Protograph

London On Tap Winner!!!

2008-12-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

The London On Tap campaign is a unique collaboration between the UK’s biggest water company, Thames Water, and the Mayor of London. At its heart, is a competition to design an iconic carafe, which will be used to serve tap water in restaurants, bars and hotels throughout the capital.

Neil Barron, Gusto Design Ltd, was shortlisted in the competition and got in touch with Protograph to produce some iconic images of the design. We took up the challenge, with a very short deadline, and produced a range of hi-res images.

What do you know? Neil has won!!! Congratulations!!!

The carafe design is derived from a stylised tap to subtly reinforce the tap water message. It has four pouring spouts which are drip-free and instinctive to use. The form produces a waistline with four exits which helps to trap the ice when pouring. The carafe is tall, tapered and elegant, yet quirky and contemporary.

'Protograph produced excellent professional images to our brief in a very short period of time with no fuss and with great enthusiasm - thanks very much! Neil, Gusto Design Ltd'

Look out for images in the press over the coming days!!!

Train them young

2008-07-29T02:40:00.000-07:00

Mr Segasby Junior, listening to some banging tunes and tweaking his lighting on his latest CAD render. Don't worry, we don't use child labour, he's only surfing the web!

What are Renderdrives?

2008-07-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

Many people out there don't know that much about the ARTVPS rendering technology our business depends on... so here's a recent article I've written providing a potted history of our rendering technology for those that are interested.

www.protograph.co.uk/artvps.html

Warning... it is very honest but informative, and a bit geeky!

Protograph invest in more ARTVPS hardware

2008-07-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

Protograph have now invested in more ARTVPS hardware to enable even faster turnaround of CAD rendering services. We had 14 Renderdrives and our recent investment takes that total to 26, it means using our own render management software we can efficiently split a complex hi res render across all machines for very very fast rendering, or we can use them for animation projects, nearly halving existing render times.

Renderdrives offer a speedy work flow that is unparalleled for rendering CAD files, maintaining data in the nurbs format throughout. This means there is little data preparation that is normally associated with visualisation - we import the CAD data from our clients and instantly can start to assign materials and add lighting.

We don't worry about triangles and polygons, Renderdrives just work and are very reliable. The 'Rapid Imaging Centre' we have created has no rivals as far as I'm aware, we have vast rendering power simply an email away for our clients. We offer real world commercial render times, sometimes you just can't wait overnight for a render. Many clients don't have that luxury.

CAD Snap Shots

2008-07-08T05:38:00.000-07:00

We have been having great fun with some R+D recently. Using the latest realtime rendering technology with our new HDR camera system. We can now very quickly produce photographic renders from imported CAD data lit by a real world scene. We will keep you posted on some new visualising services that are in the pipeline.

HDR renders

2008-07-04T01:48:00.001-07:00

We have captured real photo studio lighting set up with our Spheron HDR camera and rendered this watch model surrounded by our own HDR image. This process is also great for jewellry and any reflective products. It produces very real looking studio shots.

Perfume bottle fun!

2008-07-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

Most of our work remains confidential, so sometimes we have a play so we can show you what we can do - here's some fun we've had with a perfume bottle we created!

More customer feedback

2008-07-01T10:39:00.000-07:00

"Building a new working relationship with a new company. We use a lot of external resources and usually it takes a while to get everyone on the same page and up to speed. Sometimes it never happens…. but it did with you guys. I’m now very happy to send you the minimum of data and know that you “get“ pretty much what we require in terms of output with a minimum of (time consuming) further input from us; - specifically my time! This happened very quickly after we started working together."

"I like that you’re continually developing the way you do projects for us, that you listen to what we want but also that you tell us when you think there’s a better way of doing something – whether it’s a new finish or the way we send you data. I appreciate your views when you think we could be doing something differently. "

Testimonials

2008-06-26T02:45:00.000-07:00

Here's some recent feedback from our clients:

"Thank you for your continued support, professionalism, and great images! We would not hesitate to recommend your services to others."

"Protograph are able to work extremely quickly with a file to achieve a draft render. On approval we were really impressed how quickly and accurately the finished render was produced."

“The end results that you guys came up with were superb, and I thank you very much for making the product look so stunning. We used the images on our exhibition stand, and also in our literature... We would not hesitate to recommend Protograph to anyone else in the future.”

Mercedes Benz USA

2008-05-02T05:29:00.000-07:00

Protograph are really pleased to have been working with the team at MBUSA turning their 3D files into rendered images for use on the USA web site. It's been great working with you!

Emerging Rendering Technologies

2008-05-02T04:54:00.000-07:00

The world of CG never stands still and neither do we. We are always on the look out for new technology that can help our clients bring their new designs to life.

We are currently testing a wide range of software, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. But it can be hard for these new technologies in their infancy to fit into our industrial strength process and provide a commercially viable imaging service.

For example, some of the latest most realistic renderers available are based on the real physics of light and provide images that are difficult to tell from a photograph, they are superb. This is just what we want!!! However, to get CAD data into these packages means we need to turn files into polygons (lots of triangles representing the surfaces). Easy for a small handheld product, but too time consuming for whole train interior. There's the snag. Another snag, render times can be huge. A hi-res render could take a couple of days on a really fast machine for a clean image.

Or how about a real-time render solutions lit only by a HDR image. A wonderfully interactive way of composing your shot. Well it looks very promising, but unless you have the right HDR image for the job (well we do have our own camera now!) then you can't get the right look. But you can't make a new HDR for every job. Sometimes traditional CGI lighting techniques allow you to create a very specific look that you need faster and with better results.

All these technologies are exciting and we are loving playing with them - but our choice of rendering solution for our day to day business needs to be industrial strength and fast, so we are sticking to our renderdrives for the time being.

Street Crane

2008-03-02T04:08:00.000-08:00

Protograph are proud to have assisted Street Crane in visualising 2 new hoist designs from their complex 3D cad data. The hi-res images have been used across many marketing materials in the launch of the new designs. Brochures, press advertising, editorials and their web site have all benefited from images so real they are hard to tell from a photograph.

The work flow developed by Protograph means we can take very large and complex data sets used to design complex new machines and products (STEP in this case) and import them into our visualisation software and render them with ease on our large specialist render farm.

To make it worth outsourcing visualisation - we offer a fast and reliable service which can produce better images much faster than our clients can in house. This is backed up by our extensive experience and investment in hardware.

Protograph purchase HDR camera

2008-02-01T03:57:00.000-08:00

Protograph have invested in a state of the art HDR camera system. It means we can capture full 360 degrees of lighting and reflection information at any location and visualise your new product within it.

The results are photo real images with CG elements seamlessly integrated. We are very excited to be able to offer this to our customers.

Is there anybody there?

2008-01-03T03:19:00.000-08:00

We've decided to join the rest of the world (it seems), jump on the band wagon (note to myself!!! must look up where this saying came from) and start our own little blog. We want a place where anyone interested in CG can come and interact with Protograph and learn about our passion for producing stunning photo real images.

There's no hiding it, we also hope having a blog will increase visitors to our web site and increase our search engine rankings. Doesn't everybody?