Platform and method for collaborative generation of content
A cloud-centric platform is used for generating virtual three-dimensional (3D) content, that allows users to collaborate online and that can be connected to different software tools (applications). Using the platform, virtual environments (e.g., scenes, worlds, universes) can be created, accessed, and interacted with simultaneously by multiple collaborative content creators using varying content creation or development applications.
1. A system, comprising:
one or more processing units coupled to memory having stored therein at least one database that stores data representative of assets of a scene; and
one or more communication interfaces coupled to the memory and operable for bidirectional communication with a plurality of different types of applications that interoperate with each other through changes to the at least one database, the one or more communication interfaces to communicate requests from the applications for subscriptions to receive one or more changes to subsets of the assets of the scene;
wherein changes corresponding to at least one asset of the assets of the scene made using one or more applications of the applications accessing the scene are saved to the at least one database and different applications of the applications are notified, using one or more notifications, of different sets of the changes corresponding to the at least one asset based at least on the different applications having been granted different subscriptions of the subscriptions to different subsets of the subsets of the assets of the scene,
wherein the different sets of the changes corresponding to the at least one asset cause, based at least on the one or more notifications, the different applications to determine different values of one or more properties of a same synchronized object composed of a plurality of the assets and to render the same synchronized object in the scene using the different values, and
further wherein one or more representations of one or more of the assets in the at least one databases comprises three-dimensional data.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more properties are defined using the assets.
3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more properties affect one or more of an appearance, a position, or an orientation of the same synchronized object in a virtual environment.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the different sets of the changes corresponding to the at least one asset effect changes to different properties of the at least one asset with respect to the different applications.
5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more properties are defined across a plurality of objects.
6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the different applications are notified of the different sets of the changes includes transmitting the different sets of the changes to the different applications.
7. The system of claim 1 , wherein at least some of the subscriptions to receive changes are to different subsets of one or more layers of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of objects, and a layer of the one or more layers defines a plurality of objects corresponding to a plurality of leaves of a transformation hierarchy.
8. The system of claim 7 , wherein the one or more changes are to one or more first layers of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of objects, at least one first object of the objects inherits one or more first properties from the one or more first layers, at least one second object of the objects inherits one or more second properties from one or more second layers of the plurality of layers, each layer of the plurality of layers defines the properties for the objects corresponding to a plurality of leaves of a transformation hierarchy.
9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the changes are to a layer of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of the scene representing a virtual environment, the scene includes a plurality of objects, and the layer defines the properties for the plurality of objects corresponding to a plurality of leaves of a transformation hierarchy.
10. The system of claim 1 , wherein a first application of the different applications is notified regarding all of the changes and a second application of the different applications is notified regarding less than all of the changes.
11. The system of claim 1 , wherein the applications are presenting the scene and the one or more notifications being filtered causes a second subset of the applications accessing the scene to present the scene without the one or more changes.
12. The system of claim 11 , wherein at least one application of the different types of applications is selected from a group consisting of:
a physics simulation application;
an artificial intelligence application;
a global illumination application;
a game engine;
an animation tool;
a computer graphics application;
a renderer;
a graphics editor;
a virtual reality application;
an augmented reality application; and
a scripting application.
13. The system of claim 1 , wherein a plurality of changes made by the one or more applications to the one or more assets in the at least one database are accumulated in a list, wherein the plurality of changes in the list are saved to the at least one database periodically.
14. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more processing units execute a renderer that assembles objects to generate a frame comprising a render of the scene, wherein the system is communicatively coupled to a plurality of different types of client devices having different capabilities, and wherein the renderer assembles the scene for each client device of the client devices according to a capability of said each client device.
15. The system of claim 14 , wherein a plurality of changes made by the one or more applications to the one or more assets in the at least one database are saved to the at least one database at a rate that corresponds to a rate at which the renderer generates frames.
16. A method, comprising:
at one or more servers that store at least one database comprising assets of a scene, wherein the assets comprise one or more elements:
receiving, from a first client of clients accessing the scene, a request for one or more subscriptions to receive one or more changes to one or more subsets of one or more of the assets of the scene;
receiving changes to at least one asset of the assets of the scene, the changes to the at least one asset generated using at least a second client of the clients accessing the scene;
updating the at least one of the assets of the scene in the at least one database to include the changes to the at least one asset; and
notifying, using one or more notifications from the one or more servers, different clients of the clients of different sets of the changes based at least on the first client being granted at least one subscription of the one or more subscriptions to receive the one or more changes to the one or more subsets of the assets of the scene, wherein the different sets of the changes to the at least one asset cause, based at least on the one or more notifications, the different clients to determine different values of one or more properties of a same synchronized object composed of a plurality of the assets and to render the same synchronized object in the scene using the different values.
