This Friday we showcase a recent architectural visualisation project - Bella Vida.The full project can be see at https://www.behance.net/gallery/91137467/Bella-Vida-Architectural-CGI-Illustration
If you like to know, drop us a line and get in touch.
Happy weekend folks!
Dean
I find inspiration comes from anywhere, but sometimes taking a literal step into an inspiring space is a fantastic way to broaden your mind.
So last weekend I paid a visit to the fantastic Redbrick Mill.
Redbrick Mill is a high-end department store for the likes of Heals, Natuzzi and Made.com, and wow, what a store!
Places like these are inspiring for so many reasons. The quality, attention to detail and of course design are just a few things to marvel at. But it's also a brilliant place to take in much more than just beautiful furniture and interior design.
Seeing real items up-close and in detail is a great way to push our CGI work forward. It's those details which can turn a good piece of work into something great. It certainly inspires us to continue to push and develop!
When working on interior projects, we're always looking for inspiration and references to give our work a creative edge. Nothing stands still in the interior design world, so why should we?
A visit like this is also fantastic to get ideas on smaller things too, such as table settings, colour trend and furnishings. And let's not forget out the fantastic mill building itself! I'm a huge fan of restored buildings, and this old mill is certainly beautiful and inspiring too!
So what's your favorite place for "read made" inspiration? Drop a comment or email and let us know!
Dean
We've had the pleasure of working cracking local development with a local architect and developer to visualise the 2 new properties.
3 images have been commissioned, and will go along side their marketing material to build interest, enquiries, and hopefully sell the houses before construction has finished!
You can check out the full project on the Behance page -
Dobb Lane // Architectural CGI Illustration
And if you'd like to know more about the project, are thinking about a CGI commission, or just want to friendly northern advice, then just drop us a line.
Contact details handily on the Contacts Page.
Our client has plans to develop a North London builders yard into a fantastic residential and office space development.
In order to explain their designs, they commissioned 2 CGI illustrations.
The first visualisation shows the positive impact the proposed design will have on the existing street and surroundings.
The second image shows the extent of the development.
To help this property developer in their aim to refurbish, extend and re-use this London property, we created 2 images to help visualise the proposed changes.
Head over to the completed projects to find out more about this project!
And feel free to drop us an email or DM for a friendly chat.
Viver Green Housing Development, a project which we recently completed, has been a great success in helping our client to successfully sell many of their properties, even before the diggers arrived on site!
It's great to hear from our clients when the work we produce has been a real success. To be able to sell properties before work begins is incredible, and it shows what a great architectural design, marketing and of course great CGIs can do!
We produced 15 architectural visualisations and one CGI animation for Egg Homes, which were used in web and printed marketing. To see the all the images please check out the Viver Green Housing Development page.
There will be a video blog coming soon, showing you behind the scenes of how we created the images and animations. Until then, if you have any questions, would like to know more, or even have a development that needs to be visualised, then please get in touch!
Dean
I love this industry, and Google's new augmented reality (AR) makes us very excited! Why though? Augmented reality is when a virtual image, text data, etc is overlaid into the real world. The easiest way to do this is to point your smart phone at a tracker (a unique image), and your phone recognises this tracker and overlays the virtual image into the real world on the screen of your phone. Ikea did this very sucessfully with their app, check it out here http://www.gizmag.com/ikea-augmented-reality-catalog-app/28703/
The only problem with this method of AR is that the camera on your device needs to see a tracking image (like the Ikea catalogue). Google Tango doesn't! Now that's impressive!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHN4c7FYXYs
How it does it is probably something very technical, and I assume it uses some kind of 3D scanning to gauge depth and distance, but developing hardware isn't our thing, so I'm only guessing. What I do know is that this is a real game changer for AR. By removing the need for tracking images means we could, in theory, overlay virtual worlds into the real world much much easier. It's also interesting to read that Tango can also measure. Imagine if we take the Ikea concept, but say develop a feature where a user holds their Tango device at a room, and the app then selects tables which would fit in the space. There'd be no need for that tedious process of measuring a space, reading the dimensions in a catalogue, and then hoping it all fits OK!
Augmented reality has huge potential in education and marketing. The need to engage and excite people is very important and AR can help. It can make seemingly dull experiences very exciting. Take kids to a museum and they'll probably look forward to their pack lunch and gift shop, but if you make the experience exciting and engaging they'll probably forget all about their cheese sandwiches! In Google's promo video the kids visit a museum, and use Google Tango AR to see a T-Rex come to life, and also display further info for them to read and learn. This may not engage or excite a group of OAPs, but the beauty of digital content is that each AR experience can be tailored different users.
If we look at the area we primarily work in, marketing architecture and products, augmented reality could really be a great tool to use. Imagine walking around a house or residential development with a Google Tango style app. Whilst the parents are using it to learn about the boring stuff like energy efficiency, crime rates, or even the choice of carpet colours, and the kids could see where their new school could be, learn about local clubs and groups, or how high the new swing goes in the near by park!
Google Tango is a very interesting development, and we'll be watching it very closely. There's only one device at the moment that's Tango enabled, and that's the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, but I'm sure more will follow very soon. Imagine the Samsung GearVR with Google Tango, my mind's already blown!
Dean
I've always had a thing for small spaces and buildings. For others large open spaces are brilliant, and I agree to a degree, but I think small scale architecture is really a work of art. I love the idea that no space is spared, and each area has been very cleverly designed and thought though in order to maximise the space.
Cosy home-made outbuilding.
So when this feature on Dwell popped-up, I thought it was worth a mention....
