Welcome

I’m Mark Segasby and I am Protograph Ltd. Yes it's just me folks! Surprised? I use tons of cutting edge software, fast computers, a HDR camera and a specialist ray tracing render farm to produce images and animations to a much higher standard and faster than your usual 'freelance' visualiser. In fact I'm far from a freelancer. Protograph has required significant investment and is housed in a lovely office suite in the Leicestershire Countryside.

Why Protograph? Well I thought it was a clever combination of the words 'prototype' and 'photograph' - it captures my vision of a business producing photo realistic images of new designs in a quick turn around bureau style service.

I graduated with first class honours in product design and after 10 years spent in various design consultancies designing graphics, packaging, products, transport interiors and more, I decided to set out on my own!

Protograph was established in 2004 because I felt there was a real need for outsourced visualisation services totally focused on the needs of designers and manufacturers. In my experience producing renderings to a high standard takes a long time to master and to create high resolution images for print and animations was too much for many CAD applications and a single desktop computer. I wanted to create a business as easy to work with as sending an STL file for a rapid prototype or as easy as working with a trusted model maker.

Protograph is a resource for any business involved in creating CAD data and needing believable marketing images creating from this data. I think we are quite unique in this area of specialism. Many visualisation firms work on architecture and entertainment which requires a very different 'polygon' workflow. Protograph has the expertise to handle CAD data and doesn't require conversion of it into polygons at any stage. Therefore we can import and render data quickly, even huge files from final production data.

I now work with a wide range of clients world-wide and 99% of work is carried out purely through phone calls, emails and ftp. Most clients I have never met, which is probably best... I’m big and scary! New clients are naturally concerned about working remotely with a new supplier, but they’re quickly put at ease once we start to deliver the results in record time. See the testimonials!

So why use Protograph?

Specialist and focused
We work only with design and manufacturing businesses rendering new products, packaging, transport interiors and exteriors.

Expert
Our product design background and large experience in this sector makes us easy to deal with and intuitive to your needs. We make new designs look their best using a truly photographic approach.

Fast
Large investment in render computers means we can render out images and animations very quickly compared to a desktop PC.

Reliable
When we say we can meet your deadline, we mean it. We are as committed to your deadline as you are.

Confidential
We are based in a converted barn in the Leicestershire countryside and take confidentiality very seriously. We sign NDA agreements with clients to ensure we are bound to secrecy. We don't employ freelancers to help out on projects and all work is rendered in house on our own render farm based in our building.

If you'd like to talk about your imaging requirements then please do get in touch.

Fact:
Protograph can render images on upto 576 ray tracing processors at once. That's a lot of render power and means images look more real yet render in real world commercial time scales! We don't wait overnight for a hi-res image, we wait over lunch!!!

Facilities:

Software:
Maya, StudioTools, Solidworks, Rhino, Modo, Hypershot, Maxwell Render, Fry Render, Final Render, Photoshop, Illustrator.

3D Workstations:
Two 8 core Xeon workstations each running Windows XP 64bit.

Renderfarm:
18 Renderdrives - each containing 32 ray tracing processors running Linux 64bit.

Cameras:
A Spheron HDR camera system for capturing HDR environments to integrate CG renders into real-world content using our Nikon D300 camera for back plate image acquisition.