Kiwi firms launch rendering solution on Azure

Auckland IT companies Right Hemisphere and Nextspace have worked with Wellington firm InterGrid to enhance and speed up Hemisphere’s photorealistic 3D application software Deep Exploration and launch it on Microsoft’s Windows Azure Platform.

Azure is the computing giant’s cloud, similar to others built by rivals including Amazon, IBM and Google to lease time on their huge computer networks to users who need short-term high capacity.

Clouds – so named as they are always out there somewhere – also carry other commercial applications, allowing users to buy time on specific software for as long as they need.

Right Hemisphere president and chief technology officer Mark Thomas said his company had sold around 7500 Deep Exploration units with 90 percent going to offshore customers including Boeing, Chrysler, Bell Helicopter, Gulfstream, Northrop Grumman, Sikorsky and Nike.

The Azure launch scheduled for July would extend the product’s reach, Mr Thomas said, as the only application of its type on the Microsoft platform quickly rendering high-quality images and video.

Deep Exploration generates detailed images of thousands of components and parts within CAD 3D models of products used in areas such as manufacturing, marketing and service training.

This capability enables companies to sell direct from photorealistic images rather than build prototypes, dramatically cutting design and customer delivery times.

An enhanced solution

An enhancement in the new package is cloud computing solution leader InterGrid’s software Green Button. This connects Deep Exploration to the Azure cloud’s almost unlimited computing power, reducing rendering times by more than 95 percent.

Mr Thomas said large image or video renderings, which could previously have taken weeks, would now be performed in about an hour. A 20-second animation that needed four hours could now be done in a few minutes.

InterGrid CEO Scott Houston began his company in 2006 to develop ways to simplify accessing the super-computers. He partnered with Microsoft to develop Green Button as an easy-to-use and cost effective interface to Azure, launching the product two years ago. It now has users in around 70 countries.

Mr Houston said the cloud concept, which has been around in various forms since the Eighties, had taken off in the last few years and was growing rapidly. Cloud services were in the past 12 months worth around $US20 billion and forecast to reach $US160 billion by 2012.

“An average engineering and design user might want to access a large computer only once a month or to speed up might have to buy another 100 computers,” he said. “They instead began renting cloud time when they needed capacity.