AR Works Studio is here: the full editor, offline

Back in July we made schools a promise: whatever happens to AR Works as a company, the tool should never disappear out of your classroom. The offline version we described in that post was the safety net behind the promise, and at the time it was something we were still building.

Today it has a name and a download button. AR Works Studio is out now, and it is included with the Pro and Education plans. Not released early to a waiting list, not held back for an ownership event that may never happen - included, from today, for everyone on those plans.

What Studio is

Studio is the same editor you use at ar.works, packaged as a Windows desktop app that runs entirely on the computer in front of you. Scenes, 3D models, animation, the drag-and-drop logic nodes, both tracking modes - all of it works with the network cable unplugged.

Your projects are saved on your own machine, and they travel as .works files: one file that holds the whole project and every asset in it. The same files move freely between Studio and your online account, so a project started in a classroom with no Wi-Fi can still be published to a phone-friendly link later, when you want an audience for it.

There is one genuinely new trick too: in the installed version of Studio, 3D scanning runs completely locally. Pick twenty or more photos of a real object, taken in a slow circle around it, and Studio reconstructs a textured 3D model on your own computer. No phone handoff, no upload, no queue.

Getting your licence

If you are on Pro or Education, your licence key is already waiting on your account page, and new subscribers receive it by email as well. Download Studio, click Activate, paste the key, and you are done - activation works offline, so a laptop that never touches the internet can still be activated in seconds.

Studio without a licence is not a locked door, either. Everything works except exporting .works files, so you can try the whole editor before a key ever enters the picture.

The promise still stands

Shipping Studio does not retire the commitment that started all this. It strengthens it.

If ownership of AR Works ever passes from Qode LTD to anyone else, that handover cannot take Studio away from education accounts: education licences never expire and never check in with a server once activated. That is not a policy that a future owner could quietly change - it is how the licence itself works. A resource you build for a scheme of work this year should still open in Studio years from now, whoever runs the online service by then.

You can read the original commitment in full in our promise to schools.

Getting started

Grab the installer from your account page or the Studio documentation, which also covers activation and system requirements. And if you are weighing up a wider rollout for your school, talk to us - we are happy to help you plan it.