VIDI (Visual Information Development, Inc.) is a leading supplier of high-end 3-D computer graphics solutions for the Macintosh. With Presenter Professional's Digital SoundStage™, VIDI provides a giant leap over existing 3-D animation and multimedia software. In fact, VIDI is the first and currently the only developer to currently offer the ability to pull together sound, pictures, and animation into one easy-to-use package. It does this by combining the best in 3-D animation with the ability to pull live action film and live sound together, all in a virtual sound stage that exists completely on your desktop. While this latest application is considered one of the newest and most imaginative 3-D applications on the Macintosh, VIDI is by no means a young company.
Founded in 1986 primarily as a 3-D modeling provider, VIDI has focused its development towards 3-D visualization, animation and multimedia applications for the Macintosh coupled with a more powerful and intuitive modeling and design capability. Over the years VIDI was the first to develop a ray tracing program on the Macintosh- which ran on a Mac Plus, created the now standard PICS format, was the first to generate 24-bit images (again on a Mac Plus) the first to write a DXF conversion utility for the Macintosh, the first to develop a 3-D stereo viewing algorithm on the Macintosh, the first to utilize RISC architecture in a Macintosh, the first to offer a spline-based 3-D program, and now with the Presenter Professional Digital SoundStage, the first to offer multimedia, game, and broadcast producers a 3-D Multimedia and 3-D Sound tool for pre-visualization and production of animations, games, film, video, multimedia titles, corporate, and educational presentations, accident scene simulations, medical reconstructions and engineering/architectural visualizations.
These and many other capabilities make Presenter Professional the most complete and effective 3D virtual world development tool on the market. But don't just take our word for it. Listen to these strong commendations from the press: Digital Video said, ‘‘Presenter Professional lets you quickly create complex models, and even add sound effects. It's as if VIDI has blended all the strong points of today's 3D modeling programs. It's easy to become familiar with all the features of the program after only a few minutes; within an hour you can be producing complex models.” According to MacWeek, Presenter Professional features “an all-pro modeler and many advanced animation tools, including 3D sound. This makes it easy to create animations with very realistic sound-without painstaking audio post-production. We haven't seen a similar capability in any other product.”
Presenter Professional is used in a variety of ways by some very high profile users. These uses range from pre-visualization and creation of special effects for movies by studios such as Disney and Paramount to medical reconstruction of human organs, business presentations, and advertising. Its ability to mix sound, pictures and animation in a 3D environment makes it vital to the game, multimedia and broadcast industries. Syd Mead, world renowned futurist designer known for creating the vehicles and set designs for movies such as 2010, Aliens, Bladerunner Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Johnny Mnemonic, recently designed the realistic, futuristic cars and backgrounds for Sega's newest car chase game, Gran Chaser using Presenter Professional. The Discovery Channel is featuring a documentary on the history of aviation and selling a CD where all the aircraft were realistically modeled and rendered with Presenter Professional on the Macintosh. However, the highest profile use of Presenter Professional to-date is by NASA, in its animated presentation of the docking of the space shuttle with the Russian space station shown on CNN and Nightline as it was actually occurring.
VIDI's Presenter Professional Digital SoundStage product provides a unique application: a combination of 3D animation and multimedia capabilities in one product. This capability is not available anywhere else, not even from Microsoft Softimage. Our product puts the Macintosh and especially the Power Macintosh at the forefront of the multimedia, broadcast film and video, game, animation and graphic art markets.
