Case Study · Startup Virginia's Idea Factory

Codex3D: Testing demand for a simple "upload → 3D" service.

During Startup Virginia's Idea Factory, I used Codex3D as a vehicle to explore a key question: Who actually cares enough about 3D and AR to pay for a simple service that turns photos into usable 3D assets?

The focus was on people and organizations who need to preserve, present, or share real-world knowledge and experiences digitally — museums, educators, training teams, and product organizations.

Top three opportunity areas

Through interviews and survey work, three repeatable opportunity areas emerged:

Unified, standardized 3D workflow – simplify capture, production, and publishing so it's not "too difficult," "too slow," or "too confusing."
Lightweight, accessible, and affordable tools & templates – provide ways to experiment with 3D/AR that work across devices and skill levels, without feeling "too expensive" or "too uncomfortable."
Storytelling & interactive media around 3D content – use narrative layers, guided tours, and context to expand access, engagement, and educational impact so efforts don't feel "too confusing" or "too wasteful."

Context & hypothesis

I've spent years building AR platforms, photogrammetry workflows, and immersive experiences for museums, defense, and enterprise teams. The technology is powerful—but most teams never make it past interest and experimentation because the tooling, workflows, and staffing requirements are too heavy.

Going into Idea Factory, my hypothesis was that a lot of these pains are symptoms of the same core gaps:

There is no unified, opinionated workflow for moving from photos to a published 3D/AR experience.
Existing tools aren't lightweight or accessible enough for non-specialists to feel confident using them.
Even when 3D exists, storytelling and instructional layers are often missing, so impact is limited.

Customer discovery

Over the course of the program, I spoke with and surveyed a mix of:

Museum and GLAM professionals (curation, collections, digital)
Educators and instructional designers
Developers and 3D creators experimenting with photogrammetry
E-commerce and product teams curious about 3D/AR product views
Training and simulation stakeholders in defense/industry

I used a Jobs-to-be-Done framing—"When you try to capture or publish 3D/AR content…"—to surface real jobs, pains, and desired outcomes instead of just feature requests.

Key findings aligned to the three opportunities

1. Teams want a unified workflow, not more disconnected tools.

Most respondents described their current approach as a patchwork of capture apps, 3D tools, and file-sharing links. What they actually want is a standardized "photo → 3D → publish" pipeline that hides the complexity and reduces the feeling that 3D is "too difficult" or "too confusing."

2. “We don't have a 3D person” is the most common blocker.

Many teams see 3D/AR as valuable, but lack of in-house expertise stops projects before they begin. Capture, cleanup, topology, and file prep are perceived as highly specialized skills. This validates the opportunity for lightweight, accessible tools and templates that non-specialists can use with confidence.

3. People don't want files—they want ready-to-use outputs.

When asked what success looks like, respondents rarely said "a mesh" or "a USDZ." They said things like "something I can embed in my LMS," "a 3D view on a product page," or "a link my students can spin around." That directly supports Opportunity #2: opinionated, reusable templates and outputs rather than raw assets.

4. Use cases cluster into four storytelling-heavy buckets.

Storytelling & interpretation (museums, GLAM)
Teaching & training (education, defense, industry)
Product visualization (e-commerce, marketing)
Documentation & preservation (archives, collections)

All four rely on narrative context, not just an isolated 3D object, which speaks directly to the third opportunity area.

5. Static 3D isn't enough—people want interpretation and context.

Particularly in museums and education, stakeholders emphasized that a 3D model on its own felt underwhelming. They wanted labels, guided tours, comparisons, narration, and multi-modal storytelling to make the effort worthwhile. This aligns squarely with the opportunity to use storytelling and interactive media to expand access and impact.

How this shaped the Codex3D MVE

These opportunities and findings directly informed the first version of Codex3D you see on this site:

Unified "upload → 3D → publish" flow (Opportunity #1) – the MVE focuses on a single, simple path: upload images, choose a mode, receive a 3D output plus a future embed snippet.
Multiple modes mapped to skill level & fidelity (Opportunity #1 & #2) – AI Fast, Photogrammetry, Gaussian Splats, and Pro Processing let different users pick the balance of speed, quality, and budget that fits their situation.
Lightweight front-end, manual fulfillment (Opportunity #2) – during Idea Factory, jobs are fulfilled manually using my existing photogrammetry and 3D toolchain. This keeps the experience accessible while I validate demand before investing in heavy automation.
Designed for narrative layers later (Opportunity #3) – the roadmap explicitly includes hotspots, annotations, guided tours, and integration with Codex Learn / Codex Present so that assets don't live in isolation.

What I'm watching for in this experiment

With this MVE live, the goal is to learn how strongly each opportunity resonates in practice:

For Opportunity #1: Do users feel like the Codex3D flow actually simplifies capture → production → publishing, or where does it still feel "too difficult" or "too slow"?
For Opportunity #2: Which modes do different segments gravitate toward, and what does that say about how "lightweight" or "affordable" this needs to be?
For Opportunity #3: When people talk about success, do they ask for more narrative, interactive, or educational layers on top of the 3D outputs?

Next steps

Coming out of Idea Factory, Codex3D serves as a test bed for a broader Codex Studio roadmap:

Deepen the unified workflow with more automation for recurring capture → 3D → publish jobs.
Explore a Shopify / e-commerce plugin and educator-friendly templates to keep the tools lightweight and accessible.
Layer in Codex Learn and Codex Present so users can combine 3D assets with narrative, interpretation, and guided experiences.
Eventually fold this into a multi-tenant platform for museums, educators, and enterprises to manage and publish 3D over time.

In short: Idea Factory helped clarify that the real opportunity isn't just "better 3D tools"—it's a unified, accessible workflow that turns real-world objects and knowledge into meaningful, story-driven digital experiences. Codex3D is the first concrete step in that direction.