the content pipeline in the cloud - khronos group · rest and collada •collada is already...

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 1

The Content Pipeline In the CloudAlan Chaney

CTO, Mechnicality, Inc.COLLADA work group, The Khronos Group

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 2

About Mechnicality…

• Alan Chaney

- CTO and Founder

• Los Angeles Startup

- Formed mid-2010

• First Product

- Molly3D

• Software Consultancy Services

- Web-based Asset Management of 3D content

- Data Visualization

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 3

Taking the Content Pipeline to the Cloud

• Advantages

- Simplify workflow

- Improve collaboration

- Homogeneous delivery platforms

• Opportunities

- Tools

- Low-cost application delivery

- Asset management

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 4

Why Tools?

• Cloud Means

- Lower installation costs

- Lower operational costs

- Collaboration

• COLLADA

- breaks the proprietary tool-chain

• Ideally suited for „cloud-based‟ tool-set

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 5

COLLADA === COLLABORATION

• COLLADA

- Addressable Content Component Model

- Data Model

• Use Cases

- Simple Level Editors

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 6

Use Cases

• “End-user” delivery

- Games

- Applications

- Visualizations

- Simulations

• Content creation/editing

- Mechanicality‟s principle interest

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 7

Data Exchange

• Text

- XML

- JSON

• Binary

- proprietary

- „Image‟

• Other

- BINHEX

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 8

Object Model

• Document Object Model

- A COLLADA document is an XML Document

• CRUD

- Create

- Retrieve

- Update

- Delete

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 9

Web Technologies

• WebGL

• REST

• JSON

• HTML5

• XML

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 10

WebGL

• Khronos Specification

• See http://www.khronos.org/webgl/

• Advantages

• Disadvantages

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 11

JSON and COLLADA

• JSON

- Javascript Object Notation

• JSON Flavors

- Simple – no possible backward conversion

- Use markup to indicate entities

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 12

REST and COLLADA

• COLLADA is already „internet addressable‟

- internal references can be URLs

- inter-document references can be URLs

• REST

- “Representational State Transfer”

- Stateless mechanism for manipulating content via the WEB

• Also

- HATEOAS – “Hypermedia as The Engine of Application State”

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 13

Molly3D Open-source Libraries

• Molly3DWebGL

- Simple binding of WebGL API to a GWT-compatible library

- used by MollyRuntime and MollyDataObjects

- http://code.google.com/p/molly3dwebgl

• MollyTypedArray

- Server-side implementation of the TypedArray specification

• MollyDataObjects

- Mechanism for wrapping binary data in URI addressable objects

• MollyRuntime

- Default, „common-profile‟ runtime for Molly3D applications

© Copyright Khronos Group, 2010 - Page 14

Conclusion

• The cloud is out there

• Leverage it with the right kind of tool

• Break the proprietary tool-chain

• alan@mechnicality.com