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 use it build agile and lightning fast Mixed Reality....

Cyberspace breaths ultra-low-latency to create that liquid-real experience. Our core engine is a pseudo-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. With a minimalist cross-platform approach, it's inherently adaptable and naturally future-proof. OpenGL is the greatest dependency, yet we may just switch it to Vulkan. The 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 in the System Preferences!
• Press '1' key to viz (in app) help docs.
• Click on a (3D glyph) doc object and press 'U' key to open it!
• Also, see the 'User-Commands' PDF 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.

• ANTz Viz Presets

  • Help Docs - press '1' key
  • GaiaViz -
  • CoderViz -
  • FileViz - 5
  • WebViz-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 ;)
  • zSpace VR - Comprehend more using a VR desktop or laptop!
  • 3D Mouse (6DOF) - 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse, Navigator, Spaceball...

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

Note that MySQL requires a license agreement with the vendor for commercial use.

ANTz-Xr™ Supported Hardware

• AJA - reliable video IO with GPUdirect
• Blackmagic Design - affordable video IO
• NVIDIA - low latency GPUdirect with Quadro, Tesla and AGX family.
• 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse
• zSpace AR/VR Laptop and Desktop