selectparks - Uni-verse Project update.

Born from the 'Verse' Project, Uni-verse aims to create a common IP based protocol and programmers interface for developing distributed 3D and 3D-audio applications; allowing developers to rapidly engineer systems for sharing data between multi-user games in realtime, application independent collaborative modelling tools and other trickery.

This opens up a ton of possibilities... imagine being able to work with several people all modelling and texturing the same landscape at the same time, despite the fact you all use different 3D suites (Blender, 3DSMax, Lightwave). Similarly when making a multi-player game, I can build Uni-verse server funcionality into my project and tag/describe all my scene content using the Uni-verse indexing system, allowing any Uni-verse capable client the ability to work with my game (from level and terrain editors, other games, a messaging system into the game from a mobile phone). What Uni-verse offers is a sensible 'common language' for sharing content between media-rich multi-user applications - about time I reckon.

The Uni-verse API is pretty low level, but there's plenty here for 3D artists to get into it. On this tutorial page you'll find a general tutorial, check out the editing application Loq Airou and the scripting interface Purple which can be downloaded alongside other verse applications here.