| Q&A |
 Daniel
Cook
Anark
02/04/05 |
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Interface
d'Anark Studio 3.0
1. à gauche les slides
2. en bas la timeline
3. à droite en haut la librairie
4. à droite en bas les propriétés
5. au centre la visualisation de la scène |
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| Q1 |
A
brief presentation of Anark and Anark Studio. |
| A1 |
Here
are the basics:
- Anark Corporation provides powerful enterprise software
and solutions to organizations that need to cost effectively
deliver high-end, interactive 3D based applications.
- Anark customers such as Boeing, MASCorp, USAF, Sony and
Maserati improve efficiency, save money and communicate more
effectively with mission-critical interactive Product Visualization,
Training, and Corporate Communication applications.
- Anark Studio is the most powerful rapid application authoring
tool for efficiently creating interactive 3D content. The
unique combination of flexibility, power and workflow is why
product design, training and marketing professionals turn
to Anark Studio when they need interactive 3D.
In the early days of our industry, companies created tools
for ‘experimental 3D’. The projects that resulted
were academically interesting, but not very useful or cost
effective.
We are entering a new period that I like to call ‘useful
3D’. Real companies are trying to solve real problems
and interactive 3D offers them a great solution. Big trends
like product life cycle management (PLM) and Serious Games
require interactive 3D to be successful. The viz/sim industry
alone is $48 billions dollars and is growing at upwards of
18% a year. In short, we have a great opportunity in front
of us.
The best 3D tools will not only have advanced 3D engines,
but they will also have ease of use, workflow, integration
with existing data sources, and the ability to distribute
content widely. Anark’s goal is to finally give you
the ability to finally produce interactive 3D applications
in a rapid and cost effective manner.
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| Q2 |
What
are the new features of Anark 3.0? |
| A2 |
Anark
Studio 3.0 is a major release that focuses on creating large
scale enterprise training and visualization applications. We
took the top requests from our users and added them to the product.
We like to joke that there are twice as many features in 3.0
compared to Anark Studio 2.5.
Some highlights include:
- Text: A robust text engine that graphic designers can use.
I think this is a first for a real-time 3D authoring tool. Text
can be dynamically changed during run-time and it also supports
international fonts.
- Slides: You can easily set up states of a presentation or
of a menu.
- XML support: Connect with external data sources
- Playback modules: Dynamically load Anark presentations during
run-time. This allows you to make huge training applications
with hundreds of sections. You can make preloaders, configuration
tools and more. It opens up an entirely new level of application
development.
We’ve also improved memory management, scripting power,
and our 3D importers as well. Users will be pleasantly surprised
by the substantial boost in authoring power. |
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| Q3 |
What
is the learning curve for Anark? |
| A3 |
If
you are familiar with the basics of real-time 3D and traditional
2D multimedia tools like Flash or Director, Anark is very easy
to learn.
The
interface is quite intuitive and we include video quick start
tutorials to get you up and running quickly. One of my favorite
new additions is the online Assistant palette that lets you
search dozens of tutorials and download new content. Here is
a link you want to see what is available: http://www.anark.com/developer/studio_assistant/user/search_results.asp?search_item=&acID=0
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| Q4 |
Is
it easier and faster to develop interactive 3D contents with
Anark compared with other 3D solutions? |
| A4 |
Absolutely.
Anark Studio has a very different design philosophy than most
3D solutions. We focus heavily on artist workflow and cost-effective
production of interactive 3D.
Many 3D solutions focus on technology and ignore workflow. Unfortunately,
users new to 3D don’t realize that 3D engines are a dime
a dozen. They get excited that you can spin an object and don’t
think about what it will take to solve their real business problem.
The truth is it really only takes a couple weeks to write a
3D engine from scratch if you know what you are doing.
To most users, these 3D solutions are worse than useless. You
need to learn strange programming languages, the presentations
won’t playback on most machines, and often you need a
team of developers to produce simple things like menus. In the
end, companies give up on 3D as too difficult and a waste of
money.
Anark believes passionately in creating easy to use, powerful
tools that allow artists to rapidly produce high quality work.
Our customers need to finish their project within budget and
on time.
We’ve borrowed some of the best of breed interface elements
from proven programs Flash, AfterEffects, Director and more.
Developers can work in a familiar environment and produce amazing
results in far less time than traditional ‘game editor’
style tools. We’ve tested our tools in intense production
environments over the past three years.
