The Vertice Team wants to thank you for coming to meet us at Imagina 2011. It's my third participation to Imagina and I hadn't never seen so many people on our booth!

For my technical part, I hope you liked my small demonstrations: SMS sending, Excel File to drive a Nova Scene, Kinect integration as a controller, etc. As I always said I'm a fan of interactive and demonstrative 3D. I'm tired to see that sometimes some vendors just sell a technology only for the technology. It is time to put in front the user needs. That's what we call in Vertice user-centered design. Feel free to contact me to discuss these topics.

Also, feel free to download Nova Studio Demo to have a look to our range.

As I announced it in this previous post, here is the new custom action I called "Change State (Excel). I made some modifications I'm sure you will appreciate :

You have to know these possibilities and constraints:

1. All cells must be in a string format ('4 as an example)
2. You can choose the Worksheet number.
3. I remove the constraint to have "Jet oledb provider 4.0" installed on your computer. In other terms, this custom action is completely autonomous and no longer depends on anything.
4. On numeric properties, you can now add an operator to indicate to add, substract, multiply and divide. As an example, on RotationVectorX, you can write '++1 to add 1 to the current property value of the selected Nova Entity. Imagine what you can do if you plug this action to the "Every x Frames" trigger .
5. Right now, I only manage Int, Float, Boolean, RGBA properties of Nova Entities
6. By Nova Entities, I exhaustively mean:
   • Nova Paths, Nova Domains, Nova Groups, Nova Materials, Nova Textures, Nova Objects, Nova Cameras and Nova Lights

Attached to the post, you'll find a zip file containing a dll and a Excel sample (just pay attention to Windows language and region for numeric values inside the Excel file). To install the custom action, just drop the dll inside:

• "C:\Program Files\Vertice\Nova Studio 2010\Plugins" for 32 bits OS
• "C:\Program Files\Vertice\Nova Studio 2010\x64\Plugins" for 64 bits OS

Don't forget to install Nova Studio 2010 version 6.0.0.26.

Enjoy!

ChangeStateFromExcel.zip (30.33 kb)

It's our pleasure to present to you our last Nova Studio 2010 revision. The complete version number is 6.0.0.26.

Functionalities:

• Colorized mode support for Autodesk Revit 2011: the Nova Studio add-in is now registered on Autodesk Revit 2011 and support white rendering and colorized rendering.
• Nova templates for Visual Studio 2010: 8 templates are available, if Visual Studio 2010 is installed in Professional/Premium/Ultimate edition, to enhance Nova Studio, Controls or SDK features. C# and VB are supported. Here is the list of installed templates:
  • Nova Controls Windows Forms Application
    • A project to create a Windows Forms application that uses Nova Controls
  • Nova SDK Windows Forms Application
    • A project to create a Windows Forms application that uses Nova SDK
  • Nova SDK WPF Application
    • A project to create a WPF application that uses Nova SDK
  • Nova Studio Control Plugin
    • A project to create a control plugin for Nova Studio
  • Nova Studio Custom Action Plugin
    • project to create a custom action plugin for Nova Studio
  • Nova Studio Exporter Plugin
    • A project to create an exporter plugin for Nova Studio
  • Nova Studio Importer Plugin
    • A project to create an importer plugin for Nova Studio
  • Nova Studio UI Plugin
    • A project to create an user interface plugin for Nova Studio
• Blurred mirrors: the mirror function applied to plans can now be blurred with an intensity and a level. It permits to obtain real-time reflections like « polished concrete » or « wood varnish ».

Corrections:

• Update for the problem of double click in Nova Control
• Update for the problem of pickable objects in disabled companion scene

Enjoy!

It's time for the Vertice Team to wish you a Merry Christmas and New Year. Enjoy these moments because there are too few in a lifetime!

On our side, we will start the year with a 5 intensive days Nova Studio training (French link. Same training content as the one played in Paris) in our headquarter in Toulouse: from 01/31/2011 to 02/04/2011. Michel Rousseau will be your trainer.

You will have the opportunity to discuss with development team, so do not hesitate, sign up!

Yann has just released a new version of Vertice website.

Among the last news you will notice the following:

• A clickable breadcrumb,
• Nova Studio "What's new" page,
• Mobile features with Nova4Phone page,
• Edition comparison,
• Price list,
• Some simplications on Nova Studio and downloads page,
• Some explanations about Nova free versions.

