable. Super useful for copying composition and animation setups.
Tutorials
Dozens of tutorials, from basics to more advanced setups. I’ve also seen some quick tips/tutorials on their Insta. (A bunch on YouTube too, of course).
UI and Navigation
After using Blender/Spark AR, everything was very intuitive. Most movement mouse keys were the same, and properties were easy to find in the UI.
There’s a bunch of basic 2D and 3D objects to add, as well as the ability to add objects from the library. You can also import your own 3D models, so it’s almost limitless.
Animation
It only took me about 5-10 minutes of fumbling around to figure it out, so it’s also pretty intuitive.
Events
First, you add an event, i.e., what would start the animation. These range from your basic key press/mouse movement events to more advanced things like game controls and even API updates.
Actions
Then you add what you want to happen after the event occurs. A regular animation would use the ‘transition’ action. This then requires you to create states of your object, e.g., create a new state, then transform it, and set up the transition to go from one state to another with certain animation values, e.g., delay, animation time, etc. This also has a bunch of options like making API requests, triggering imported 3D model animations, creating objects, transitioning scenes, and a heap more.
Exporting
Formats
More than I expected. Apart from direct public link and embed code, you can export images from the scene, videos of your scene animating, 3D models of your scene animating, full code zip, and others. The free version has a logo watermark in the corner, which is not super intrusive but easily hidable with basic tricks.
Performance review
You can run a performance test, which gives you a list of statistics with an overall score and places where you can improve your scene’s performance.
Although my scenes scored in the high 90s, I still noticed some lag when I had around a dozen or more objects animating/linked to the mouse. This was only in the editor and seemed to disappear when live/embedded on a separate site. Also even a basic scene seemed to require about 400-600kb of library files to run (basic three js can be much lighter).
Final first impression
Overall, it seems like a solid app, especially if you have experience in 3D environment builders already. It can quickly allow you to turn what you make in other apps into an interactive web experience. There are many functions I can see being powerful e.g. API links and advanced event settings.
I would definitely recommend it to people wanting to add a bit of 3D spice to their projects. I have really gained a better understanding about where my app can fill in gaps in the market.
So if you’re interested, go make a free account at https://spline.design/ and build something!