Author: by Staff

Creative group Maness-Allen has announced Sam3d, a new search engine for 3D models that gives artists and animators a "central, vendor-neutral nexus" for browsing a library of 3D assets from household items to high fidelity terrain models. Maness-Allen says the engine also allows modelers and artists to communicate, and will provide modelers, artists and production animators a common point of access where they can easily search and review all of the 3D models that are available. The company says the initial launch of the search engine includes information from TurboSquid, ModelBank, and 3D02, but other vendor sites will be added throughout the summer. Said senior partner William Maness, "We've taken a Googlesque approach to 3D model searching, providing a vendor-neutral platform for customers to find the right model for the job, at the right price. Production animators don't have time to chase through dozens of vendors to find stock models, so we created Sam3d to let them do a single search, and be able to compare results. We use AJAX technology to let the customer start browsing the results, even while Sam is retrieving further and deeper information."