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ANTz at a Glance!

• Download ANTz app at openANTz.com and feel free to Contact Us.

ANTz visualization engine bridges bio-cybernetics, digital arts & data science.

• Viz your Data to gain greater insight!
• OR build agile and lightning fast Mixed Reality....

Cyberspace breaths ultra-low-latency to create that liquid-real experience. Our core engine is a psuedo-state-machine, written from scratch in plain C to minimize latency, flow bandwidth and maximize processing power. It's rock-solid, forged through decades of hard work in live Visual FX, Machine Control and high-dimensional Data Analysis.

The Architecture is based on the Neural Physics Engine (NPE) implementation of Hyperglyphs. Using a minimalist cross-platform approach, it is inherently adaptable and naturally future-proof. OpenGL is the most significant dependency, and even it could be substituted. Our Native Scene Graph is basic to work with and uses standard DB tables or common CSV files.

• Report BUGS here and make 'enhancement' requests!

User Docs

Quickstart

• Download unzip and simply run the 'antz' app.
  • OSX requires authorizing the app!
• Press '1' key to viz (in app) help docs.
• Click on a (3D) doc object and press 'U' key to open it!
• Command 'cheatsheet' is in the apps 'doc' folder.

User Guides

• Tutorials - Videos, step-by-step guides and data wrangling examples in C or Python.

• User Manual - Everything that nobody reads, a comprehensive reference.

  • User Commands - If you read anything, than read this!!!!
  • Global Scene Graph - How our virtual world is organized.
  • Transparency - It's not what you think, it's just an illusion!
  • Texture Mapping - Formats, alpha tricks and memory constraints.

• AutoViz

  • Help Docs - press '1' key
  • GaiaViz - press '2'
  • WikiViz - 3 key
  • CoderViz - 4
  • FileViz - 5
  • GitViz - 6
  • 7viz - 7

• Hardware

  • CPU+GPU - Faster CPU clock = faster viz, big GPU's are good!
  • Mixed Reality Video IO - Oh, perhaps you want cyberspace ;)
  • AR & VR - Comprehend more, no really, ours works more better!

Import & Export

• Images
• 3D Models
• CSV, JSON & MySQL
• Native Tables
  • np_globals
  • np_node
  • np_tag
  • np_channel
  • np_tracks
  • np_models
  • np_images
  • np_fileviz
  • np_gaiaviz

Developer

Dev Guides

• Architecture - ANTz core engine described with key concepts.
• Code Workflow - How to contribute, via git or email.
• Cross Platform Guide - Avoid platform dependency, it's a nasty habit!
• Code Style Guidelines - Keep your colleagues from going cross-eyed.
• Doxygen + Graphviz - Inline code comments that generate API docs.
• IDE Setup - Visual Studio, Xcode and Eclipse.

API's

• C
• OSC
• Python

Roadmap

• ANTz v1.0
• Future API's
  • API Java Socket
  • API RESTful
• Every Link Known to ANTz

3rd Party Libraries

• Khronos Group - OpenGL, OpenCL, COLLADA
• freeglut - cross-platform application framework
• GLEW - GL extension wrangler
• Assimp - 3D model import
• FreeImage - image formats
• FreeType - font rendering
• MySQL - database connector
• curl - URL based data transfer
• Jannson - encode decode JSON
• oscpack - OSC networking
• python - scripting language

Supported Hardware

• AJA - reliable video IO with GPUdirect
• Blackmagicdesign - affordable video IO
• intoPIX - ultra low latency JPEG2000 FPGA core
• nVidia - low latency GPUdirect with Quadro series or AGX
• Violin Systems - AV compliant SSA (Flash Storage)
• zSpace desktop VR

Disclaimer: Hardware libraries often need to be obtained directly from the vendor. Also, you may need to get 'NON-public' ANTz source code by contacting us.