Getting started with Rodin.io

Sign Up

It is very easy to start creating in VR, just sign up at rodin.io. The field validation will help you.

OR you can navigate to Sign In page if you already have an account.

Creating a project

Right after signing in, you will be redirected to the dashboard.

Github sync

In case if you have a github account, for your own convenience you can sync your profile with that account and work on your Rodin projects both from Rodin on-line IDE and your standalone IDE.

To do so, click on user icon (top-right) and navigate to the “edit profile”, where you’ll find the “Sync with Github” button.

New project

Let’s go back to the dashboard, where all your current projects are listed (if any).

Hit the thumb “Create new project” to see the available templates you can use for your new project.

Editor v1 (v2 - coming soon with redesign, more powerful and with more 3-rd party integration)

Rodin provides you an on-line IDE (Integrated Development Environment, we’ll call it “Editor”), where you can work on your projects with live preview.

Now open your newly created project in editor (mouse hover on the thumb and click “open in editor”) and run it.

To run the project open the index.html and choose Run - Run index.html in the top menu bar.

The left frame shows the project structure, the middle frame contains the tabbed code editor, the right frame shows a live preview. If the Run - Auto Run is checked, the live preview will reload on every Save (Ctrl+S) event. Rodin library is in ES6 standard, so your projects are created in ES6 by default, however because the ES6 is backwards compatible with ES5, you can code in ES5 as well. On every Save event the whole project is being trans-piled to ES5 to ensure cross-browser compatibility (until ES6 will be fully supported by the majority of browsers).

Private preview

While logged in, you can preview the current state of the project by the URL shown in the address bar of preview frame (https://apps.rodin.io/projects/{username}/{projectname}).

Public preview

If you need your project to be preview-able to non-logged in users as well, go to the dashboard, click on the settings icon on the project thumb (shown when hovered), and in the project settings page click on the Public switch:

When Public switch is ON, the project is available for everyone via URL - https://apps.rodin.io/public/{username}/{projectname}.

Modules

Rodin has a “Store” where you can buy or get free Modules. Modules are independent components that can be used in your projects for different tasks. For Example the Socket Connection module can enable you to send and receive data streams between the active users of your experience (see “Presentation Hall” template).

To get a Module go to the Store (in header menu), and click on the “shopping cart” icon on the module thumb.

When a module is purchased, is will appear in your project settings page in “Modules” tab.

In order to use that module in your project, click on the “+” icon in the bottom-left corner of the module thumb and module will be assigned to your project.

Deployment

Publishing

OK, it’s a nice feature to have a public link of a project, but what about deployment? What if you want to have a public version of the project, but also need to continue the development, without changing the public version, until the next stage of development is done.

For cases like this (and the common sense) you can “Publish” your project. Publishing means creating a separate copy of the current version which is not affected by the further changes you’ll make on the ongoing project until you publish the new version again. To publish your project go to the settings page (settings icon on project thumbnail in dashboard):

As soon as you publish the project you’ll get the published version URL

Later you can un-publish your project, update with newer version or rollback to the previous version if something went wrong.

Custom Domain

You can assign your own domain to your projects, In order to do so, go to the “Web” tab in project settings. Click on the “Add custom domain” switch, and follow the instructions.

Submit, do the setup of your domain provider and your project will be available on your provided URL.

App generation

Any project created with Rodin library is truly cross-platform, and can run on any VR device. All you need to do is generate an app in the corresponding tab of project settings, down load it and deploy to the store or simply run. Let’s generate an Oculus Rift app from out Drag’n’Drop project. Go to the “Oculus” tab in the project settings, fill in the fields and click build.

You’ll be notified when the build is ready for download. Just click the “download” button, and you’re ready to go: publish the app in Oculus Store or use it on your device.