Viewpoint Brings Intelligent Life To Content Creation

Viewpoint's tool, called Viewpoint Media Integrator (VMI), allows companies that create digital content to use a graphical interface to integrate disparate media types, including 3-D, audio, Flash and JPEG.

VMI also allows for the creation of interactive, or dynamic, content, said Andrew Cook, director of product management at Viewpoint, based here. Until VMI was released, digital content couldn't respond intelligently to user input, he said.

But now it can, and content creators can build that intelligence into their applications with relative ease, Cook said.

>> The Viewpoint Media Integrator allows companies to use a graphical interface to integrate disparate media, including 3-D, audio, Flash and JPEG.

"[The market has been looking for a tool like this for quite some time," he said. "What it allows us to do is move from creating rich static media to creating rich dynamic media."

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Added Mark Thomas, president and founder of Right Hemisphere, a developer of 3-D graphic production solutions whose Deep Exploration product integrates VMI: "To really get the best from 3-D communication technology, the content must be interactive. VMI puts the power to create on this platform into everyone's hands, in an easy-to-use authoring system that seamlessly integrates data from a multitude of 2-D and 3-D sources."

ViewPoint's products make up a technology platform that's used by Fortune 500 companies for business-process visualizations, marketing campaigns, rich advertising and product presentations, Cook said.

Ford Motor, for example, used Viewpoint products to create animated images of its Explorer and Expedition vehicles.

"The company wanted to create a powerful customer experience at its Web site," he said. "They used our technology to piece together digital content,audio, Flash and 3-D images that allow consumers to view and explore in 3-D vehicle features such as air-bag deployment and the suspension system."

Other Viewpoint customers include Baskin-Robbins, National Geographic and Thomasville Cabinetry.

As for partnerships, Viewpoint is targeting companies that can offer services in 3-D modeling, animation and cross-media development, as well as vertical-market solution providers that can use the technology to develop innovative products for customers, said a Viewpoint spokeswoman.

Opportunities for integrators include developing cutting-edge, interactive, rich media solutions for the Web, CD-ROMs and kiosks; integrating Viewpoint content with existing databases; and using the most popular 2-D, 3-D and vector graphics authoring tools to create compelling content, the spokeswoman said.

Viewpoint partners receive special pricing and licensing terms and obtain marketing materials and sales support, the spokeswoman added.

Fusion InfoTech, a solution provider based in Edison, N.J., incorporates Viewpoint technology into the applications it builds for customers in the financial services, manufacturing and high-tech industries.

"Viewpoint products turn a browser into a 3-D screen," said Hrishi Patil, project coordinator for Viewpoint at Fusion InfoTech. "[Animated digital content helps consumers make purchasing decisions by giving them a realistic feel for products and services."

Fusion InfoTech's projects have included developing a next-generation e-commerce application for a Fortune 1000 financial and marketing information company and building a B2B portal for a major distributor of computer- and network-related products.

At Diginiche, a company that produces interactive, online, virtual tours of places and products, staffers have been hand-coding content for two years.

With VMI, designers can now use a GUI to integrate multiple media types seamlessly, said Paul Nykamp, a partner at Toronto-based Diginiche.

Many of the company's customers, including Infiniti, Sol Meli%E1 Hotels and Herman Miller, are car manufacturers, travel/hospitality firms or companies in the medical market.