Amazon Launches Sumerian Tool For Building Immersive AR, VR And 3D Apps

Amazon has announced a new service that is meant to enable developers to build VR, AR, and 3D applications for what it calls "popular hardware" platforms. The preview for the new service, called Amazon Sumerian, starts today. Sumerian allows developers to build realistic virtual environments and then populate them with 3D objects and animated characters.

Amazon writes, "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."

Amazon says that there is no cost associated with the software and that customers must only pay for the storage used for their 3D assets and the volume of traffic generated by the content they create. Amazon says that before Sumerian arrived, building this sort of content required special skills in tools for 3D modeling, environmental design, animation, lighting effects, and audio editing. Once the content was completed the developers then had to know how to deploy the content for each of the major hardware providers.

Amazon writes, "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."

Content built with Sumerian can be deployed to any browser supporting WebGL or WebVR graphics rendering. Hardware including the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and iOS devices support the content created with Sumerian. Scenes created with the software are hosted on the AWS cloud and served so that users can access the content from anywhere.

"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."