ionForge Announces Image Difference Tool - Breakthrough In Source Control and Asset Management
ionForge Company, a leading provider of next-generation software configuration management tools, announced a major advancement in Evolution, their source control and asset management solution. Evolution’s new Image Difference tool allows developers to detect even small changes in an image when they compare two versions. By allowing development teams, including graphic artists, developers, and project managers, to track changes in images through the life of a project, Evolution's Image Difference tool will help ensure that projects are completed accurately as well as on time and on budget.
Irvine, CA (PRWEB) May 17, 2005 -- ionForge Company, a leading provider of
next-generation software configuration management tools, announced a major
advancement in Evolution, their source control and asset management solution.
Evolution’s new Image Difference tool allows developers to detect even small
changes in an image when they compare two versions. By allowing development
teams, including graphic artists, developers, and project managers, to track
changes in images through the life of a project, Evolution's Image Difference
tool will help ensure that projects are completed accurately as well as on time
and on budget.
Evolution supports image comparison for all common image
file formats, including BitMaP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, PCX, PNM, and TIF files.
Evolution can compare images across different file formats.
Outdated
image comparison tools provide little more than side by side images, which
require digital artists to spend time picking out changes, or a rudimentary
overlay which shows coarse variations. The ionForge team has applied the same
revolutionary thinking they brought to the digital asset management field to
image management. Evolution's Image Difference tool gives users unprecedented
power and flexibility to identify subtle changes in images, even those that
would be time consuming for an experienced graphic artist to detect. The new
Image Difference tool provides metrics that show the degree of change between
images, and visual filters with threshold adjustment that let you highlight the
nature of changes and adjust the acceptable level of differences.
“We see
this as a major advancement in source control and asset management,” noted Lucas
Heneks, Lead Developer of Entertainment and Game Tools for ionForge. “Visual
image comparison is going to dramatically improve the development cycle of game
and entertainment projects. “
Complementing the Image Difference tool,
Evolution is specifically designed to handle large media files, which are
commonplace in gaming and entertainment development projects. Easy to install
and use, Evolution can scale to meet the needs any development
project.
“Evolution’s latest features allow us to optimize and refine not
only our code, but our art assets as well,” said Drew Clark, Project Lead of
Reactor Interactive. “By letting us see physically see the difference between
levels of image compression, we’ve been able to reduce load times, and texture
memory without sacrificing visible quality in our higher-resolution
textures.”
Individual developers wishing to try Evolution’s Image
Difference tool can do so for themselves by downloading a free single license of
Evolution from ionForge at:
http://www.ionforge.com/?ir=idiff
This free single
license is a perpetual license; it never expires and is fully supported. The
free single license starts as a 10 user license for evaluation, then transitions
into a single user perpetual license.
Evolution Features
FAST Remote
Access
Evolution remote access works right out-of-the-box, just type in the
IP address and port of the server and log in! No VPN to configure, no
complicated set up or proxy, or third party software such as IIS required.
Evolution works over TCP/IP, with automatic encryption and compression to make
sure that it's secure and fast, even over
dialup.
Productions
Evolution allows you to create super-projects
called Productions that are modular groupings of files that can be versioned as
a unit. Use Productions as snapshots and manipulate your changesets before
committing them to the system. Productions dramatically simplify file and
project management, allowing you to control groups of files with simple
one-click operations.
Deferred locks
In exclusive checkout
environments, Evolution provides a managed queue so lock assignment and
notifications occur automatically. No more waiting, the current lock owner
receives a friendly "Hurry up" message when another user enters the queue, and
the new owner receives a notification when they've been assigned the
lock.
IDE Integration Perform your day-to-day tasks without leaving your
development environment. Evolution supports the MS SCC API, used by the entire
Microsoft family of Integrated Development Environments, including Visual Studio
.NET. Artists in your team can also control their assets without ever leaving
their familiar environment with Photoshop integration.
