real time interactivity and SketchUp models

[esperientben]

Hello all,
I am a new member here and would like to introduce myself. I am CEO of Esperient, a Company that develops real time 3D authoring tools for visual computing applications.

Anyway, we have recently integrated our software (Esperient Creator) with SketchUp. This allows non-programmers to drag their SketchUp models into our software and then add (using simple drag and drop) animations, shaders, real-time shadow mapping, materials and a host of other features. The whole process takes just a few minutes and transforms a static model into an interactive application.

We have created a video that shows the process and this is available to view or download from http://www.esperient.com/videos/sketchup.wmv

I hope that this is of interest to you and look forward to any feedback

Cheers for now

Ben

[esperientben]

Esperient Creator 3.7 has just been released. This release contains dozens of improvements and new features, most of which are designed to make the software easier to use and faster to run. Principal new features include:

- Dozens of new drag & drop re-usable components have been added including Smart Objects™ for Navigation, Cameras, Lights, UI Elements, Game Content, Material Changers, Sketch shaders, Locators and boat controllers among many others.

- Colored and translucent shadows through glass, drag & drop handling of real time reflections and refractions, and cubemap refraction calculations.

- Unified most popular shaders. Rather than having separate shaders for all feature variations, features such as bump-mapping can be turned on or off as needed.

- Many new API functions and Scene variables.

- All new editor transformations. This allows the movement of huge objects (million plus polygons) within the editor without delays.

- Launch of Esperient Creator Enterprise which includes all of the new functions added to version 3.7 plus support for Motion tracking, Stereo Displays, Networking and Sockets.

The software, including the free community version is available from www.esperient.com