Oz.com, formerly known as Oz Interactive, has unveiled a delivery system for 3D animation over the internet, called Fluid3D. The software has been developed to take advantage of and enhance RealNetworks RealPlayer G2 using the World Wide Web Consortium’s Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL). Fluid3D comes in three parts: a renderer for RealPlayer G2, a server plug-in for RealServer G2 and an exporter for publishing 3D content developed on a variety of different authoring platforms to the web. That means content developers can keep the tools they currently use. The product already supports Kinetix 3D Studio. Support for VRML 2.0 models, NewTek LightWave 3D and AliasWavefront Maya is also in the works. The company says its proprietary compression algorithm, OZ Anim-X CODEC, helps protect the intellectual property of content authors. Oz also claims that Fluid3D is the first new media type to enable streaming broadcast of three-dimensional computer animation through RealPlayer over the net, but that’s not to suggest that it’s big or slow. On the contrary, Fluid3D should work at speeds as low as 28.8Kbps, and all that’s required for installation is a one-time 350KB download. According to the company web site, the public beta of Fluid3D will be out in January.
