Product Visualisation
We can work with CAD files, material samples or just blueprints to produce visual prototypes which can be animated, rotated and pulled apart into cutaway views. We have an extensive material library, and are happy to make custom textures to give you product precisely the right appearance. We also utilise a series of methods to make the object appear "real" - adding depth of field, motion blurring, photo-real lighting, subtle imperfections, physics-based reflection and colour models, and multi-layered simulation (for laquered effect, metallic car paint, translucency, etc.) All of this helps to ensure that your product looks as real as it will when it rolls off the production line.
Data visualisation
With our employees' background in academia we are as happy manipulating raw scientific data as we are producing ground-breaking visualisations. We can process and edit raw data, and translate it into a clear, visual form - highlighting to a general audience what you yourselves know to be hidden in the data. Our scientific training ensures a high degree of accuracy and conscience when manipulating data - rest assured that we will not compromise the scientific method just to produce pretty images!
Concepts
Many concepts are nigh impossible to convey verbally, or even in illustrated form. This is where the power of animation comes in: it's possible to visualise mechanisms or abstract concepts, from molecular scale interactions to space exploration. Allow the audience to appreciate the complexity and skill involved in your project, by viewing it first-hand.
Several of our clients have used our visualisations for the bidding stage on a project - bringing a slick animation to the table really helps you stand out as being committed and professional, and we're pleased to claim a 100% success rate on bids using our work.
Public engagement
As we live in an increasingly visual and interactive world, we need to step up the quality of our presentation just to be noticed. Static bar charts are no longer sufficient - to engage the public's imagination they need a helping hand. For example, our Bloodhound video went viral on the web - here was something visual and exciting which the public could relate to. Would they have been so accepting of some aerodynamic modelling data and cardboard cut-outs? Strong visuals make your project stand out, and helps the public separate the wheat from the chaff. Regretably many worthy and scientifically valuable projects fail to recognise the importance of getting this right early on.
Our Tools
We use 3D animation and compositing software in conjunction with Photoshop to produce our artwork. Our primary tool is Lightwave, which is a 3D package used extensively in broadcast television production, film visual effects, video game development, print graphics and visualisation, and is responsible for more artists winning Emmy Awards than any other 3D application. This is augmented with a state-of-the-art sub-patch modelling, sculpting and painting program in Modo, which greatly enhances the quality of objects we are able to produce in a short time-frame.
We also apply certain effects post-processing with Fusion as this gives much more control and flexibility to the final production and polishing process.
For raw data we use Matlab and Excel/VBscript to process data, and custom scripts to load it into a our 3D packages.