DMP, Digital Media Professional has recently established a new seminar room for the training of Khronos API’s. The room offers comfortable chairs, a specious desk space for each student, a ceiling mounted projector, a white board for easy instructor presentation, 12 computers with 17 inch LCD’s and excellent air conditioning. There is even an in-class coffee maker. DMP has also announced two new OpenGL ES classes in November. For further information, please visit the Khronos Events page.

COLLADA announced today the latest Release Notes for 1.4.1 revision B of their Digital Assets Schema in Japanese. You can access the PDF of these Release Notes here. COLLADA defines an XML-based schema to make it easy to transport 3D assets between applications without loss of information, enabling diverse DCC and 3D processing tools be combined into a production pipeline.

After Siggraph 2007 in San Diego, Neil Trevett Vice President Embedded Content, NVIDIA and President, Khronos Group did a long interview with Zenji Nishikawa, a Japanese journalist. The article covers the short and long term outlook of OpenGL. It is quite detailed and well worth a look, however it is in Japanese only. We have included a link using Google’s translator which is rough, but will give you an idea of what the article is all about.

The Khronos Group today posted slides from several of the Birds of a Feather sessions that were held at the 2007 Siggraph in San Diego. Included in the slide collections are OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenKODE, OpenVG and OpenMAX. There is also a collection for the Japan BOF. You can view the slides on the Khronos Groups Developer Library in PDF format.

Anark Corporation has announced a new version of Gameface, its artist-oriented UI development utility, adding over 20 new workflow and performance improvement features including real time previewing on consoles and further integration with various game engines. Additional features include a COLLADA graphics pipeline that enables artists to import 3D models, materials, textures and animations from 3Ds Max and Maya, and component-based workflow that allows large teams of UI artists and designers to work in parallel on any part of the UI project.

Ascollada, a AS3 library for reading COLLADA files was recently released. The library is geared towards Papervision3D but should work with any 3D-engine like Away3D or Sandy. Some features include simple models, material loading (watch your paths!) and biped animation. Note that this library is in its infancy so expect some bugs.

The NVIDIA Scene Graph Software Development Kit (NVSG SDK) provides a comprehensive set of classes that developers can easily combine and extend to create fast and reliable GPU-centric graphics applications. NVSG is the ideal platform for Vehicle Styling, Volume Rendering, Broadcast Graphics, and Vis/Sim style applications due to its shader-driven design and effective use of OpenGL extensions and GPU resources. Version 4.0 adds support for: OpenFlight, COLLADA / COLLADA FX, and OBJ file formats; FX Composer 2 and mental mill Artist Edition effect interchange; significant Animation extensions; HD SDI Graphics-to-Video Output support; new examples and many performance and usability enhancements. NVSG is available free from NVIDIA’s developer site.

With a major overhaul of how the future of OpenGL is shaped and Khronos Group taking over the development of the API, development of SPECviewperf was switched from being developed inside the SPEC OpenGL Performance Characterization group to the SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Project Group. The future of this benchmark is going multi-platform, since the development group is pushing to release binaries for Linux and Mac OS X. If the people manage to pull this one off, there is no reason why SPECviewperf will not continue to dominate the professional graphics benchmark space for many years to come.

Members of the Khronos COLLADA workgroup wish to invite the entire 3D community to a special, first-time COLLADA Summit on Friday September 21st at the SAT. If you are an Artist, Technical Director or Software Programmer interested in content creation and mixed tool pipelines in any 3D application field (game, film, CAD, visualization, etc.) then this is a must attend session for you. Space is limited at this event and pre-registration is require. Complete information on this special event can be found on the Khronos COLLADA Summit Event page.

Khronos Group today announced the winners of the Siggraph 2007 COLLADA Crawl. There was a great turnout for the event and lots of winners. Thank you to every one who participated in the COLLADA Crawl. We look forward to seeing you all back again next time. For a complete list of winners, please visit the Khronos Open Space website.

The OpenGL ARB unveiled the name and more details of the new version of OpenGL formerly know as Longs Peak - now officially OpenGL 3 - on August 8th 2007 at the Siggraph Birds of a Feather (BOF) in San Diego, CA. OpenGL 3 will be a great increase in efficiency in an already excellent API. It will provide a solid, consistent and well thought out foundation for the future evolution of the OpenGL standard. OpenGL 3 is a true industry effort with broad support from all vendors in the ARB. The OpenGL 3 specification is on track to be finalized at the next face-to-face meeting of the OpenGL ARB, at the end of August. This means the specification can be publicly available as soon as the end of September, after the mandatory 30 day Khronos approval period has passed. Also presented today were the changes to the OpenGL Shading Language that will accompany OpenGL 3. For more details see the OpenGL BOF presentations here. We invite you to discuss this news in this thread on our forums.

AMD has released new OpenGL ES 2.0 developer tools. The AMD OpenGL ES 2.0 Emulator is a PC-based implementation of OpenGL ES 2.0 allowing you to develop OpenGL ES 2.0 applications in advance of hardware availability. RenderMonkey v1.71 is a shader integrated development environment that now supports creating OpenGL ES 2.0 shaders and effects.

e frontier, Inc. has announced Poser Pro, a high end addition to its flagship Poser product line. Geared toward a multitude of production environments in both the 2D and 3D realms, Poser Pro offers the features and functionality of Poser 7 plus professional level application integration, a 64 bit render engine, and network rendering support. Poser Pro now supports the COLLADA exchange format for content production, pre-visualization, gaming and film production, and offers the ability to fully host Poser scenes in professional applications such as Maxon’s CINEMA 4D, Autodesk’s 3ds Max and Maya, and Newtek’s Lightwave. Other features include increased support for Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended (via COLLADA) and export of HDR imagery.

Imagination Technologies are celebrating their PowerVR Insider program at SIGGRAPH this year, with its success since its launch last year a high point for the Kings Langley-based company. PowerVR insider is ImgTec’s resource for programmers, engineers and anyone else involved in the world of mobile and embedded 3D graphics. There’s a big focus on the open technologies that ImgTec implements in its silicon designs licensed to customers, including OpenGL ES and OpenVG.

Futuremark Announces 3D Content Creation Tool Chain for OpenGL ES 2.0 today at Siggraph 2007. Futuremark’s new toolset provides hardware developers and the mobile gaming community with a solution for creating, developing, and running OpenGL ES 2.0 3D games and applications content in real-time from popular 3D graphics applications including SOFTIMAGE|XSI®. The Futuremark Content Creation Tool Chain supports all important OpenGL ES 2.0 features from common effect frameworks including effects, render passes, render to texture, post processing and shadow maps. The toolset consists of three major components: Futuremark BFP™ (Big Fat Pipeline), Futuremark RSCGE™ (Radical Shader Crunching Game Engine), and Futuremark FMS™, a COLLADA™ compliant content data file.