Highly
Customizable
Evolution includes a scriptable command line as well as a soon
to be released automation API, allowing you to better integrate Evolution with
dedicated build automation and deployment tools. Use Evolution as the keystone
tool in your development pipeline to control and monitor your code, but you are
free to use the other tools you already have to perform auxiliary duties. The
fully supported automation API will be available in May 2005.
Evolution
also includes advanced Source Control Management features such
as:
• Real Time Multicast Updating - Metadata changes
are shown instantly
• Snapshot Architecture: Manage
immutable code states as components
• Reflections, Clones,
Shards - Advanced branch types for automatic code propagation and simple
merging
• Easy to learn / easy to use intuitive
interface
• Import from other source control
solutions
• Advanced branching models - Flexible support
for any development process
• Customizable Promotion
Ladders - Customize Evolution to fit specific internal promotion
processes
• Event triggers - Automate human procedures and
manual scripts in build processes
• Special features reduce
merge conflicts
• Database agnostic - Supports ANY ODBC
datasource
• Uses enterprise level
security
• Automated deployment through event
triggers
• Identify project flaws through design
deconstruction
• Complete change reports (exportable to
HTML)
• Access code from anywhere using encrypted TCP/IP
• Obliteration feature – removes code without harming
history
• Works in Progress - Privately commits changes for
only a single developer.
• Define work
boundaries
• Insulate each component owner and let them
handle the specifics of their Production and promote it up your promotion ladder
accordingly
http://www.ionforge.com/products/evolution/
Evolution
User Testimonials
"Evolution is a great source control solution for the
independent developer."
Drew Sikora
Blade Edge Software
Lincroft,
NJ
The Evolution Story
(http://www.ionforge.com/products/evolution/)
Evolution was
born out of our own team's real-life frustrations with the limitations of
existing source control solutions, spanning from free products to outrageously
priced software.
As a veteran developer himself, Nick Ni knows first hand
the frustration of team software developing without proper processes. Data
corruption, file collisions, and accurate project analysis are just some of the
challenges that both managers and developers face when developing without a
Source Control Management tool. Source Control Management is a central tool that
allows developers to accurately control their source code, while allowing
management to ensure project benchmarks are achieved on time.
Fueled by
their frustration with existing Source Control Management solutions, Ni and his
team of developers created Evolution, a robust Source Control Management tool
that addresses many of the issues developers face today. Realizing that the
goals of project managers often conflict with the processes of developers, Ni
and his team built Evolution with advanced features that harmonize the efforts
of these disparate groups.
http://www.ionforge.com/products/evolution/
As our own
customers, ionForge developed Evolution as the solution all of our team members
would want and need to use.
• Our developers needed
convenient features to make their everyday tasks faster and easier, as well as
the ability to abide by corporate policy without being bogged down by the
burdens of tedious duties.
• Our build engineers
complained about the difficulties of creating scheduled daily
builds.
• Our project managers and architects needed more
sophisticated mechanisms to represent the complexities of designing and managing
a project from conception to gold and beyond.
The answer to all these woes
lay in source control.
In our research, we realized the crux of the issue
was that source control was still viewed as nothing more than a method of
backup. It was time for source control to evolve beyond this basic idea of a
simple repository.
ABOUT ionForge (http://www.ionforge.com)
Founded in 2001, ionForge is
committed to providing innovative solutions for the common problems encountered
by software development teams.
Based in Orange County, California –
ionForge is focused on providing their clients with
• An
immediate return on investment.
• Minimal transitional
costs.
• Long-term value.
ionForge is committed to
delivering solutions that solve problems immediately, require no downtime and
have little learning curve, and provide obvious value in both the medium and
long term.
Mission Statement
ionForge's mission is to increase the
productivity of software development teams worldwide by providing solutions to
the real problems they face both on a day-to-day basis and in the long term.
Through innovative technology, creative thinking, and exceptional customer
service, ionForge will solve the complex issues of large enterprises at a cost
that teams of any size can afford.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/5/prweb240802.htm