Thingamajig

Thingamajig is a VR-based tool for creating and prototyping interactive experiences and worlds. You build scenes in a creative sandbox, then switch between editing and play modes to test them. It is designed to be usable without prior experience in 3D graphics or modeling.

Build and arrange scenes

You can create objects from boxes, spheres, cylinders, cones and toruses, or import glTF models from tools such as Google Blocks and Blender. Thingamajig also integrates browsing and searching Google Poly and Sketchfab from inside VR, so you can drag models from search results into a scene. A subset of Google Poly models has been archived and remains accessible through the application.

You can position, rotate and scale objects, optionally constraining movement to a line or plane. Snapping tools align objects to points, edges, faces or a uniform grid; custom snap points let you make reusable components that fit together in predefined ways. A jig object supports precise alignment and angles. You can group, ungroup, clone and delete objects, and split imported geometry into pieces that can be regrouped for reuse. Scenes support a wide range of scales, from city skyscrapers to detailed door handles, with undo and redo and automatic saving.

Add behavior and animation

A wiring system connects objects to define behaviors and animations. Gizmo-type objects often have sockets for wires that control parameters. The tools include physics simulation with joints, springs and forces, as well as controls for gravity, mass and drag; objects can be made dynamic with automatically generated optimized collision geometry. Animation options include keyframe components and procedural or interactive animations.

Thingamajig includes gizmos for lighting, cameras and monitors; hinge, sliding and ball joints; springs and force generation; path and look-at joints; and keyframe animation of values, rotations and colors. Other gizmos include a transporter that moves the player to specified locations, proximity and collision detectors, birth detectors that trigger when objects spawn, timers, wave and noise generators, and trigger, accumulator and logic operators. You can also use particle effects such as fire and smoke, an environment object with a sun and sky controlled by time of day or custom gradients and fog, and emitters and sources that spawn objects at specified locations. Anti-gravity gizmos create floating objects with variable drag, while destroy gizmos delete objects in play mode. Hand grip and mount gizmos let objects attach to the player’s hand or let the player ride dynamic objects. Snap sockets provide dynamic connection points that can act as triggers.

Test and share experiences

In play mode, you can move around the world, interact with dynamic objects, climb, jump and ride moving objects; gizmos and wires disappear. Many play-mode features also work dynamically in edit mode, so you can experiment while building. Kiosk mode runs the application in dedicated play mode, allowing you to deploy an experience to one or more PC-based VR kiosks for sharing or for training and education.

A scene lobby provides a central VR location for accessing scenes, represented as bubbles showing a 360° view from the last place visited in each scene. The Thing manager lets you build, browse and search reusable components called Things, creating libraries of pre-rigged objects for different needs.

Import media and devices

You can drag and drop mono or stereoscopic 360° video, with audio, as well as audio files with support for 3D spatialized audio. A Vive tracker gizmo can control objects in VR using a tracker device. The portal camera gizmo tracks the user’s real-world head position through a Vive tracker or controller and uses a monitor or projector as a window into the Thingamajig scene.