17. The method of claim 16 , wherein the first client identified the one or more subsets of the one or more assets in a request for the at least one subscription.
18. The method of claim 16 , wherein the one or more servers refrain from providing the changes to a plurality of clients based at least on the plurality of clients lacking subscriptions that correspond to the one or more subsets of the assets.
19. The method of claim 16 , wherein said receiving the one or more changes and said updating the one or more subsets in the at least one database to include the one or more changes comprise synchronizing the at least one database and data of the second client.
20. The method of claim 16 , further comprising synchronizing the at least one database and data of the clients after said updating the at least one database to include the changes.
21. The method of claim 16 , wherein the notifying is performed per client according to subscriptions to receive changes to the one or more subsets.
22. The method of claim 16 , at least some subscriptions of the one or more subscriptions are to different subsets of one or more layers of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of objects.
23. The method of claim 16 , wherein the one or more changes are to one or more first layers of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of objects, at least one first object of the objects inherits one or more first properties from the one or more first layers, and at least one second object of the objects inherits one or more second properties from one or more second layers of the plurality of layers.
24. The method of claim 16 , wherein the one or more changes are to a layer of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of objects, and the one or more changes correspond to a plurality of the objects.
25. The method of claim 16 , further comprising resolving conflicts between changes to the at least one database according to a ranking assigned to applications that are sources of the changes.
26. The method of claim 16 , wherein the at least one database comprises a plurality of assets, and wherein a set of the assets from the plurality of assets comprises a virtual scene when assembled.
27. The method of claim 16 , wherein the clients correspond to applications selected from a group of types of applications consisting of:
a physics simulation application;
an artificial intelligence application;
a global illumination application;
a game engine application;
an animation tool;
a computer graphics application;
a renderer application;
a graphics editor application;
a virtual reality application;
an augmented reality application; and
a scripting application.
28. A processor comprising:
one or more circuits to:
store in, at least one database assets comprising three-dimensional data, the assets forming a virtual scene;
process one or more communications received using one or more sockets coupled to the at least one database and operable for bidirectional communication with clients accessing the virtual scene;
receive, from a first client of the clients, one or more requests for one or more subscriptions to receive one or more changes to one or more subsets of one or more of the assets of the virtual scene; and
perform operations to synchronize data of the assets and data of the clients accessing the virtual scene;
wherein the operations comprise:
receiving changes to one or more elements of an asset in the one or more subsets, the changes to the one or more elements generated using at least a second client of the clients accessing the virtual scene;
updating the one or more elements in the at least one database to include the changes to the one or more elements; and
notifying, using one or more notifications, different clients of the clients accessing the virtual scene of different sets of the changes to the one or more elements based at least on the first client having the one or more subscriptions to receive the one or more changes to the one or more subsets, wherein the different sets of the changes to the one or more elements cause, based at least on the one or more notifications, the different clients to determine different values of one or more properties of a same synchronized object composed of a plurality of the assets and to render the same synchronized object in the virtual scene using the different values.
29. The processor of claim 28 , wherein the operations further comprise:
the at least one database and data for the first client being synchronized via the one or more sockets to include the one or more changes in the at least one database, after the one or more changes are generated using the second client.
30. The processor of claim 28 , wherein at least some subscriptions of the one or more subscriptions are to different subsets of one or more layers of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of objects.
31. The processor of claim 28 , wherein the one or more circuits are further operable for resolving conflicts between changes to the assets in the at least one database according to a ranking assigned to the clients that are sources of the changes.
32. The processor of claim 28 , wherein the first client and the second client are different types of clients selected from a group of types of clients consisting of:
a physics simulation application;
an artificial intelligence application;
a global illumination application;
a game engine;
an animation tool;
a computer graphics application;
a renderer;
a graphics editor;
a virtual reality application;
an augmented reality application; and
a scripting application.
