What are Zooks?

I guess they’re best described as virtual robot insects or creatures.

You can create your own Zooks and pit them against creatures made by other people, or just create the weirdest looking Zook you can think of, using software available for download from the BBC.

Find out more at the official site for the CBBC (Childrens BBC) show BAMZOOKI.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/bamzooki/.

or read about it at wikipedia

Gameware’s Creature Labs team uses artificial life programming techniques to provide the ZOOK’s autonomous movement and behaviour and integrates this with the BBC’s virtual studio system to enable real-time visualisations in a studio setting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAMZOOKi

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Dassault Systèmes announces a 3D XML plugin for Virtools. So now you can generate 3DXML files from products including Catia and SolidWorks and integrate them into Virtools Dev.

The adoption of 3D XML technology via a dedicated extension to Virtools’ solutions is the first step towards providing a complete solution for recreating the end user experience on virtual products, with real-time interactive scenarios.

Read more about 3D XML plugins at

http://www.virtools.com/solutions/products/virtools_3dxml_plugin.asp

In a recent interview with Heather Clancy Editor of CRN, Autodesk COO Carl Bass says (amongst other things)

The kind of acquisitions we normally do, Alias would be more of an anomaly. What we do a lot of is technology acquisitions to fill in gaps. What we’re doing in analysis and simulation. We’re moving to this world in which we’ve gone from a 2-D, line-drawing representation of what it is you’re going to build to a digital, 3-D model. What comes with that 3-D model is the ability to analyze it, simulate it, avoid making prototypes of it. And with each of those are specialized software. So, there are gaps in our ability to visualize, analyze, simulate some of those things. You’ll continue, probably, to see us do small technology acquisitions. These bigger acquisitions are much more opportunistic.

The full article is available at

http://www.crn.com/…articleId=183702289&pgno=1

Geomerics is a Cambridge based company specializing in advanced graphics and physics technology.

At this years Game Developers Conference (GDC) they are announcing a new solution to overcome problems faced by game developers with lighting and shadowing technology.

Its system handles dynamically changing lighting environments, moving objects and changing viewing angles. The technology also allows for dynamic specular effects to be integrated into the same pipeline.

Geomerics has utilized the power of ‘geometric algebra’ to provide exciting and innovative solutions to geometric problems in real-time. This technology is poised to transform computer graphics in gaming, providing a major step-change improvement over the current state-of-the-art in terms of speed, achievable effects, and ease of programming - its also GPU friendly.

Further details appear a little sketchy at the moment, perhaps following the GDC, more information will become available. One to watch in the future…

http://www.geomerics.com

“Visualising integrated information on buried assets to reduce streetworks” (Vista).

The project, funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (UK) and being undertaken by researchers from Leeds and Nottingham Universities, is aimed at producing a 3D model of the pipes and cables which are buried under the streets in the UK and will look at constructing a unified database combining data available from the various Utility companies.

You can read more in an article at the BBC - Pipe Network to be mapped in 3D

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4831238.stm

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