Over the last few years Amazon has been quietly pushing into the 3D industry by acquiring companies and releasing tools for game developers to use — often free — as a part of its AWS platform.
Today, Amazon quietly announced a new tool called Sumerian that’s aimed at people who want to design and build AR or VR experiences, but don’t have any prior training. It’s also great for more experienced users and can handle custom code, but is primarily targeted for people newer to the industry.
Sumerian is particularly interesting because it lowers the barrier for publishing to users of both AR and VR — it outputs ready to use WebVR code on the other end. The designer is able to quickly grab existing assets, throw them into a scene, tie it together, then release it to anyone with a headset and web browser.
First Lumberyard, now Sumerian
What’s interesting is just how quickly Amazon is pushing into the space. Last year, Amazon licensed Cryengine and built a free tool called Lumberyard for building and designing AAA games. That engine offered a way to build 3D games from scratch for free, while integrating them directly with Amazon’s Web Services, which many developers already use, in the same tool.
The move was a loud push into Unity’s territory, which had seen limited competition until Amazon appeared and has been used as the core of hundreds of hit games over the last few years.
Sumerian is the next step in owning the pipeline: VR and AR. The tool is based on an acquisition of Goo Create, as confirmed by the founder of Goo on Twitter, which was designed to lower the barrier to entry and bring 3D fun to the masses by publishing on the web.
Amazon is now playing in a budding space, and it’s first to the party with a tool that could throw open the doors to entirely new talent.
In a way, Sumerian reminded me of the early 2000’s on the internet, when Macromedia Flash was responsible for a large chunk of the world being introduced to designing websites and 3D interactions were everywhere.
It’s easy to forget Macromedia’s influence now, but it was a core part of how many people experienced the internet for the first time, and what it could do. I cut my teeth on Flash, learning how to animate websites and do complex transitions, which ultimately lead to me learning how to code.
The missing Editor for WebVR
Designing for WebVR — and even AAA VR — right now is a painful experience: there’s a distinct lack of tooling, with developers mostly needing to work directly in code before seeing any results.
Existing projects like Aframe, ReactVR and others are promising, but tend to require deep technical skills before anyone is able to build something with them — that isn’t conducive to experimentation or artists coming onboard and trying VR.
Sumerian could do what Flash did for VR, AR and other new platforms, by showing the world it doesn’t need to be difficult to experience, and can be compelling. It’s exciting that Amazon is playing in the space as WebVR begins to become a core part of major browsers, including Chrome and Firefox.
Over the next year, expect to see a lot of weird and wonderful WebVR experiences as developers, designers and artists start playing more — perhaps Amazon will be a big part of making it happen.
content from blog.bigscreenvr.com
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