Microsoft Announces Simplygon Cloud for developers

Microsoft has launched Simplygon Cloud , a 3D asset optimisation tool on Azure Marketplace. This will help developers and consumers to easily optimise their 3D content for mixed reality. Developers will also be able to reduce complexity of existing model in creation, optimisation and extensibility of 3D object models. Simplygon supports all major mixed reality platforms, including Windows Mixed Reality, iOS and Android; rendering engines including Unity 3D and Unreal Engine; and GLTF, FBX, and OBJ file types for ingestion.

Earlier this year Microsoft had acquired Sweden based Simplygon, to make mixed reality content and development easier, affordable and more efficient.

Historically, 3D asset optimisation has taken days or weeks of manual effort and is one of the tasks that artists and developers dislike the most. With Simplygon, one can create 3D assets once – at full visual fidelity – and automatically optimise them to render smoothly on any platform

As an example, the above 3D model of a couch was built with 584,000 polygons. To render this content on a lower GPU device, Simplygon optimised this down to 5,000 polygons, which greatly reduces the file size, while maintaining the ideal visual fidelity for the intended device.