On August 6, Vivaty launched a new program for content developers called Vivaty Create, and also released the new Vivaty Studio. Mark Hull, Vice President of Products at Vivaty, explains us what they are in the interview he gave to Hiperia3D News.
In a previous article series, I analyzed 6 different systems to have your 3D world in Facebook or in a web page. Vivaty was one of the most remarkable ones.
Vivaty has one of its strong points in that everything is based on X3D, the standard for interactive and immersive 3D content. Tony Parisi is one of the founders of Vivaty, and he's the co-father of VRML, and the editor of the X3D specification. So it's not strange that they're taking X3D to its natural place: multiuser virtual worlds.
As an introduction to the interview, I will explain shortly what are Create and Studio and what are they for.
Vivaty Create
http://developer.vivaty.com/
Most of the systems to have an embeddable 3D world have an online catalog that contains objects. These objects can be inserted in the 3D scenes. These catalogs use to be limited, and having a big catalog of 3D objects is one of the most important feature for users.
Vivaty Create is an initiative that Vivaty has started to build a big catalog of objects and scenes. It is a process in which you upload your objects and scenes and they'll be featured in Vivaty. That way you get promotion of your modeling skills, and they get objects for the application catalog. But you can even win $1,000 in cash towards a trip to the San Francisco Bay Area to meet the Vivaty team in person.
They have also called all users and 3D designers (developers, content creators, hobbyists, animators, and modelers) to share their ideas, ask for features, etc.
There's even a developer wish-list in which you can suggest anything that you find valuable. For example, the ability to use VRML avatars has been suggested.
The first participants will also have the opportunity to join as members of the Vivaty Create Council, and belong to a selected group of users.
No sex, violence, or offensive material is allowed. You must also send optimized content, that meets some requirements, and in X3D format. Think that the idea is to have fast loading scenes and quick access for the object and scenes catalog.
You can consider Vivaty Create as a way of integrating yourself in the Vivaty community. With this initiative, Vivaty gives the voice of their users a place inside their organization.
Vivaty Studio
http://www.vivaty.com/downloads/studio/
In a previous article I mentioned Flux Studio, which was developed by the same company before it changed its name to Vivaty.
The company has continues its development, and now they offer us Vivaty Studio for free. With it, you can create full X3D worlds, and also content for the Vivaty Platform.
Vivaty Studio is a very complete world edition application, as you can see in their feature list. It can also import your content from other famous 3D modeling applications.
The many users of the old Flux Studio can now be sure that the project will continue growing, and they can keep on creating great X3D content with Vivaty Studio.
Interview With Mark Hull, Vice-President Of Products At Vivaty
Mark Hull is the Vice-President of Products at Vivaty. He ran more than a dozen businesses at Yahoo! (including Groups, Photos and Personals), and also ran product management and marketing at iWin and MerchantCircle.
With his vast experience, he explains in Vivaty's own words, what are Vivaty Create and Studio.
- What will be Vivaty Create? Is it a repository of objects and scenes, a showcase of 3d works, or both?
- The first phase is not a repository or showcase per se. Vivaty Create is the pilot phase for our new developer program. We are starting with a manual content submission process, where creators email us their files to vivatycreate@vivaty.com. We are accepting both Scenes and Objects and we hope to get a much wider variety of content than we could ever produce (or dream up) internally. Select submissions will be showcased on vivaty.com and inside Vivaty Scenes by mid-October, when the contest ends.
- How will this project be shaped? Will it be a web page at Vivaty, or will it be done through an application?
- Submissions are currently being taken via an email address (vivatycreate@vivaty.com) but we see this evolving into a submission process on the web. Whether that's on vivaty.com or through an application, we have not decided that yet. We hope to get feedback from developers so we know how they want this to work.
- What are the advantages for contributing to Vivaty Create?
- Getting involved early means your feedback will have a louder voice and you'll always be one of those first contributors to this program. Your content, if chosen, could also be some of the first third-party content that Vivaty users see and experience. Top content creators can win prizes ($1,000 towards a trip to the San Francisco area to meet us and give us your thoughts first-hand, as well as other prizes) Other advantages: this is all web-based and flexible enough to include anyone who is exporting to COLLADA and many other file types.
- Let's talk about Vivaty Studio. Is it similar to Flux Studio, the previous design studio of the company?
- Yes, it's very similar to its predecessor, Flux Studio. Vivaty Studio is a tool that's used to create and publish for the web…it's designed to simplify the complicated aspects of 3D for the casual creator, while exposing more powerful features to advanced creators. You can read more about the specific features of Vivaty Studio here: http://www.vivaty.com/downloads/studio/
- What kind of worlds can the users produce with Vivaty Studio?
- Vivaty Studio imports many types of files (including COLLADA) and then exports an X3D file. Based on open standards, X3D is supported by more companies and creators than Vivaty alone.
- What file formats will Vivaty Studio be able to import?
- For Vivaty Create, developers would do the following to send us either scenes or objects:
1. export COLLADA files and many other supported file formats (see http://www.vivaty.com/downloads/studio/Studio_Feature_List.pdf for all the details)
2. open them in Vivaty Studio
3. save them as .x3d files
4. send them to vivatycreate@vivaty.com.
-What is the output file format that will have the contents created with Vivaty Studio? Will they be X3D?
- Yes, X3D is right.
-Is Vivaty Studio an application for use with Vivaty Scenes, or can it be considered a complete solution for X3D authoring?
- Vivaty Studio has its roots in being a complete authoring tools for X3D development. Vivaty Studio can be used as a lightweight modeling tool for creating 3D content from the ground up, or it can be used to import COLLADA content from a range of tools (3D studio Max, Maya, Google Sketchup, Blender, Milkshape and many others). The evolving focus is to optimize the tool for publishing to the Vivaty platform, starting with our first application, Vivaty Scenes. But we don't see those two things (authoring and publishing for the web) as mutually exclusive.
Conclusion
Vivaty is expanding the presence of X3D on Internet and at the same time developing an excellent multiuser 3D platform.
I see their project as a whole movement towards an interactive 3D web. Vivaty Create, Vivaty Studio, Vivaty Scenes... they are all branches of a bigger structure that will bring us to a wider range of 3D interaction on social networks.
© by Jordi R. Cardona. Link to this post without copying the text.
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