Esperient Creator 3.7

Create event-based media experiences that are more deeply engaging in different and innovative ways.


A 32 foot wide projected power wall display, driven by four networked computers

Introduction

3D computer games have set a new standard for interactive and engaging media presentation, pushing the boundaries of how we experience information. High quality, real time interactive 3D is a new tool in the designer’s toolbox that helps make online, desktop and event-based media experiences more deeply engaging in different and innovative ways. Visual computing applications are changing how we work, learn and play. Creator has been designed to enable the creation of next generation applications that blend the compelling capabilities of interactive 3D technology with the ability to innovate in product communications and user experiences.

Creator enables rapid development of compelling interactive 3D applications and content for product communications, presentations, education, training and entertainment. Significantly lowering the cost and time barriers associated with creating interactive 3D media, it is specifically designed for creative artists and media designers. Users of Rhinoceros (Rhino3D), Adobe Creative Suite, Autodesk 3DS Max or Maya, Google SketchUp and a host of other tools, will benefit from Creator’s workflow design.

Extended Features

The Smart Objects™ and Intelligent Materials™ Architecture introduced in Creator 3.5 has been extended to take the design and creation of application templates to a whole new level. Imagine creating a handful of Smart Objects™ that will allow anyone to use their own 3D data to build and publish fully functional applications within minutes. By reducing repetitive scene production times, authors can work on visual design with the functionality already in place, bringing productivity to its highest.

Above: Dragging an Intelligent Materials™ water shader into an empty scene - the material automatically detects that no geometry is present, creates a plane and applies itself – saving steps, optimizing workflow.

Above: Smart Objects™ List document with brief descriptions, locations, and links to in-depth information these productivity increasing assets.

Smart Objects™ and Intelligent Materials™

•   Enabling creation of reusable components that optimize workflow and allow for the creation of entire application templates


•   Supporting easy to use drag and drop component deployment into a scenes


•   Enabling creation of intelligent and interactive materials


•   Making the design and implementation of sophisticated application templates a reality

Drag & Drop Assembly

 

This drag and drop Assembly application takes only minutes to create with pre-existing 3D data. Scene notes for each object appear on mouse-over in the Asset Browser.

Using Context Help with the Asset Browser takes you directly to existing help documents making solution finding quick and easy.

The User Interface

Working on real world projects, creative media designers live with their tools day in and day out. Project times range from tens to hundreds and, sometimes, thousands of hours. The only constant is high pressure deadlines and the need for tools that are trusted and reliable. We know this, which is why we have spent thousands of man hours designing and refining our user interface, workflow and core technology. Creator’s simple to use development environment is based on a standard windows interface and a full What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interactive authoring environment. Creator’s unified workspace and workflow incorporates  Scene management  Asset management  Object properties  Object modeling  Material management  Event-based animation  Key-frame animation  Runtime Script editor  Interactive scene pre-view  Drag and drop content into scenes All functionality is within one application and available at a click of an icon. All authored Scenes may be interactively played and paused directly in the editor prior to publishing

File Import Options

Creator can import content from leading digital creation tools including Rhinoceros (Rhino3D) 3DM, Autodesk 3DS Max, Maya, XSI, Adobe 3D and more than 30 other leading 3D file formats. In addition to 3D content, Creator can import video, text, audio, and 2D graphics with support for more than 40 different 2D graphics formats. CAD data support is offered via integrated workflows with Right Hemisphere Deep Exploration or Deep Server using the .RH file format.

Built-in Modeling Tools

	In addition to being able to import existing 2D and 3D content, Creator includes a complete toolset to allow direct application creation. This means that next generation applications can be developed without requiring any other 3D software. Creator’s features include:  Over 60 built-in primitive 3D objects ranging from lines, spheres, cubes and planes to complex objects such as stairs, gears, arches, and more. Each primitive object has easy to use property grips to simplify scene placement and object manipulation   Over 50 3D object alterations including bend, twist, taper, and more which can be used to modify in-built primitives for modeling – enabling creation of complex objects   3D Boolean operations including: union, intersection, subtract, fracture, merge   2D geometry drawing including line, polyline, arc, circle, ellipse, rounded rectangle, polygon, star, triangle, and more   2D UI authoring tools including sliders, text box, radio buttons, text and image blits for standard 2D user interface components   Object grips and transform axes to visually control object size, position and surface subdivision   2D and 3D reference grids to assist with object positioning (including snap to grid, angle snap etc)   Polygonal editing tools for object, face and vertex editing, together with tools to collapse meshes, invert polygons & flip normals
Above: 60+ built-in procedural modeling primitives
Above: Built-in 3D Object modeling and editing tools
Above: Object alterations enable advanced object modeling, visualization & animation

