Excerted and reposted from: http://develop3d.com/features/nvidia-gtc-2013

Nike’s Russell McMurdie lifted the lid on the highly dynamic rendering workflow that Nike uses as part of its design / review process.

The presentation included a feast of photorealistic renderings, including the legendary Nike Air Force One shoe, that play an essential role in getting a product signed off for manufacture.

Nike’s design process starts with a sketch, which then evolves into a model using a number of 3D tools, including one that is specifically designed for modelling shoe uppers.

To create the visualisations the model is then taken into Maya via the OBJ format and automatically cleaned up using some custom scripts. Finally it is brought into Bunkspeed, where Nike’s custom materials are dropped on to create the stunning photorealistic renderings.

The Nike Flyknit Lunar 1+ rendered in Bunkspeed PRO by Russ McCurdie of Nike

According to McMurdie, custom materials for Bunkspeed are essential so visuals will accurately represent how the finished design will look. “Our material designers get a sample of the materials,” he said. “Depending on the material we’ll either go and photograph it or scan it and then take it into Photoshop. Then we have programs that export out all of the different maps we need and they’re all super, super light and fast and quick.”

For each unique design, stills and turntable animations can be rendered in seconds thanks to an in-house GPU render farm that boasts a whopping 24 Nvidia Tesla C0275 GPUs. This proves invaluable when last minute visuals are needed for meetings in order to get new designs and colourways signed off.

In addition to the speed benefits, McMurdie explained that using the GPU render farm frees up his local machine so he can continue to work at full speed.

On a cold Friday in February, Kia Motors American design studio, located in Irvine, CA, contacted Bunkspeed with an urgent request: create multiple exterior & interior photoreal marketing images of their newest concept for the Chicago Auto Show…..in less than four days!

The concept vehicle is the Kia Cross GT, which takes Kia’s design in a bold new direction that hints at the future of the brand’s premium aesthetic in a larger package.

After receiving the Alias data from the Kia designers, Bunkspeed’s Service’s team went right to work creating custom materials, textures, environments and backplates. In just four short days, Bunkspeed produced multiple exterior and interior images, regarded to be “extremely photorealistic”. If we had used other rendering software, the photoreal rendering efforts would have taken much longer to produce, with inferior quality, and would have caused us to miss the deadline…by miles.

The results were “Absolutely KILLER!” said Kia design manager Michael Castiglione. Bunkspeed was “a real pleasure to work with and will definitely use again for future projects.”

In just a few short days, Kia’s marketing group went from design to concept launch at the auto show with several stunning images promoting their newest concept. The Bunkspeed renderings created for the Kia Cross GT were enlarged to over thirty feet wide, then projected behind the concept vehicle live during the world debut presentation at the Chicago Auto Show.

This project with Kia clearly demonstrates Bunkspeed’s ability to easily and quickly increase brand consumer excitement and market share, all while shortening development cycles and increasing creative productivity.

“The team at Bunkspeed are very talented and flexible. They gave us the opportunity to make many tweaks to create the desired images in a VERY short time.” Thanks Bunkspeed!!!

-Michael Castiglione, Kia Design Manager

To use the rendering experts from Bunkspeed’s Services team to enhance your own projects, please contact us at sales@bunkspeed.com

http://www.kia.com/us/#/concept?fvVehicleID=cross-gt&fvPageID=intro

http://www.autoblog.com/photos/kia-cross-gt-concept-chicago-2013/#photo-5624211/

Join us next week for some cool Automotive Design technology and some GoKart racing!

Click here to register

Not long ago, it took days and multiple machines networked together to be able to output a 32 megapixel image to the screen. Now with a single machine from Exxact Computer, with 4 Nvidia Quadro cards, you can plug a 1920×1080 display to each output and literally within minutes be displaying a 32 megapixel image all at once. It is something to behold. Here’s an example of just that at the Exxact Computer booth at the Nvidia GTC conference showing an image rendered at 8K x 4K in Bunkspeed by Brian Hillner for Kia’s CrossGT concept car. No compression, no loss of quality. Each of these displays could just as easily been projectors.

There’s lots of buzz about 4K video right now. 4K projectors, 4K displays etc. Here’s an example:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/20/4127496/samsung-prices-s9-4k-tv-39999-taking-pre-orders-in-late-march

8K is 4 times the pixel density of 4K and 16 times HD. Now we just need something that can actually play 8K video!

Hundreds of materials, environments, cameras, scene files, and more are available.

Bunkspeed, a leading developer of advanced yet simple to use 3D rendering and animation software, is proud to announce that the second phase of the online Bunkspeed Community share site is ready. With development of “Phase 2” complete, the Bunkspeed Community can now accommodate the public exchange of all common assets used in Bunkspeed software along with assets that can be used in any rendering software.

Bunkspeed Community members can share, rate, comment, and download assets such as Bunkspeed Materials (.bmf), Environments (.hdr, .exr), Bunkspeed Cameras (.bcf), Textures, and Bunkspeed Interactive Files (.bif).

“In just the first couple of days, there have been nearly 100 new materials uploaded to the site, bringing the total material count to nearly 500,” says Philip Lunn, CEO of Bunkspeed. “We expect rapid growth as our users experience all the great new content available for download.”

All of Bunkspeed’s rendering and animation products are “live linked” to cloud stored assets uploaded to the Bunkspeed Community. The community can also be accessed directly from the web by/through/via a link on Bunkspeed’s home page. Once logged in, the user can browse and drag the assets from Bunkspeed’s online library directly onto a model or scene – a very simple process.

The Bunkspeed Community share site is a way for us to give back to our community of users and allow some of the great talent using our tools to share their materials and more.”

Today, we released the first of two phases which will ultimately allow all users of our Community to exchange assets freely. Phase 1 marks the completion of the “consumption” end of the community where you can Search, Browse, find the Most Popular, Most Recent and also see what specific users have uploaded. Until Phase 2, Bunkspeed Administrators will be publishing assets but your feedback on the current interface will be greatly appreciated.

Bunkspeed Community Screenshot

Enjoy and we’ll update you when Phase 2 is ready!

Bunkspeed is proud to sponsor, for the 4th year in a row, “Design Panel 2012″ hosted by the Motor Press Guild and AutoDesignO, at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, Monday June 18th, 2012 @ 4pm. You’re invited so RSVP here: info@autodesigno.com.