During the three next weeks, this blog won't be much active. Indeed, it's time for holidays and much of the Vertice team is on vacation .

Years after years, holidays have always been suitable to ideas' birth in the Vertice team! So, we will be very pleased to welcome you again on this blog from the last week of August with plenty of new inovative content.

Meanwhile, "portez-vous bien" as we say in my country!

    Frédéric Colin

A corollary question to my last post was also whether it was possible to automate something about this. Namely, something that would automate the quality adjustment based on the machine behind the scene.

You have to know that Nova Engine already does a part of that kind of things when used rendering options are not available on the graphics card. But the question was more about an artificial intelligence that will adapt rendering quality. In fact, in such a way, Nova does not yet include an artificial intelligence.

So, I was thinking without such a tool how today I will implement easily and in a short time this requirement if I had to develop it. Once more, simple heuristics can always help us on these complex issues. The best heuristics I was thinking about, would be to simply use the current scene FPS to determine if the scene quality may be increased or decreased. Then, after a predetermined (ie: after each x frames rendering), the system could check if the overall quality should be increased or decreased. And this can easily be done using Nova Scripting and Action builder. This complete the proof!

However, if we wanted to go further in that kind of solution, we will have to study the current scene to determine which will be the best quality options and channels to enable to disable and in which order. Moreover, we will have also to study what will be the quality scale to hold.

In my previous sample, I have arbitrarily decided that the level would include three stages of quality, but why not more? It is still a topic that should be studied further.

Finally and in order to set this little heuristic, we should provide the scene designer a way to decline (or not) in quality such and such options. It is understandable that with the addition of such features a small artificial intelligence engine would be perfect.

Many new things this month at Vertice.

Nova 2010 range release has occupied the whole team in recent weeks! There were several roundtable discussions internally and lots of coffee to develop the new ergonomics and without revealing the result, it is only the beginning in our future roadmap :-).

In the next weeks, we will demonstrate our new technology by giving you more contents, samples, documentation and seminars than ever. The second date (after the Laval Virtual) will be at the Bewise Day Conference on may 18th in Aix-en-Provence. We will animate a 45 minuts session to introduce interactive 3D with Nova. Don't also hesitate to talk with us on our booth at this event (sorry the banner is in french!).

A new graphic design also complements the whole and I hope you will appreciate it! Don't hesitate tou tell us what you think about.

During the last month, many of our early alpha testers also asked us for a free Version. It's my pleasure to say that it's now done with the Nova Studio Express version.

Enjoy!

The conversations I had with some of our customers make me post this subject today. It concerns the Nova Personal Learning Edition (PLE) and what you can do or not with it. I offer to cover this subject with questions and answers.

Q: Can I test the PLE version more than 30 days?
A: Yes you can! Nova has so many functionalities that you may need more than 30 days to test all of them.

Q: if I use the PLE version and a mxb file, will it automatic update my work when I will buy the commercial version?
A: Yes. There a no limitations on this topic for mxb files.

Q: Someone in my company works with the PLE. Can I generate for him the exe.
A: No, it’s absolutely not allowed. Even more, it’s illegal.

Q: Is it possible to generate an EXE with the PLE Version?
A: Yes it’s possible, but you will get a Watermark on the scene.

Q: I work as a freelance and need to convince one of my prospects. I used the PLE version and I asked another freelancer who has purchased a Nova license to generate an exe. I'll buy the license Nova as soon as I sign with my prospect. Is it illegal?
A: Nova licenses acquired individually are neither transferable nor commendable.

Q: I developed a specific plugin, will it work with PLE version?
A: Yes it will work since as there are no limitations on this topic.

Q: If I use the PLE, will automatic updates work?
A: Yes, it will work.

In conclusion, please note that the PLE license has no limitations in terms of functionalities or length of use compared to the Production license of Nova. The PLE thus displays a permanent watermark in the Nova Explorer and in the .exe files generated. Nova PLE runs without any activation key. Production or Education with this license is forbidden. For production, we also understand the necessary pre-sale steps to sell your products.

I hope this post helped you to better understand when to use PLE or not. For any further questions, please contact Mr. Sébastien Callens.