Several schools recently picked the Virtools Software Suite

Posted by: Kevin Hawkins at March 10, 2005 2:11:18 PM

San Francisco, CA, March 10, 2005 - With over 185 universities using and teaching Virtools around the globe, Virtools has become the leading interactive 3d development platform in the Educational field.

Virtools publishes a suite of software solutions used to create interactive 3D applications for video games, as well as simulation/virtual reality and marketing/multimedia applications.

Virtools' revolutionary interactive 3D technology makes learning complex game or multimedia production easier than ever before. More and more universities are taking advantage of this opportunity by introducing Virtools solutions to their arsenal of teaching tools. Dev's user-friendly graphic interface is the perfect introduction to interactive 3D media, whether students have a foundation in programming or not.

Recently, Virtools was added in the curriculum of several schools in North America for game design and game development. These include the Cerro Coso College , of California (online training), the International Academy of Art and Design, of Toronto, Canada and the Isacsoft Institute of Montreal, QC, Canada.

"Virtools is proud to rapidly expand into the educational market, serving commercial companies with highly skilled and proficient students, ready to work with the latest technologies used in todays games but industry leaders" said Bertrand Duplat, President and CTO of Virtools. "Using Virtools in a game curriculum allows technical artists to expose their work in a state of the art highly interactive portfolio without programming backgrounds, while programmers learn the advanced interactive techniques by customizing the engine through the Virtools Software Development Kit" he added.

His opinion is shared by the directors of the programs:

"Our program has the unique challenge of bringing together novice designers and developers focusing on the goal of producing a working game in an extremely short project lifecycle. In terms of exposing novices to the engineering, programming and design elements of the game development process in an easily managed and intuitive interface no product we reviewed held a candle to Virtools. The Virtools SDK allows us to make the technical elements of the build process available to the programmers while the intuitive workspace allows the art and design teams to see results quickly. An all in one environment excellent for exposing the novice to build process."
Michael Stead
Director, Game Design and Development Division
International Academy of Design & Technology - Toronto

"Virtools Dev is an intuitive, natural extension of the XSI or Maya workflow that our students are accustomed to, allowing our students to gain critical experience in working with their assets 'in-game'.
I couldn't imagine a more effective tool for learning how games and design simulations are created. The remarkable efficiency of 'building blocks' makes interactive authoring accessible to artists, yet the scripting environment is full featured and well suited to supporting game programming instruction."
Jim Kiggens
Director, The Academy of Digital Animation Cerro Coso College

"I'm very impressed with the time needed for the students to learn 3d programming thanks Virtools Dev. Students come straight out of a C++ class, and they very quickly integrate the concepts of real time 3d programming. The ergonomy of the Virtools interface allows us to logically explain the use of behaviors in an interactive project development. The building blocks indeed make programming very user friendly while extremely robust and precise."
Christophe Serres, teaching of Virtools Dev at the IsacSoft Institute, Montréal