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June Customer Spotlight - Saul Caldwell - Mesh Media
Like so many of our customers, Saul Caldwell of Mesh Media in Manchester, England knows a good opportunity when he sees it. As a CAD specialist working for a major bank, he was encouraged to learn more about 3D visualization. Saul installed that copy of 3D Studio and hasn’t looked back since, helping to build a highly successful design visualization firm specializing in architectural renderings.
Saul has seen plenty of changes in the business since he first clicked that 3D Studio icon eight years ago. Today’s biggest challenges, he says, stem from simply keeping pace with change. “I think the biggest challenge today is keeping up with all the different developments in the 3D industry. There are so many releases and variations of software and content that you need to spend more time researching and this can eat into your working time. I think it’s important to strike the right balance.”
Among the many changes he’s seen, he says that “the biggest advances I have seen in the 3D industry have been with the third party rendering packages. We currently use Vray. I’ve also been impressed with some of the character animation packages like Motion Builder. I think the future for 3D is very bright.”
And in that future, Saul goes on to say that “I think that it’s only a matter of time before every architectural job requires a 3D visualisation, no matter how small. In fact, I think this will be the case for all designed products. You can easily imagine what a building or object will look like in your minds eye from looking at 2D drawings but you can’t beat a photorealistic 3D rendering to be absolutely sure.”
Produce high quality visuals as quickly as possible, however, will grow increasingly difficult if, in fact, Saul’s prediction comes true. That much new demand will certainly require that professional visualizers have the tools and techniques that allow them to construct and detail their scenes as realistically as possible in the minimum amount of time. Towards that end, Saul has found content and textures from Got3D to be a big help.
“We are often asked to present a scheme which is little more than a massing model shown at eye level. With a library of good trees and people close at hand you can quickly bring the image to life. It’s good to have a library of fresh, natural looking people who seem to be passing through the image rather than just standing around the scene for the benefit of scale. The trees are also very good indeed. Very realistic and very detailed. The detail of the foreground trees allows me to put real depth and perspective into an image without obscuring the design I am trying to show.
We have also recently purchased the 3D people models. These are very natural looking and are perfect for positioning in an animation quickly. With the previous seated people libraries I have used, I have had to render and re-render to get them seated correctly. With Got3D I can position them by eye in the viewport and they look more like a real person than a 3D model, which is perfect for our animations.”
Be sure to take a moment to check out the work of Saul and his team at
Mesh Media’s website here. Outstanding work is being produced around the globe and we’re excited to supply a portion of the tools and content that help pros like Saul do such terrific work.
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