Category: Allegorithmic

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Adobe Acquires Allegorithmic For AR/VR Creative Cloud

Adobe Acquires Allegorithmic For AR/VR Creative Cloud

Adobe announced the acquisition of Allegorithmic, makers of the Substance toolset for textures and materials.

Allegorithmic also built a hybrid VR tool demonstrated at Oculus Connect 5 that allowed easy switching between desktop and VR modes so that 3D content creators can easily get a look at their work in a VR headset with access to all the same panels and UI elements from the desktop version.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. A press release announcing the acquisition references VR and AR as becoming “more critical” to brands and that the Substance tools will be integrated as part of “new offerings” in Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of subscription software tools.

“We are seeing an increasing appetite from customers to leverage 3D technology across media, entertainment, retail and marketing to design and deliver fully immersive experiences,” said Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president for Creative Cloud, in a prepared statement. “Creative Cloud is the creativity platform for all and Substance products are a natural complement to existing Creative Cloud apps that are used in the creation of immersive content, including Photoshop, Dimension, After Effects and Project Aero.”

Project Aero is Adobe’s AR authoring tool. The company also built 360 video tools into its Premiere editing product and has shown other experimental VR and AR tools.

Adobe’s creative tools are industry standard for many designers and artists, so if Substance becomes part of new Creative Cloud tools and software subscriptions from the company, the acquisition could play a part in accelerating VR and AR software creation.

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Apple Reveals USDZ – A New AR File Format Made With Pixar, Adobe Bringing Support To Creative Cloud

iOS 12 has made its official debut at Apple’s WWDC 2018 event and has brought quite a lot of new toys with it. And the team kicked off discussions by focusing on how the tech conglomerate is continuing its focus on augmented technology.  It was last year at the same time, almost to the day, that Apple revealed its AR developer platform ARKit and now as then Apple’s Craig Federighi took to the stage to talk attendees through not just the rumoured ARKit 2, as reported earlier on VRFocus, but other developments.

WWDC 18The first announcement was a brand-new file format specifically for working with AR. Something developed companies such as Pixar – “some of the greatest minds in 3D.”

“AR is transformational technology.” Federighi told the audience at San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center. “Bringing experiences into the real world? It enables all kinds of new experiences, changing the way we have fun and the way we work. In iOS12 we wanted to make an easy way to experience AR across the system.”

The new file format is called USDZ (or Universal Scene Description), which has a focus on sharing content and will be able to be used or viewed in everything from internal file views, to the web browser Safari to email. Enabling you to place 3D models into the real world.  “It’s something like ‘AR quick-look’”, Federighi explained.

USDZ - Universal Scene DescriptionApple confirmed that they would be working with leading companies in 3D tools and libraries to bring USDZ support to their services. With Allegorithmic (developer of Substance), PTC, Turbosquid, Adobe, Autodesk, Sketchfab and Quixel all namechecked on stage.

“At Adobe we believe that augmented reality is an incredibly important technology. And with ARKit, Apple is by far the most powerful platform for AR.” Added Adobe‘s Executive Vice President and CTO Abhay Parasnis who appeared on stage to explain more about the company’s work on USDZ, something he described as “a pretty big deal” and confirming that USDZ support would be coming to Adobe’s Creative Cloud set of applications and services.

“With Creative Cloud designers and developers will now be able to use familiar apps – apps that they know and love, like Photoshop or Dimension – to create amazing AR content, and bring it easily via USDZ.”

Parasnis also confirmed a new Adobe creative app for iOS, specifically for designing AR-related content that will enable developers to bring in anything from text to images and video on Creative Cloud directly into a WYSIWIG AR editing environment.

VRFocus will bring you more news on the AR developments on WWDC shortly.