Visual media has become more and more a standard over the past few years. As more and more shows and installs are asking for media, companies are now providing more ways to serve it. One of the coolest systems I saw at #LDI2010 was the d3 by United Visual Artists. It’s been around for a little while but is only now making a [huge] splash here in the states by being debuted on the U2 360 Tour. You see that giant bird nest thingy over the stage? Thats being driven by  d3.

At first glance d3 is a bit intimidating- timeline based editing, built in real time visualizer and the capability to drive an entire visual rig including lighting. It can play media at a full 1080p resolution and spit it back out to one of four DVI outputs at a max resolution fo 1920×1200. It’ll play most of the current video formats, so no need to worry about re-rendering content. Send it live feeds on 2 HD SDI or 4 SD SDI inputs.

Being visual, you of course want to see what you’re creating in real time and the built in visualizer doesn’t lack in that department. It can import complex 3D objects, simulate camera movements, and even let you build complete pixel maps. Future updates will allow for full projection masking and spherical mapping.

Control is very well thought out as well. You can run right from the d3, have multiple devices setup in a master / slave system to Art-Net, MIDI, and MIDI timecode.

UVA really want’s you to use d3. So much so that (until further notice) when you buy a new system they will train you for free.

I want one.

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