Article created in collaboration with Design Connected about the productivity in the CGI industry.

It’s about time…

… to talk about productivity.

… to asses the tools we use.

… to minimize the time-waste.

… to share workflows.

We’ve been talking to Design Connected team that it’s time to share real insights about their favorite topic — productivity. It has always been their main focus, thus helping them to keep the company compact and agile.

They’ve reached out to 6 of their clients — ranging from behemoth front-runners of the CGI industry to super cool small boutique studios, who are adding a personal perspective on the topic and share details about the productivity-boosting tools they are using. CGarchitect is publishing exclusively those insightful short interviews for you.

Learn the productivity secrets of:

* Design Connected 

* DBOX

* Illusive Images

* Pikcells

* Recent Spaces

* The Boundary

* Talcik&Demovicova

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Design Connected

For more than 10 years the company is known for producing high-quality 3d models of designer furniture. A lesser-known fact is that today almost all new models featured on designconnected.com are a result of direct collaborations with premium brands who need product digitization and virtual photography.

Keeping everything in-house and with a relatively small team, Design Connected is constantly punching above its weight thanks to ever-evolving workflows and smart use of tools. The later gradually evolved in the development of free digital assets management software called Connecter.

 

Which tools do you use on a daily basis? How they make your work easier?

We mainly use 3ds Max, Connecter and V-Ray. The latter is because we Bulgarians like to support each other. Jokes aside, because of the nature of our work, we have profound knowledge on pretty much all popular modeling software products and rendering engines.

We invest a lot in researching how we can automate big chunks of the daily tasks. This means a lot of testing and writing down the specifics that will then be passed to the developers.

For example, for production tracking, we are using a mix between Teamwork and Trello. The former is mostly for the 3d artist’s tasks and time tracking, while the latter is for the people working on the finalization of a model — preparing formats, gathering and adding details on our websites. We are using custom APIs to synchronize the two tools and cut the manual transfer of bits of information.

We have many different roles in the team and the custom automation ensures that everyone knows what they have to focus on. At least, most of the time.

The situation is even more complex when we work with brands and there is a lot of external communication. We rely on our key account manager to handle the details and brief everyone using our project management tools — Teamwork and Trello. For now, we haven’t implemented CRM system, although it may be the next step for those projects.

What’s your current biggest challenge in terms of the effectiveness of your work? How are you planning to solve it?

In general, finding simple, elegant solutions to complex issues is what we are looking for. Sometimes just not doing something is far better than overcomplicating it.

A big challenge is allowing many artists to collaborate on one scene or even on one model in real-time, without overwriting each other’s work. That will let us perform a number of tasks simultaneously, instead of consecutively, thus increasing productivity and reducing the needed communication.

We are preparing internal tools and workflows, that will then be made public through Connecter Server.

 

DBOX 

Founded in 1996 in New York, DBOX is an award-winning integrated marketing and communications agency, focussed on representing high-profile branded property developments and destinations.

In 2019, DBOX operates from London, Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Hong Kong, delivering marketing campaigns and architectural communications throughout Europe, the Middle East, China, South-east Asia and the Americas.

Their global successes include: ‘The Tulip’ for J Safra Real Estate and Foster + Partners and ‘432 Park Avenue’ for Macklowe Properties.

Their most recent works and behind the scenes stories are frequently posted @dboxglobal

 

Which tools do you use on a daily basis? How they make your work easier?

We use a combination of custom software developed in-house at DBOX and third-party systems. There are some tried and tested tools that we use on a daily basis such as the incredibly versatile iToo Software — I can’t remember the last project where we didn’t use either Forest Pro or Railclone. Thinkbox’s Deadline has been great to ensure we get the most out of our render pipeline, allowing us to upscale and render directly to the cloud. 3D data provided by our clients often require clean up and refinement, having SiNi Software’s forensic, sculpt and scribe tools help to streamline this process.

We use Autodesk products and V-Ray for day-to-day projects. DBOX’s talented Maxscripters are an ever-resourceful team producing custom scripts for our daily and repeat needs. We continually generate and add to our catalog of 3D assets and so we devised custom software, designed from the ground up for cross-studio collaboration. Both our catalog and custom software remain central to our ability to continually produce high-grade work at a pace respectful to the time we feel is required to produce superb artwork. 

As a global agency, we operate across multiple continents and multiple time zones and continually address how best to communicate. Internal and cross-studio communication is again essential to achieving the caliber of work DBOX commits itself to. We constantly review our work and share thoughts and ideas. Slack is vital to help facilitate communication between DBOXers, especially when working on larger collaborative projects — Slack also helps us reduce internal and wasteful email.

 

What’s your current biggest challenge in terms of the effectiveness of your work? How are you planning to solve it?

