NPOWER Software - Advanced Modeling Plugins for 3DSMAX and RHINO

My first taste of 3D software was over 15 years ago. I was a product designer and looking for a new challenge. A friend found a demo version of Truespaceon a CDrom in the back of a computer text book. I tried it on a borrowed laptop and was absolutely hooked. Most people were just discovering PowerPoint and I felt I had found something from another world! Eventually a friend loaned me the money for 3DStudio just as it was changing to Max. I ran this on the same borrowed laptop (imagine an 8inch screen split into 4!) but by then I knew this was what I wanted to do. I sold my motorbike for £3000 ($5000) and spent it all on the most powerful computer I could find (I don’t remember much about it other than it had a whole 32Mb of RAM!!) and struck out on my own.

Since then there has been a steady growth of clients, at first because it was a new and innovative way to present ideas and now because high levels of presentation are simply expected, especially in bigger corporate environments. It does take a while though to develop the trust in these relationships, especially as there can be a lot riding on the results and deadlines are often very tight.

Most of our work is high res. imagery for Marketing, Advertising and Product design. The product design area covers all levels from concept to manufacture – the experience we have allows us to take a sketch from the back of an envelope (yes it has happened) and turn it into an image so believable that marketing departments get disappointed when they discover there’s still a year of development to go. One of our clients now asks for our initial concepts as monotone images just to damp down expectations and avoid having to explain this every time!

I enjoy the creative process and the technical challenges that visualisation brings so I am still involved in all aspects of the business from building workstations to making sure print output is up to scratch. I do however import specialists for certain aspects of production, 2D animation for example or graphic design. This approach allows costs to be streamlined and the business flexible, it means I can always use the right person or team for the job. Being small in this way allows us to give a really personal service to big clients that usually deal with bigger agencies and their account handlers rather than the people producing the work. Changes can be actioned much faster and possibilities discussed directly with those who ultimately have to make it happen. The industry seems to be slowly changing and clients are starting to realise that the security they felt was offered by bigger studios is now being matched and sometimes surpassed by individuals and cooperative groups that are faster to respond and have a more personal interest in making a success of every project.

The quality of the final model is superb because you don’t have to worry about polycounts and flat lines on curves, usually the automatic render settings are good enough to forget about this aspect of the output completely.

Recently I produced some fully engineered Polypropylene parts for manufacture in China – they cut steel for the injection moulding tool from the power nurbs models I created in Max, that’s pretty impressive for a plug-in to a visualisation app!

The translators product is essential for me as well - being able to import an IGES file from a client without having to take a day off while Max goes into meltdown has reduced my stress levels no end!

Overall it’s a simplified workflow even though it’s a challenge to begin with especially if you’ve come from a poly-based background but it pays off in spades once you get the hang of it.

Although it was a relatively small job at the time I think having the chance to recreate the Monopoly logo in 3D was one of the best. We were in a development meeting discussing an element of the pack design that I was working on and I said 'wouldn't it be cool if the logo was 3D as well?' they agreed and because I was working for the headquarters of Waddingtons in Europe they had the power to authorise its use across every Monopoly product in the world – wherever I go, from the US to Australia, there it is!

Tricky – a time machine would be a good start, impossible deadlines would be a thing of the past! Seriously though, like many others I have hoped for a standardised CAD format for a long time. Not particularly exciting I know but it would open up possibilities no end for collaboration and save a lot of time fixing import problems. At the moment it seems to be a way to lock users into a certain application or brand but I think the bigger picture means that eventually this will become a fruitless pursuit and mark developers out as having a lack of awareness of the needs of users rather than giving them the exclusivity that they are trying to achieve.

The open source community is really worth watching and I think what we can see now is just the beginning – really strong and powerful products are being developed by the users themselves and this is good for competition and pushing boundaries. In a professional environment you can’t beat having predictable product support and updates but I think the Open Source approach can teach traditional developers to focus more on the customers needs rather than the bottom line.

Workflow seems to be the buzzword at the moment, often in terms of cramming more into our busy lives but I would like to see more innovations from software developers that allow the artist to create and produce rather than being distracted by what the software demands of them. This is definitely a tall order but some seem to be rising to the challenge. My hope is that technology will become so powerful and software so well designed that the technology itself will fade into the background while at the same time opening up creative possibilities that we can’t yet imagine!