New service enables any developer to quickly and easily build virtual
reality, augmented reality, and 3D applications for popular hardware
platforms
Preview starts today
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 27, 2017--
At midnight, during the AWS re:Invent Midnight Madness kick-off event,
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN),
announced Amazon Sumerian, a new service that makes it easy for any
developer to build Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and 3D
applications, and run them on mobile devices, head-mounted displays,
digital signage, or web browsers. With Amazon Sumerian’s editor,
developers can build realistic virtual environments, populate them with
3D objects and animated characters, and script how they interact with
each other and the application’s users. VR and AR apps created in Amazon
Sumerian will run in any browser that supports WebGL or WebVR graphics
rendering, including Daydream, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and iOS mobile
devices. Getting started with Amazon Sumerian is as simple as logging
into the AWS Management Console. There is no software to install or
upfront costs—customers pay only for the storage used for 3D assets and
the volume of traffic generated to access the virtual scenes they
create. To learn more about Amazon Sumerian, visit: http://aws.amazon.com/sumerian.
Customers in many industries are adopting VR and AR technologies to
build realistic virtual environments, or overlay virtual objects on the
real world, for a range of applications, including training simulations,
virtual concierge services, enhanced online shopping experiences,
virtual house or land tours, and much more. Until now, creating
realistic virtual environments, or “scenes,” required specialized skills
and the use of multiple different tools for disciplines such as 3D
modeling, environmental design, animation, lighting effects, audio
editing, and more. And then, once a VR or AR application is ready,
developers must learn and implement unique specifications and deployment
processes for each of the major hardware providers. Amazon Sumerian
solves these challenges by providing a web-based editor that developers
can use to easily and quickly create professional-quality scenes, and a
visual scripting tool to build the logic that controls how the objects
and characters in the scenes behave and respond to actions. Amazon
Sumerian also makes it easy to build scenes where rich, natural
interactions between objects, characters, and users occur through the
use of AWS services such as Amazon Lex, Amazon Polly, AWS Lambda, AWS
IoT, and Amazon DynamoDB.
“Customers across industries see the potential of VR and AR technologies
for a wide range of uses—from educating and training employees to
creating new customer experiences. But, customers are daunted and
overwhelmed by the up-front investment in specialized skills and tools
required to even get started building a VR or AR application,” said
Marco Argenti, Vice President, Technology, AWS. “With Amazon Sumerian,
it is now possible for any developer to create a realistic, interactive
VR or AR application in a few hours.”
With Amazon Sumerian, developers can:
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Design immersive VR, AR, and 3D environments—Amazon Sumerian’s
easy to use editor allows developers to drag and drop 3D objects (e.g.
furniture, buildings, and natural objects) and characters into
“scenes” (e.g. rooms, office environments, and landscapes). Developers
can choose from Amazon Sumerian’s library of pre-built objects,
download and import objects from third-party asset repositories such
as Sketchfab or Turbosquid, or create and import their own objects.
Amazon Sumerian also includes templates with pre-populated scenes.
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Easily create animated characters powered by AWS AI services—Developers
can also use Amazon Sumerian to create animated 3D characters that can
guide users through a scene by narrating scripts or answering
questions. Amazon Sumerian is integrated with Amazon Lex and Amazon
Polly, which provide automatic speech recognition (ASR), natural
language understanding (NLU), and text-to-speech capabilities, so that
Amazon Sumerian characters can understand and respond to users in
lifelike conversations.
-
Deploy applications to popular VR and AR hardware—Amazon
Sumerian scenes run in any browser that supports WebGL or WebVR
graphics rendering. Amazon Sumerian scenes are hosted in the AWS cloud
and served from a publicly accessible endpoint, so that users can
access them from anywhere.
Mapbox is a location platform for developers with a deeply customizable
toolset to embed maps in any application. "We now bring Mapbox location
services to Amazon Sumerian, enabling users to integrate 3D maps and
surfaces into their AR and VR applications and bring location-based
experiences to life," said Alex Barth, VP of Business Development,
Mapbox. "For instance, we integrated Mapbox’s points of interest and
global terrain maps with Amazon Sumerian so data is delivered and
rendered in real-time."
Thermo Fisher Scientific is dedicated to improving the human condition
through systems, consumables, and services for researchers. "My
experience with Amazon Sumerian makes developing WebVR and Web3D much
easier,” said Jonathan Agoot, Technology Strategist, Global eBusiness
Innovation Center of Excellence, Thermo Fisher Scientific. “I can easily
import my 3D models, textures, and animation so I focus on developing a
scene and not have to worry about code."
About Amazon Web Services
For more than 11 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most
comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 100
fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking,
analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet
of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, and application development,
deployment, and management from 44 Availability Zones (AZs) across 16
geographic regions in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China,
Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the UK. AWS
services are trusted by millions of active customers around the
world—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and
leading government agencies—to power their infrastructure, make them
more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit https://aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than
competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational
excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping,
personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle
Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa
are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more
information, visit www.amazon.com/about
and follow @AmazonNews.

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