The current era of saturated media means it can be harder than ever to stand out and be heard in the crowd, delivering the strategic messaging of a client’s vision to its key audience as efficiently as possible is essential to be successful. Our knowledge and use of social media and traditional media help us continually provide our clients with effective works.

The Tulip in London by Foster + Partners is a perfect example of our deep and multi-faceted approach. The Tulip was the highest profile London planning event of 2018 and covered by media outlets around the world. Together with J Safra Real Estate we created the project’s visual identity & messaging, launch website, VR application and a suite of striking, press-ready visuals. At this time, DBOX’s work has featured globally in more than 12,500 items print and online articles resulting in an unprecedented exposure for both for our clients and consequently, DBOX.

We continue to refine our knowledge and understanding of our audiences and clients — our decades of experience and constant research helps drive us as creatives and drive our desire for success. We are only as good as our last image!

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Illusive Images   

The creative collaboration of two well-known artists — Johannes Lindqvist and Daniel Reutersvärd. Both are struggling with an obsession for details and a great passion for crafting the most photo-realistic visualizations.

They are waving the FStorm flag and inspiring the masses with their fantastic commercial and side-project work.

 

Which tools do you use on a daily basis? How they make your work easier?

We as a studio specialize in interior visualizations only, and since we are working in a relatively narrow field like that, we don’t have to use a lot of different tools. We can only come to think of two things that have impacted our work more than anything else.

First one would be our choice of the renderer. If anyone has seen our speeches at either SoA Academy days, D2 Conferences or AVD you’ve heard this already. We adopted “FStorm render” very early in our workflow, far back in the Alpha days. Since we’re specialized in interiors, our needs are quite simple: We need an easy to use, a photorealistic renderer with the basic functionality, but it has to do that really well. FStorm is, according to us, the best choice. Even if some claim that you could get shorter render times with other renderers, we couldn’t care less. Quality and efficiency are our priorities, rendering we do overnight. If we can set up our scenes faster during the day, the render times are not important.

We’ve been trying to perfect our workflow down to the smallest detail and have realized that the simpler we keep it, the easier it is. Therefore, other than 3Ds Max and FStorm of course, we don’t use many other third-party tools. The tool we use on a daily basis, however, and the only one that we really couldn’t live without, is “Connecter”. Connecter is basically what our whole workflow is built upon, which allows us to really cut some serious production time without sacrificing quality. We’re not going to lie, preparing a model library with 15.000+ models takes some real hard work (and maybe even some tears), not to mention invested money, but it’s also the best investment in both money and time we’ve ever made, as it has paid off so many times since.

What’s your current biggest challenge in terms of the effectiveness of your work? How are you planning to solve it?

Actually, right now we are at a stage where we have it more or less solved already. However, there’s still a big bottleneck and that has nothing to do with software, but rather how we administrate the projects with the clients.

We are able to work really efficiently when we know exactly what we are supposed to do, but the problems start when we realize that the clients don’t. And the issue here is that we cannot really solve it, since we’re not directly responsible for it. We have taken measures, trying to educate our clients, be very picky with what kind of material we get and that we don’t start a project before everything is perfectly planned.

We also use Basecamp as a collaboration tool to make sure our communication is efficient and all information always is collected in one place. We do love phone calls (but we hate E-mails) as it’s a great way to personally connect with clients in a way text can never do, but it’s always important to have every bit of information in one place. Almost all our failed projects have been due to misunderstandings or miscommunication. Basecamp solves a lot of that for us. Why Basecamp and not something else? Because it’s very easy to use for clients. One of our most important “rules” is to always force as little responsibility on the client as possible, and we don’t want them having to learn a complicated system just for communication.

But still, this doesn’t always cut it. The ultimate solution? We don’t know, yet.

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Pikcells   

An innovative agency that is made of digital artists, interior designs, stylists, software developers, thinkers, makers, and doers. They are constantly raising the bar of photo-realism in their projects while playing with everything new.

That can be seen in their cool Lab where the team shares tests, experiments, prototypes and pitches.

 

Which tools do you use on a daily basis? How they make your work easier?

3ds Max

As the most widely used software package, it ensures compatibility with the latest plugins and scripts. Also means that most artists are familiar with it allowing free flowing of skills through the studio and access to more resources.

Corona Renderer

We are always looking for ways to focus more on the artistic and creative elements of our work and less on the technical parts while retaining quality. The simplicity of Corona ticks many boxes for us as there is almost nothing to configure making it very easy to learn and work with.