Animation & Simulation

Creator supports a large number of interactive animation techniques. More than 60 animation behaviors - including object transforms (move, rotate, scale), color change, real time physics, keyboard and joystick controls –are available with just a mouse click

Above: Skinned and boned animated characters can be imported or created within Creator
Above: Event-based animations and real time physics
Above: Video content applied as textures	Above: Animation categories

Visualization

	Effective use of materials, lighting and shadows are the key elements to the visual quality of interactive 3D user experiences. Creator is equipped with:  Multi-stage textures  Dynamic lighting  Real time shader-based dynamic lighting & soft shadows  Mip-mapping to preserve texture quality  Over 100 vertex and pixel shaders  Bump & normal mapping  Import and generate light maps  Ambient occlusion alteration  Screen based ambient occlusion
Above: Dynamic shadows increase visual realism
Above: Support for multi-layer materials	Above: Real time reflection
	Creator advanced render functions include:  dynamic procedural textures  dynamic render to texture from any scene object or camera  Real time reflection  Real time refraction  Extensive shader support Creator ships with over 100 pre-built shader effect files including: metals, glass, water, ocean, reflection and post-processing effects such as motion blur, bloom, sepia, skybox and depth of field. Creator also ships with a unique ability to view volumetric datasets using real time shaders and to intermix these with polygon- based content or use as standalone tools. Pre-built volumetric shaders for volumetric smoke, fire, coral and volumetric solids are also available.
Above: A soap bubble dynamically reflecting its environment in real time
Above: Real time reflection and refraction on simulated ocean water	Above: Volumetric display of MRI data
	Creator ships with a number of visualization tools to create various special visual effects for presentation, games and interactive visualizations. The Mirror object and Floor shaders provide means to deliver real time reflective surfaces depending on target hardware. Creator has in-built particle systems’ effects including:  Basic  planar  contact  projectile Particle systems respond to scene forces and scene gravity. Gravity and force objects can be used to create particle flow around objects, enabling visual simulation of dynamic flow and atmospheric effects. Particle systems also provide a means to create visual effects including smoke, sparks, dust etc. Contact particle systems enable designers to visually represent environmental changes in response to object movement e.g. Tire tracks, footprints, or surface scratches.
Above: Mirror objects provide reflective ground surface

Advanced Applications Development

Above: The in-built scripting editor supports color coding, command completion and integrated help

Built-in Scripting

•  Powerful game engine with a choice of two easy to use scripting languages; CScript, an object orientated scripting language, and Creator lisp
  
•  Easy to use professional scripting development environment with color coding, intellisense-like command completion and integrated help
  
•  Web browser, visual basic and embedded program communication direct from both scripting languages
  
•  Extremely easy to use application programming interface with over 300 API commands with extensive documentation and examples

Database

•  ODBC database connectivity for relational database integration.
  

Networking

•  Integrated easy to use network send data support and chat
  
•  TCP/IP Socket animations & API commands for sending messages and text between client and server applications
  

Extensible API

	Develop support for :  Integration with extensive databases  Augmented reality systems  Interface with actual and virtual control panels and equipment  Virtual reality and tracking systems
C++ plug-in architecture allows for robust scientific visualization as with University of Otago’s virtual dogfish- a project to model neural mechanisms of prey tracking and navigation in sharks.
Above: Augmented reality from HITLab New Zealand

Scene Publishing: Desktop, Web & Surface
	Creator publishes interactive content to desktop, web, stereo and for surface based displays. Creator’s publishing solution is based around:  free distributable runtime viewer  free distributable ActiveX-based web browser viewing with bi-directional JavaScript support  self contained executable with viewer and data embedded together for direct publishing Creator scenes can be published as part of web applications and SCORM compliant learning content. There are no licenses fees for distributing content created with Creator. Creator runtime viewer can display scenes in passive stereo on a single screen or networked non-stereo on multiple screens (e.g. power-wall displays) for large area surface based displays projects.
Above: Desktop: published as self contained executable
Above: Web: Easily embed in a web pages
Above: Surface: A 32 foot wide projected power wall display, driven by four networked computers

Minimum System Requirements

Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Vista  Pentium 1 GHz processor or higher  Microsoft DirectX, version 9.0c or greater  Microsoft DirectX, version 9.0c or greater compliant graphics card compliant video card with hardware accelerated 3D rendering, and at least 128MB RAM  Scenes using shaders require at a minimum, shader Model 2 Pixel and Vertex shader card support (this is standard functionality on modern graphics and games video cards)  512mb memory  Network Card (for network visualization and simulation capabilities)