Polygon Labs, an innovative studio pushing the boundaries of interactive data applications and visual branding, has announced its new Visual Data Plugins and Asset Hub software to expand the use of the Unreal Engine 3D creation tool for broadcast applications. The two new products join Polygon Labs’ Porta workflow enabler (used by multiple Vizrt customers) to further bridge the gap between TV content production workflows and Unreal Engine broadcast production.
Asset Hub is a web-based, centralized platform that can be hosted on site or in the cloud and is already used by apparel brands and the retail world with adaption for broadcast use now near completion. With it, users can seamlessly import 2D and 3D files and associated metadata and can tag, group, store, browse, preview and distribute 3D assets to Unreal Engine. Asset Hub provides the functionality to centrally store and distribute 3D assets across the production workflow with Unreal Engine, an important addition to Unreal Engine’s capabilities. Asset Hub will be available as a software subscription.
The new Visual Data Plugins are ideally suited for applications like finance, weather and sports, as well as for things like showing data for elections. They create real-time bar, line, pie or candle charts with any data that users push through the Unreal Engine. Visual Data Plugins will be available on an annual subscription basis that includes upgrades, support and maintenance.
Polygon Labs is also formally introducing Porta, which already has a significant customer base, to the market. Porta makes it possible for Vizrt control tools to send data and commands to the Unreal Engine, with users able to control the Vizrt and Unreal Engine graphics simultaneously, bridging the gap between the two workflows.
David Jorba, Polygon Labs’ Chief Strategy & Business Development Officer, comments, “We see these new offerings as a big step forward in broadening the use of Unreal Engine by integrating it with the existent production workflow that broadcasters already have in place. Asset Hub is already being used in the retail world on apparel brands and adapting it for broadcast will prove very beneficial for our customers. Asset Hub imports 3D objects and 2D images plus their associated metadata and opens a new world for searching, browsing and viewing the details of the assets. Our Visual Data Plugins were born from the need of making data visualization operations simple; they accept any type of data inside the Unreal Engine and seamlessly view it in several chart formats.”
Asset Hub and the Visual Data Plugins will be available from Polygon Labs at the end of Q2.