iDA Director for Lifestyle & Eduction, Games & entertainment Thomas LIM

As part of its digital exchange initiative,The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (iDA) is working towards developing CAX (Computer Animation Exchange) on the lines of its Online Gaming Exchange and Digital Cinema Exchange.

Identifying India as a potential market partner for CAX, the iDA had sent in a delegation at FRAMES 05 to share its plans with Indian players in this space.

Speaking to Animation 'xpress, iDA Director for Lifestyle & Eduction, Games & entertainment Thomas LIM said that," It is the third exchange that the iDA has introduced. Our Online Games Exchange is already up and running and the Digital Cinema Exchange shall be up in the next 2-3 months time. The key to the succes of our Online Games Exchange was Korea which partnered us in our efforts. We expect India to play a similar role in the Computer Animation Exchange"

On being asked to elaborate on what the iDA planned to do with CAX, LIM replied,"We plan to offer services like digital fedex, digital banking and remote rendering."

"The future is digital and the digital bank shall be a virtual resource pool where animation studios could rent digital assets and monetize the same. For eg, a studio creates a CG table and chair for 1 scene in its animated series, the same CG furniture could be used by another studio which is creating content by paying a small rental for that ready to use digital asset. This would save the latter, time and cost in CG creation, while the former would monetize its assets after having used them already" he added.

"With digital fedex, we will offer content creators with digital distribution pipelines and partners across various delivery platforms. The remote rendering services will also be of great utility to studios that take on high end jobs and cannot scale up to meet rendering requirements."

"We believe in offering an evolved ecosystem for business. With CAX we are pitching not just rendering or any other single process as a service but the entire gamut of related services across the value chain as a complete bundle of services" concluded LIM.

Besides iDA's LIM, the speakers from the Singapore delegation included Mediacorp Technologies CEO Mock Pak Lum, MC3 Deputy CEO Alfred Lie, Intense Animation Studios MD Tony Sealy, and independent animation producer/director Nickson Fong. They highlighted upon the benefits such as scalability, security and distribution that Indian animation players could get by doing business with CAX.

Amongst the benefits mentioned were Singapore's top ranking in Asia for best IPR protection, lowest risk country in ASIA-PAC for business, 16Gbps direct internet connectivity to 72 countries and Govt support for animation projects in collaboration with local partners.