This is what our customers told us:
- 3D-files are mostly very bulky files: up to gigabytes
- To view these files, every polygon needs to be rendered.
- Simple 3D files contain thousands of polygons, complex files contain hundreds of millions of polygons
- If rendering on client, whole file needs to be on the client, and the client needs a rendering software
- Client computers need to be very powerful to cope with this (CPU/GPU)
- In order to define the right file, it needs to be viewed from different angles and zoom factors
- Users have to download huge files only to see that it was the wrong one!
Since our software is open to any other provider, 3D filetype or technology we solved this with the help of the Mental Images streaming server. But how important is the integration of 3D into Digital Asset Management and workflows? Any thoughts?
Just to give you an idea how we solved the problem of "3D files, the size of a dinosaur on a standard webbrowser" watch here: http://www.adamsoftware.net/3D/3DMovie.html