Following our tradition of getting the makers of the most used 3D engines out there we landed an interview with Alex Karpovich, from Alternativa3D.

Dreaming in Flash: Can you tell us a little more about yourself and your role on the team?

Alex Karpovich: I'm director of Alternativa company, and that means I'm basically responsible for everything here. I'm 29 years old, male, if you need that =)

Dreaming in Flash: What's the history behind Alternativa3D, how did it come to happen?

Alex Karpovich: We transformed from a very good web-studio. Main team just tired of making websites, it's getting boring after second hundred =)
We already had an experienced crew and big ambitions, then we united them with good idea and friendly venture capital. Flash was always our passion, but now it's combined with powerful server-side technologies here.

Dreaming in Flash: The web is thriving with 3D content these days, how do you see this evolving?

Alex Karpovich: Well, every technology is good in certain way, so I don't really think that all the web will go into 3D. But many many many projects will be able to create additional value by using 3D technologies in their websites. We'll also see 3D coming to mobile browsers, for sure.

Dreaming in Flash: What distinguishes Alternativa3D from the pack?

Alex Karpovich: We're commercially oriented, not-opensource-company (shoot me).
We have our own vision on creating better technology, and we're working full-time at our own office, which lets to really focus on our tasks.

Dreaming in Flash: What is your vision for 3D and the web?

Alex Karpovich: 3D is good for visualizating things, but not as good for delivering textual information, so we'll probably see browsers' rich media using 3D, but not that hackers-movie-like interfaces =)
Everyone seems exited, feeling that "we're almost there"... competitors know what I mean.

Dreaming in Flash: How will Flash Player 10, and Pixel Bender, affect Alternativa3D?

Alex Karpovich: It's getting faster with supported typed arrays and built-in perspective correction. We also like PixelBender, because it will let to create various FX and filters, as long as creating procedural textures may seriously redoce traffic, where it is important.
Still, there's a lot of desired features that are not implemented yet. We'll pray for Adobe to make them soon.

Dreaming in Flash: What are Alternativa3D plans for the future?

Alex Karpovich: We'll continue with 3D engine development (we have some serious features upcoming), along with AlternativaPlatform launch. We're starting our sells and dealing with a huge amount of enthusiastic people from many parts of the globe, and that is a very hard and interesting job.

Dreaming in Flash: I've recently read that you have partner studios, how does one become a partner?

Alex Karpovich: Well, you have to be experienced AS3 team to work with 3D engine, right? If so, drop us a letter with short self-description, and we'll see what we can do for you, that's it. A lot of people are looking for professional that can use Alternativa3D at their websites, so we're ready to share them. This process will get more standartized as long as we're getting more experience with partners.

Dreaming in Flash: Will it ever be opensource? Why?

Alex Karpovich: Not now. May be later, if we'll see that we really need that (read: if we'll understand that it's better for the project). Opensource is really good for some reasons, but we'd like to have full process control for now - we have some long-term plans on this software =)

Dreaming in Flash: And to end, what's your secret to achieve such speed and quality in your demos?

Alex Karpovich: Magic, definitely. Think of hardcore gurus with red eyes, scientists in glasses conducting strange experiments at night, colored smoke around the lab, and silent men in black suits with silver suitcases in hands =)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 7:23 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.