33. The processor of claim 28 , wherein the one or more circuits are further to assemble the assets in the at least one database to generate a frame comprising a render of the virtual scene, wherein the clients comprise devices having different capabilities, and wherein the frame is generated for a devices of the devices according to capabilities of the device.
34. The processor of claim 28 , wherein the one or more changes are to one or more first layers of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of objects, at least one first object of the objects inherits one or more first properties from the one or more first layers, and at least one second object of the objects inherits one or more second properties from one or more second layers of the plurality of layers.
35. The processor of claim 28 , wherein the one or more changes are to a layer of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of objects, and the one or more changes correspond to a plurality of the objects.
36. The processor of claim 28 , wherein the one or more circuits are to provide, based at least on the subscriptions, different sets of the clients accessing the virtual scene to receive different sets of changes to a same assets of the virtual scene.
37. A system comprising:
one or more servers, comprising:
at least one database that stores assets comprising three-dimensional data used for generating a virtual scene; and
one or more circuits to:
receive, from clients accessing the virtual scene, requests for subscriptions to receive one or more changes to subsets of one or more of the assets of the virtual scene;
synchronize changes corresponding to at least one asset of the assets made by at least one client coupled to the server and data of the at least one asset to include the changes in the at least one database; and
notifying, using one or more notifications, different clients of the claims of different sets of the changes corresponding to the at least one asset in accordance with the subscriptions to synchronize the different sets of the changes corresponding to the at least one asset with data of the different clients based at least on the different clients having been granted different subscriptions of the subscriptions to different subsets of the subsets of the one or more assets of the virtual scene, wherein the different sets of the changes corresponding to the at least one asset cause, based at least on the one or more notifications, the different clients to determine different values of one or more properties of a same synchronized object composed of a plurality of the assets and to render the same synchronized object in the virtual scene using the different values.
38. The system of claim 37 , wherein the one or more circuits are further to resolve conflicts between changes to the assets according to a ranking assigned to the clients that are sources of the changes.
39. The system of claim 37 , wherein the clients comprise different types of clients selected from a group of types of clients consisting of:
a physics simulation application;
an artificial intelligence application;
a global illumination application;
a game engine;
an animation tool;
a computer graphics application;
a renderer;
a graphics editor;
a virtual reality application;
an augmented reality application; and
a scripting application.
40. The system of claim 37 , wherein the clients comprise clients that are subscribers to one or more selected assets in the at least one database, wherein the subscribers are notified when a change is made to an asset in the at least one database that they subscribe to.
41. The system of claim 37 , wherein the clients comprise respective plug-ins to communicate with the at least one database.
42. A system comprising:
one or more processing units to implement at least one client application of a plurality of client applications accessing a virtual environment, the at least one client application to:
interoperate with others of the plurality of client applications to produce and modify assets of the virtual environment through changes to the assets;
request one or more subscriptions to receive one or more changes to one or more subsets of one or more of the assets;
receive one or more notifications corresponding to a set of changes of different sets of changes to at least one asset of the assets, wherein different client applications of the plurality of client applications are notified of the different sets of changes based at least on the different client applications having been granted different subscriptions to different subsets of the subsets of the one or more assets, and wherein the different sets of the changes corresponding to the at least one asset cause, based at least on the one or more notifications, the different client applications to determine different values of one or more properties of a same synchronized object composed of a plurality of the assets and to render the same synchronized object in the virtual environment using the different values; and
render one or more views of the virtual environment using the one or more subsets of the one or more of the assets, the one or more views including the same synchronized object.
43. The system of claim 42 , further comprising at least one database configured to store the assets, wherein the changes are saved to the at least one database and provided from the at least one database to one or more of the plurality of client applications based at least on the one or more subscriptions.
44. The system of claim 42 , wherein at least some subscriptions of the one or more subscriptions are to different subsets of one or more layers of a plurality of layers that collectively define properties of objects.
45. The system of claim 42 , wherein the plurality of client applications comprise types of applications selected from a group consisting of:
a physics simulation application;
an artificial intelligence application;
a global illumination application;
a game engine;
an animation tool;
a computer graphics application;
a renderer;
a graphics editor;
a virtual reality application;
an augmented reality application; and
a scripting application.
46. The system of claim 42 , wherein information that identifies client applications of the plurality of client applications as having subscriptions to the at least one asset is associated with the at least one asset, wherein the one or more changes are provided to the client applications based at least on the subscriptions.