Pulse Animation Studio.(Evaluation)

Developing 3D Web content

PULSE ENTERTAINMENT develops three products for creating and viewing interactive streaming 3D content on the Web: Creator 4.3, for authoring; Producer 4.4, for exporting content from Discreet's 3ds max; and Player 3.3, a browser plug-in. Collectively, they form Pulse Animation Studio. Each of the Studio products is free as a download--fees commence only when content created with Pulse is published.

The Creator authoring tool works with DXE, VRML 2.0, and 3ds max files. After importing them, you can manipulate the files using Creator's tools for bone deformation, lip synching, morphing, UV texture mapping, rendering, lighting, and animation. Creator also comes with a library of scripts, or you can create your own using Pulse-Script, a proprietary, Java-like language for customizing interactivity. You can also customize through JavaScript/Java.

Creator allows you to create and trigger unlimited behaviors independently, or use the behavior editor to modify and save each behavior separately. You can then define the behaviors to trigger at runtime via JavaScript, user input, or messages sent from other objects or events. You also can add and synch audio files to animations.

When content is finalized, you save the project and Creator compresses the assets, encrypting them for protection against unauthorized use, then compiles them into Pulse's .pwc (Pulse Web Content) file format for Web deployment.

Producer is designed for 3ds max users who want to publish content to the Web. After you've, built elements in max, you use Producer to convert them into a Pulse-compatible format. Producer will export object hierarchies, colors, animations, cameras, and target morphs, so you can create lip-synch and facial expressions on your Web-based characters. Plus, it supports Discreet's character studio 2.2 and the Max R3 Morpher modifier, and it maintains biped structures and bones that control skin deformations.

The final product, Player, is a browser plug-in that enables users to view and interact with Pulse-created content.