How to work with
How to work with our Ventuz products
Workflows are about specialization, having the right tools to perform the different tasks required to get the job done on time and in an efficient fashion. Ventuz solutions are designed to meet the requirements of most graphic workflows, by offering three main applications to fit into your new or existing graphics workflow.
Workflow with all 3 Ventuz products
In this configuration, Ventuz Designer is used to bring together external assets (which include especially tight workflows with other packages such as Adobe Photoshop, Substance Designer or Maxon Cinema4D), design and author new content, link data and create the animations, logic and behaviors. This results in Ventuz scenes and templates.
Director then looks at the scenes created by Designer, finds the templates and data structures and takes control of launching and controlling any Runtime, or collection of Runtimes that it has been assigned. The Ventuz Configuration Tool offers all the screen setup, warping, shaping and clustering/synchronization tools of the various Runtime outputs, while Directors Topology editor specifies how they all fit together in a single graphical interface.
Director offers the ability to change assets, fill out elements and manually control logic in the scenes and templates that have been defined by the Designer as being Director-controlled. These edits and controls are directly passed to the Runtime(s) during live operation. It also controls the launching and sequencing of scenes and templates in the Runtime(s). Any other interactivity, data connections, assets and generation inherent to a scene the Runtimes are playing remain live and unaffected by Director.
Thus, you have content being produced in Designer and passed to Runtime, with Director then sitting on top and assuming control. Obviously, there are many more possibilities, for more in-depth and complete details, please refer to the extensive documentation.
Create and Play with Ventuz Designer and Runtime
In this configuration, Ventuz Designer is used to bring together external assets (which include especially tight workflows with other packages such as Adobe Photoshop, Substance Designer or Maxon Cinema4D), design and author new content, link data and create the animations, logic and behaviors. This results in a single file, called a Ventuz Presentation, which combines the Ventuz scene and any internal assets.
These presentations are simply loaded and then run by Runtime. The easiest way to launch is to double click a presentation on a machine with Runtime installed on it. Provided the external assets, data connections and requires hardware is present, it will run with no further intervention. Runtime, via the Ventuz configuration tool, also offers all the screen setup, warping, shaping and clustering/synchronization tools required for setting the machine up.
Because of Ventuz’ openness and APIs, it is also very easy to create external control applications, for example web-pages, .NET apps or use OSC to drive Runtime.
Runtime is not simply playing back the Ventuz though, it is actually generating and running it in Realtime, so any interactivity, connectivity or data feeds within the scene remains live. It can also, of course, be controlled live through APIs, external devices and/or scripting, as determined by how the content has been created in Designer.
Ventuz Designer and a cluster of Runtimes
In this configuration, Ventuz Designer is used to bring together external assets (which include especially tight workflows with other packages such as Adobe Photoshop, Substance Designer or Maxon Cinema4D), design and author new content, link data and create the animations, logic and behaviors. This results in Ventuz scenes and templates.
Of course, because a Runtime cluster is not simply playing back a scene, but actually generating and running it in realtime, any interactivity, connectivity or data feeds within the scenes are live. It can also, of course, be controlled live through APIs, external devices and/or scripting, as determined by how the content has been created in Designer.
The only difference to the single Runtime version is that the content needs to be distributed and launched in a synchronized environment. For this, Ventuz has a configuration tool, which provides for content to be uploaded to the Runtime cluster and launched. This Ventuz configuration tool, which connects to the remote cluster machines via network, also contains all the screen configuration, warping and shaping and cluster setup tools.
The Runtimes then jointly ensure that they, and their content, remain synchronized to each other on the basis of a shared software cluster clock, which can be further enhanced by supported hardware features such as house sync, genlock or framelock/swapsync.
If Director, or another external control application is present, it can take control of the Cluster in exactly the same way as if it were a single Runtime.
