Light simulation

GPU rendering engines really gained prominence around a decade ago.

Octane, a type of GPU renderer specifically allowed realistic light and material interactions to be simulated and rendered in near realtime, transforming the process of digital creation, where as before you were trying to illustrate physical phenomena like light or glass, the Octane renderer transformed into a window to a virtual workshop, where you could get realtime feedback from virtual light and material changes. Play, iteration and collaboration were all positively effected.

When working at United Visual Artists we had always been in awe of the workshop, it stood as a gatekeeper into the world of physical design and architecture, and indeed elements of physical and virtual correlation and prototyping will always need to be done, but the ability to quickly asses a space and iterate an intervention, making use of libraries of virtual assets and fixtures has been a huge benefit to our process.

Our workflow generally begins with sketching and digital ideation facilitated by cloud based tools like Miro that help define themes and intentions.

We build this out into 3D sketches and then renderings in which we iterate the lighting environment, structure and the imagery and technology present. How we weave and layer those elements together with sound and the narrative journey of a space becomes the main creative and production challenge.

From there our models become the basis for 3D CAD, which we use to inform different partners and vendors of the creative intent and helps efficient collaboration across separate teams and companies.

Dragonfly 3

Creating a dynamic environment, show or install is a technically involved process.

The goal is to be able to understand different audience perspectives, to layer light, imagery, sound, kinetics, and cameras together, and be able to manipulate these in creative ways in aid of the show.

A recent history of show design can’t be written without noting the increasingly ascendent role of video. A media server we knew as D3, now Disguise but initially Dragonfly 3 was spun out of the knowledge and development that happened at UVA in south London in the early 2000s. It represented a wider trend of video projection and latterly LED becoming a hugely important aspect of show design, architecture and placemaking.

An interdependent process

As technology and integrated production become ever more important within the creative and design industries, maintaining an initial, traditional blue sky creative phase divorced from production becomes counterproductive to the project and is in danger of wasting time and money.

As a studio that works in both creative and production capacities, its evident that defining realistic production boundaries can prompt the most creative and innovative work.

This differs from the workflows and relationships that are transplanted from the ad agency - production company model. These often involve a creative intent and vision defined by sketches and references, which we receive and are asked to validate and cost. Unfortunately this often leads to the project not going ahead due to production unknowns and scope budget mis-matches.

By engaging TEM Studio early in the process and together clearly defining outputs, goals, budget, logistical and timeline boundaries and progressing a project in an open, non hierarchical way between creative, strategy and production, we generally yield better, more cost efficient results for stakeholders.