Most Popular Homes of 2015: Small Spaces
The article features apartments, outbuildings and floating homes, however my favourite has to be the home inside a grain silo!
You wouldn't expect a home here!
The house features all the things you'd expect in a home, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and living areas, but the really amazing part is just how brilliant it looks, and actually how spacious it appears to be!
Fantastic custom walnut and black metal kitchen and stairs!
The 190 square foot space apparently all custom made, with the Eames Wire Chairs being the only non-custom items, very impressive! The contrast between the wood and black metal work is also very nice, and it's a real credit to the owner in their boldness and design to use these dark colours without making the space feel small and claustrophobic.
The beautiful landscape garden.
Overall the building is incredible in almost every sense, and the attention to detail is fantastic! It really is a unique use of a very unusual building, and perhaps we as a society and culture should embrace these structures more. The individuality in this building is what makes it what it is, so don't try to copy it, instead be inspired!
So that's a little bit of inspiration for the start of 2016! To read more about the converted grain silo home, check out the Dwell article. I'll be sure to blog more about these incredible small buildings and architecture in 2016!
Dean
Well it's that time of year again....
....so first of all, Happy Christmas everyone!
We're almost at the end of 2015, and I find it's always great to look back at what we've done over the past year. We can smile and pat ourselves on the back at the great work we've produced, but also to reflect on the hurdles and obstacles from the year!
I hope this year has been a great one for you, I know we've had a good year, producing some great work for you guys! As usual we've focused on creating architecture, interior, and product CGIs, but we also explored other area such as 3D printing and virtual reality. I find it's always great to explore and play, even if it's just to glimpse at what might be!
So I'll leave you with a short selection of our interesting 2015 projects for you to browse with a mince pie and sherry....
Student Mattress Room Set -
The student mattress room set was a continuation from 2014, but is still worth of a mention. We really enjoyed working on this project, partly down to the fact we were given a lot of creative freedom with regards to the set design, and also to how well the final image turned out. It was technically challenging matching the CGI with the real air mattresses, but the end result was worth the extra effort!
New Broadway -
2015 saw an increase is architectural visualisations for us, and the New Broadway project was perhaps one of the more interesting projects to work on. The images were photo-composites, set at dusk, which meant we could play with light and colour much more than a typical day-time CGI.
Construct & Configure Interactive Application -
The Construct & Configure app finally went live this year, and although it's not 100% finished, it shows the potential of what we can do, and the direction we see things going in the next few years! We will be finishing and improving the app, and it will be used by clients to interactively visualise their products. Give it a go if you haven't already!
3D Printed Miniature Figures -
As part of our need to explore and play with new tech, we have been busy with the 3D printer and scanner, turning folks into miniature figures! We honestly didn't know what would happen when we bought the printer, and it still feels very novel, however the miniature model railway guys have been taking advantage and we've been producing miniatures to go along with their trains, platforms and scenery!
There's been so much more happening in 2015 which I haven't mentioned, from virtual reality, to kitchen CGIs, along with all the other little things which crop up, and perhaps get lost along the way!
In 2016 we of course want to continue to produce amazing CGIs, animations and interactive projects, and as usual we will continue to play and explore! On our "wish list" is a VR headset, perhaps an Oculus Rift, or HTC Vive, which will allow us to really see what the future may hold! Also we will most likely launch another website, dedicated to the 3D scanning and printing, as the interest in this niche is definitly something we want to expand.
Also, away from the "doing", we want to attend more events, exhibitions, and such to make sure we're surrounded by new and exciting things. We'll be travelling all over the UK to various cities and events, so if you want to meet-up for a brew, chances are we could be passing by some time soon!
So that's it for 2015! Time to step away from the PC for a week, re-charge, rejuvenate, and hit the ground running in 2016!
Dean
From time-to-time, we get the chance to try new things, move in a different direction (even it's only for a short while), and experiment with something outside of the day-to-day work, and being in the CGI / visualisation industry means that nothing stands still, and there's always an opportunity to develop, test and explore.
One area I've been wanting to explore is the interactive / virtual reality side of the industry. Interactive walk though, virtual reality, and other tech like this has been around for decades, and it's concept is nothing new, but I'm sensing a trend towards these applications more and more. The hardware is more accessible than ever, with it the computing power required now literally pocket sized with the advances with smart phones and tablets.
Anyway, I digress from the blog posts title, over the next few weeks / months / when time allows, I will be creating a virtual reality environment, a loft style office. The user will be able to walk around the space, explore the architecture, and interact with several objects. How far the interactivity goes may depend on time, but I think it would be great to add some quirky elements in there too.
Quick sketch to kick off the new project.
I will be learning and building the virtual reality environment inside 3Ds Max (my standard 3D application), and Unreal Engine 4. Unreal Engine looks very exciting, giving a massive amount of control to us creatives, whilst making the programming less complex than other packages.
In the past I have sometimes viewed virtual reality as a bit of a gimmick, with no real purpose and too many limitations, but recently my attitude has changed as I see a massive improvement of visual effects that may soon rival traditional CGI, and the access to consumer-ready hardware, meaning you don't need a £2000 PC to view a simple interior.
Also, I'm very excited for 2016, when it looks like we may be treated to more virtual reality head sets. The Occulus Rift will be out of development and consumer ready, and others such as Sony, and HTC are also releasing their versions very too which all look very promising and may really shift the industry and projects more towards virtual reality.
Anyway, the loft office project has started! It may take a while to complete, but I'll be posting small updates as soon as I can, and also check out my instagram (@punch_ard_digital) and Twitter (@deanpunchard) for even more frequent, and even slightly random posts!
Dean
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