Like a match made in 3-D heaven, Viewpoint DataLabs, one of the leading vendors of digital graphics models, and ThinkFish, an upstart software company that renders 3-D in groovy styles that look hand-drawn, announced their merger today. Their goal is to make 3-D graphics easy enough to be used by the creators of mom-and-pop Web sites, while still cool enough for the big-dollar market to come begging for more.
"We think 3-D can be pervasive in all kinds of storytelling," said Martin Plaehn, chairman and CEO of Viewpoint. His Orem, Utah-based company has already made its mark selling 3-D renderings of everything from fighter jets to gallbladders for some 4,000 clients in Hollywood, the government, and broadcast news organizations, to name a few.
By bringing together Viewpoint's stock of 10,000 objects rendered in 3-D with ThinkFish's 25 LiveStyles - a tool that renders a standard photorealistic 3-D model to look impressionistic or cartoon-like, or as if drawn by Picasso - the combined company will offer a do-it-your-way menu of 3-D art.
"It's almost like dressing a model," explained Mark Pesce, a graphics expert and VRML pioneer who's an occasional adviser to ThinkFish. "By themselves, the models are rather simple," he added, emphasizing that the LiveStyles technique can really spice up the images.
While Viewpoints' primary market consists of moviemakers who need oodles of 3-D power, and government-funded simulations for the military, the company sees a consumer market for 3-D graphics. Perhaps as early as next year, consumers will be able to pay somewhere between US$99 and $299 to license a CD's worth of 3-D models along with the LiveStyles technology, modify a chosen image, and drag and drop it right into their family newsletter.
"I have other things to do with my life than learn 3-D tools," explained Chris Lowery, ThinkFish's director of business communications. Assuming others feel the way he does, there is a market out there for the less geeky among us who want to play with 3-D without trying to build it themselves.
Viewpoint is working on the consumer tools, but first it plans to introduce a refined search-and-browse capability allowing corporate clients to combine the Viewpoint library with the new LiveStyles feature in as little as 10 weeks. The company also will license the technology to be used with the classic 3-D rendering tools.
The merger is really an acquisition that tucks ThinkFish's San Francisco work force of 16 into the Viewpoint fold, bringing its staff to 101 people, with offices in London, Los Angeles, Orem, and San Francisco. ThinkFish's top brass is being moved into high-level jobs, with the former president and CEO now leading Viewpoint's business-development efforts. Plaehn, who has so far managed to double the company's annual product sales and grow the company from nearly $5 million in product and service sales in 1995 to $7.5 million last year, will continue to run the show.