Everyone has technology. Only Anark has the developer friendly
tools that help you get the job done. |
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| Q5 |
Is
it possible to integrate Anark Contents in other applications?
Is it possible to read/write datas (xml parsing, SQL queries)
with Anark? |
| A5 |
We
recently released our Anark Client SDK that gives you the ability
to embed the Anark Client ActiveX control in your applications.
A 3D solution that cannot tie into databases and enterprise
data is a dead end for most companies. 3D needs to be more than
a pretty face to be useful.
Anark Studio 3.0 can read/write XML data. We integrate nicely
with middle-tier systems and databases in enterprise environments.
In combination with our integrated JavaScript engine, text and
the ability to dynamically load Playback Modules, Anark is ideally
suited for creating high-end dynamic 3D applications. These
are incredibly exciting capabilities that are saving many of
our customers millions of dollars over their existing techniques. |
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| Q6 |
Is
it possible to create Pixel or Vertex shaders with Anark? |
| A6 |
This
is a good question because it comes up a lot from our potential
customers as well. We are looking into shaders quite closely
and plan to add this feature to a future release.
Here is something to think about, however. Shaders are only
supported by a small percentage of existing machines. What is
the point of creating a 3D application if it crashes or fails
to play on your end user’s machines? We’ve asked
our customers ‘do you want your 3D content to play on
many machines or do you want to support slightly better visual
quality?” Unfortunately, due to drivers and DirectX penetration,
it is very difficult to have both at this point in time.
Every time, our customers choose compatibility. Their applications
benefit from by being able to robustly use 3D models. If a 3D
application crashes on the CEO’s 3-year old laptop, someone
loses their job. Creating an improved shiny surface provides
minor business value at best. Many 3D companies are run by engineers
who care only about cool technology, not about what is useful
to the customer. Anark cares about customers and we focus on
the features they need. |
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| Q7 |
Will
it be possible for FireFox users to display Anark contents in
their browsers? |
| A7 |
Firefox
is gaining market size rapidly and we are watching them with
great interest. We’ve recently added playback support
for OS X Safari and OS X Mozilla/Netscape browsers and are always
looking for ways to make Anark playback on as many machines
as possible. |
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| Q8 |
What
kind of applications are made with Anark in the industry area? |
| A8 |
Anark
is used primarily for product visualization, training, and marketing
applications.
- Train on complex processes before a product is deployed
- Replace onsite training with remote training.
- Show and configure large industrial equipment to potential
buyers without flying them out to look at a physical mockup.
We also recently announced a new game user interface solution
for game developers. They came to us and said “We have
the best 3D engines in the world, but it is too difficult for
us to create our game front-ends.” Now the top names in
game development are adopting Anark because it is the one 3D
option that has the efficient workflow they need.
These are the superstars of the interactive 3D world and they
are in love with Anark Studio. We are a modest crew here at
Anark, but this type of praise makes us work even harder. :-) |
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| Q9 |
What
are the benefits of using Anark in the industry? Is it possible
to import and display CAD models with Anark? |
| A9 |
We
import CAD models as a regular part of most enterprise Anark
projects. We work with all the existing 3rd party tools and
we also have a services group that offers their expertise in
transforming CAD data into real-time models.
Current 3D conversion tools are great for basic projects. However
the industry needs to tackle the problem of incompatible CAD
formats if it wants to make interactive 3D more widely adopted.
Expect some great things from Anark in the future. |
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| Q10 |
Is
it possible to develop an online game (like Wildtangent or Virtools)
with Anark Studio? |
| A10 |
Certainly.
Online games are not the focus of Anark technology, but by building
a tool that can service the 3D needs of companies like Boeing
or Mazaratti, we’ve created a wonderful platform for web
game developers.
Here is a lovely game example that one of our users, Charles
Goran created recently: http://digitalrain.org/crypthunter/crypthunterdemo.mov
Most of this was done using drag and drop behaviors with only
a small amount of scripting. He also recently won a Mac web
game contest with his Anark game Shine Bug.
You can create highly deployable 3D web games with content you
can stream over the internet and hook up to XML web services.
Plus you get a friendly authoring tool that doesn't require
10 dedicated developers to produce professional content. I don’t
know of another platform that compares and I’ve looked
at most of them.
Thanks for the opportunity to share some of our thought with
the good folks that visit your website. We’ve got a great
community over at forum.anark.com, so don’t hesitate to
stop by and let us know what you think about the technology.
There’s a 30-day trial of Anark Studio 3.0 available as
well if you are interested. |
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