Looks like it’s a busy SIGGRAPH for the graphics industry and as ever, that always comes has a bearing on the design and visualisation industry. One company killing it this week is Luxion. Yesterday, we had the news that it’s signed up with the DuPont Performance Color team to bring its Hot Hues to KeyShot’s materials library. Then we’ve had a bevvy of announcements about using 3d visualisation on the web.
KeyShotVR
Fully interactive version of this is found here
The first is the announcement of KeyShotVR. This uses a technique that’s been around for decades in the form of QuickTimeVR and has since been found everywhere. Basically, the system can render out the frames to create a tuntable or rotisserie style animation. As you mouse over it, drag the model left or right, the frames are preloaded and gives the effect of a live animation.
The tools to generate these are going to be delivered as an add on to KeyShot Pro and will output not only the images (which is some cases can be around 100 images or so depending on the animation type) as the resolution required (it also includes levels of detail), but also the Javascript and HTML code to make it work. What’s interesting is that this is HTML5 based so doesn’t need a plug-in to work – just a compatible browser. There’s a bunch of examples at www.keyshot.com/vr/ – go check them out. I’m curious to know how you see this working its way into your workflow – leave us a comment with your thoughts.
LuSt
Second up is the announcement today of a joint effort between Luxion and Sabretooth, to create LuSt, the “first 3D Realtime Web Service Platform.” The idea here, unlike the KeyShotVR approach, is a much more adaptable approach to serving up 3D rendering images on the web. Anyone that’s played with any automotive website of late, perhaps NikeID will know what I mean. High quality images, adaptable to product configurations.
Of course, this isn’t an off the shelf solution and the likes of RTT have been making a fair proportion of their income from this type of work for decades – as a consultancy. It looks like the LuSt offering isn’t all that different with Luxion providing the tech and Sabretooth (a digital production house) providing the services. You can bet your bottom dollar that this is targeting those larger customers in Luxion’s community, rather than the traditional KeyShot user base – but I’d hope that the company finds a way to democratise some of this technology to it’s wider audience.
