Rightware unveils Kanzi 3D developers tool

Late last year, upstart Rightware acquired futuremark’s Mobile and Embedded Business Unit, and out of that comes the Kanzi development platform. Aimed at providing a complete pipeline from 3D content creation to deployment to mobile and embedded devices that support OpenGL ES 2.x and 1.x, it looks to be very scalable.  What also makes it very interesting is that the 3D format they support, COLLADA, is supported by just about every 3D animation and modeling application out there.

Rightwave will unveil more about Kanzi during Mobile World Congress starting February 15th, 2010.

The full press release, plus some more images, after the break.

Rightware Debuts Kanzi™ Cross-platform User Interface Solution at Mobile World Congress

User interfaces designed with Kanzi solution work in multiple different operating systems and embrace rich 3D graphics to provide better user experience and eye-popping visuals

Espoo, Finland — February 2, 2010. Rightware will demonstrate Mobile App Store application running in various mobile devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from February 15th through February 18th.   Mobile App Store is designed and implemented using Kanzi user interface solution that enables designers to quickly have their applications running in different target devices.

Key advantage of the Kanzi solution is “design-once, deploy everywhere” cross-platform support for the leading mobile operating systems, including Android, Blackberry, Linux, Maemo, Moblin, iPhone OS, Palm Web OS, Symbian OS, and Windows Mobile. Kanzi solution is build on top of industry standard OpenGL ES graphics API.

In terms of designer’s work flow, Kanzi provides the missing link between today’s leading 3D graphics content creation tools, such as 3DS Max, Maya and XSI on the one hand, and cell phones on the other hand. Artists can easily export their designs from these software packages to Kanzi SDK using COLLADA data format. Designers then rapidly compose the actual user interface application and apply all 3D graphics effects within the Kanzi SDK itself. The tool features a desktop runtime of the Kanzi engine to bring a real-time view of the final application at the desktop. This feature eliminates the need to continuously build the project to target device during development in order to inspect it. Therefore, design cycle shortens substantially while the designer is better able to realize her vision.

Kanzi runtime can be integrated to a wide variety of target devices, even those with different operating systems and hardware architectures. Applications made with Kanzi SDK will execute properly in all these devices, thus giving greater return on investment for the application developer.

Kanzi features a unified pipeline for OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenGL ES 1.x based 3D graphics. The engine supports real-time streaming of data, texture and fragment shaders, multi-texturing and dynamic lighting. There is also a versatile animation framework supporting key frame animations, such as vertex, object and bone based animations.

Rightware will exhibit at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from February 15th through 18th. The booth is located in Hall 1, 1E19. Interested companies and media are encouraged to book an appointment for a full hands-on demonstration by emailing a meeting request to sales@rightware.com.

Kanzi Gallery