Amazon Sumerian Tutorials - Complete Guide

Have you ever wanted to build a VR, AR, or 3D experience, but just don’t know how you’d even distribute it? Or, are you stuck using your 5-year-old laptop that just can’t quite run Unity, Unreal Engine, or other XR solutions? Still, perhaps you’re just not confident in programming anything for these advanced technologies?

Fortunately, none of these issues need to stop you – not with Amazon Sumerian available! Offering opportunities for professional developers, hobbyists, and beginners alike, Amazon Sumerian will let you easily build for virtual reality, augmented reality, and 3D, while also giving you a quick method to distribute your project to anyone. With this article, we’ll help you understand not only what Amazon Sumerian has to offer you, but also how you can start using it to bring your projects to life!

Table of contents

What is Amazon Sumerian?

Amazon Sumerian is a facet of AWS – Amazon’s popular cloud computing service. With Amazon Sumerian, you’re provided with a concrete set of browser-based tools that let you build 3D scenes and make them interactive. As the technology is built on WebGL 2.0, this has some wonderful implications for developers using it.

First, the entire service is web-based. As such, you don’t need to worry too much about installing extra programs, plugins, or similar. Instead, all building is done from the comfort of your browser. Additionally, when you’re ready to distribute your project, this is likewise done over the web, so there is no complicated exporting or package creation. Instead, you can either embed your project into a website or simply get a URL to send to users – who in turn can connect even with their mobile devices. It also easily integrates with AWS, so if you use these services for other web projects, you’ll have an additional advantage.

The other positive of its WebGL base is that Amazon Sumerian is compatible with WebVR and WebXR. Consequently, you can easily take your apps beyond just plain old 3D and turn them into full-fledged virtual reality or augmented reality experiences. Similar to the above, as this is web-based, as long as users have a compatible VR headset or AR-capable smartphone, they can easily access the project with no fuss.

Advantages of Amazon Sumerian

While there are many VR, AR, and 3D scene solutions available, Amazon Sumerian offers some distinct advantages – regardless of your skill level – that make it a worthwhile service.

Web-Based Production

As mentioned above, Amazon Sumerian is entirely web-based – including both the editor and distribution. This gives it well-rounded, cross-platform capabilities (yes, that includes mobile devices) that can easily suit your needs. It also means there is a low overhead for your customer enablement if you’re using it for that purpose.

Templates & Assets

If you’re a busy, on-the-go person, no need to worry. Amazon Sumerian offers both templates and assets at your disposal. The templates help quickly set up pre-defined scenes for 3D, AR, and VR, so you’ll spend less time fussing to just get your scenes going. Additionally, with a variety of 3D assets and textures available, you can quickly shave off time on production and focus on the aspects that are most important to you.

Want custom assets, though? Don’t fret! Amazon Sumerian accepts FBX (2017) files and OBJ files, so you can add in your own models if you want.

Easy Access to VR & AR

Another one we’ve previously talked about already, but it still stands as an advantage! With pre-made templates at your fingertips, you can easily take any project into the XR world space and go beyond the benefits of 3D – giving you novel ways to improve customer enablement.

Pre-Made Scripts

Amazon Sumerian is also great if you have no coding experience. Using a drag-and-drop UI system, you can easily use predefined actions to do a number of different things. This includes playing animations, processing commands, moving the camera, and more.

However, it does leave its scripting API open and well-documented, so if you need to get custom behaviors into your project, you have the option to do so! It also uses the popular JavaScript programming language, so you don’t have to worry about learning anything too niche.

Sumerian Hosts

What if you’re interested in having virtual characters guide users through different interactions? Well, this is where Sumerian Hosts come in. These 3D animated characters are powered by an easy-to-access AI backend that lets you perform various actions. For example, the hosts have the ability to verbally aloud read scripts you compose or even integrate with voice commands to answer user questions. Of course, you can also customize these hosts to suit your project’s needs. Once again, no advanced programming knowledge is necessary, and you can use these hosts to add innovative solutions to your websites.

Affordability

Amazon Sumerian is quite affordable to host as well. If you sign up to the AWS Free Tier, you can create a scene that is 50MB per less and get access to 100 views/month. However, as long as you don’t need any advanced storage needs, paid hosting only costs $0.38/GB based on bandwidth use (i.e. based on visits). For businesses looking to use this for customer enablement, you won’t be breaking the bank.