Blend4Web 17.04 Released

We are glad to present a new release of Blend4Web. Highlights of 17.04: HTC Vive controllers, new bloom, smoother LOD-switching, Cycles background nodes, upgraded Normal Editor, WebAssembly and gzip compression!
https://www.blend4web.com/en/community/article/337/

Hmmm, my HTC Vive arrives on Thursday. This is going to be fun

Thought I would pass this along. An article that relates well to Blend4Web:
https://uploadvr.com/webvrs-magic-window-gateway-pushing-vr-billions-people/
Blend4Web takes the approach that the scene is the same. Each device is like a different size of window to view the same 3D space. I see that same approach transitioning well into WebVR.

Hi Will,
Thanks for sharing the link. Very interesting and inspiring article!

What browser should I use for working with the HTC Vive?
I am working on a Windows 10 machine.
Chrome or Firefox nightly build?

Hi Will, this is well described here:
WebVR Rocks
WebVR Info

Awesome, thanks. I am working on a mixed reality studio that has a second virtual camera perspective composited with the real person in the VR experience, This is being done in VR gaming but I think there is a way to do it with the Chromium VR ready browser. If I get it working I will do the Blend4Web VR demo with it.

I have been patiently waiting to use standard HDR Backgrounds for realistic results in Blend4web. I was really excited about this announcement; yet I cannot seem to get it to work. Is there any updated docs or pointers to use this feature? I'm still kind of confused as to the workflow to use Cycles nodes, yet preview them using the Blend4web engine. I have the same setup of nodes you show in this post (in Cycles); and I have selected "Use Nodes" option in the Blend4wewb engine. Yet when I try to preview it with the blend4web engine, it never shows up . . .

Please don't keep us hanging!!!

In the Blend4Web engine, select the 'Use Nodes (Cycles)' checkbox in the World tab. Then switch over to the Cycles engine to make the node tree. Then you export it to JSON or HTML as normal. I attached my .blend file.

Then, as per the article, I added a Glossy BSDF Node (in Cycles).. It renders out very nicely to HTML.

Here is a link to the currently supported Cycles node materials.