Deadline

We’ve been using Deadline for about 3 years and it has quickly developed into a vital part of our pipeline. It allows us to get the most out of our network rendering possible by utilising all machines in the most efficient way. We have created lots of custom scripts too such as submission scripts to pre bake light maps automatically, emailing jpeg previews of a render and optimised setups for sequences and animations. The recent addition of cloud rendering is basically the holy grail.

Fusion Studio

As our workload has increased and the type of projects we work on becomes larger and more complex we recently switched our compositing workflow to Fusion from After Effects.

Fusion provides many benefits when compositing multilayered floating point renders, but to pick a handful I would say; speed, performance, organisational clarity and customisation.

Connecter

Organising and easily accessing our assets can be a laborious task. Having a piece of kit like Connecter at our disposal allows us to quickly add new items to our library and easily find existing ones via keyword searches or tags.

Marvelous Designer

Sculpting photoreal fabrics was virtually impossible before MD came along and this tool has meant we don’t need to photograph as much bedding and soft furnishings as we used to.

ProofHQ

Having an organized, accessible and clear audit trail with version control is essential for successful project management. All stakeholders [Clients, Collaborators and Artists] working on a project can see where it’s at and who said what. Before this we used emails to log comments and would never ever return to that world of pain!

Internal knowledge base & forum

As we have grown it’s become more and more important to develop and maintain a reliable production pipeline and workflow. The details of this system need to be logged somewhere so we have built an internal knowledge base using some existing WordPress themes. This is great for inducting and training new people as well as reminding existing artists how we do things.

Bolted onto this is also an internal forum which has been incredibly useful for sharing ideas, organizing events, researching issues and recording meetings.

Other tools used regularly — Photoshop, Substance, Railclone, Forest Pack, ZBrush, GitHub, Slack, Popsapp, Google Docs / Drive / Mail, Screen Connect.

What’s your current biggest challenge in terms of the effectiveness of your work? How are you planning to solve it?

The only thing we ever worry about is keeping quality high. Currently, this falls into two challenges;

1. Maintaining quality while scaling up.

2. Growing with effective resource.

It’s quite easy nowadays to knock out a few really good images, but to scale up your team and continue at the same quality level is very difficult. I think this is a unique problem in CG as the amount of variables that need to be controlled mean there are many possible ways to get to a similar result. If each person is doing things slightly differently you will often end up with some problems along the way. Especially when the content being created has to be used in stills, animations, real time environments and online tools, if it’s going to work in these circumstances then it has to be created correctly from the start.

To solve this we have been building up a relatively low tech solution in the form of an internal knowledge base which documents the important aspects of our workflow and pipeline. Whenever processes are enhanced, edited or deleted, the content in the document is updated and the team informed, similar to updating software. We also introduced regular team discussions and reviews about quality and workflow so that everyone is reminded about the expected standards.

We are fortunate enough to have lots of talented artists coming to us from local universities and the surrounding area but we are very picky about the people we hire, the knock-on effect being that it takes a while to grow the team.

For our growing pains, we are looking into the possibility of taking on more remote workers so that we don’t have to limit ourselves to local/permissible talent. This brings new challenges, like sharing assets which we are currently exploring.

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Recent Spaces   

An industry-leading London-based architectural and design visualisation studio founded by Alex York and Iain Banks.

They produce still CGIs, animated films, interactive virtual & augmented reality experiences and unique Fluid Images for top brands and property developers.

 

Which tools do you use on a daily basis? How they make your work easier?

Here at Recent Spaces, we’re constantly thinking of how to improve our workflow and allow for better communication between all roles within the company. This becomes vitally important as our team grows, adding new artists and support roles each with their own specific needs and ways of working.

The main production tools that we use on a daily basis are 3ds Max 2018, Adobe Photoshop, Corona Render, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Pdplayer, Connecter, Bridge, ImageGlass, Pureref, iToo Software. Most of these apps are core to the creation of our CGI imagery and animations but I’d like to mention some of the smaller apps, those being very beneficial in order to speed up certain aspects of the pipeline. Pdplayer, for instance, has allowed us to preview sequences of animations very quickly after rendering and allowing for fast layering of elements. Every animation is checked here before importing into our After Effects or Premiere projects.

With a very quickly growing library of resources, Connecter is also vital in order for us to easily and cleanly manage our 3d assets. It’s also our plan to transition all of our 2d assets to this platform too to unify everything. This has allowed us to rapidly build out scenes to test compositions and lighting at an early stage for clients

PureRef is a new tool for us but is proving its worth for fast checking of reference imagery. It allows you to continue adding to its canvas by dragging images into the frame and arranging however is preferred with a seemingly infinite zoom in or out.

Image Glass is now our default replacement for all of the native windows image viewers for fast opening and browsing of jpgs. It also has some useful tools for colour profiling so that we can be sure that we’re always viewing our images in the correct colour space.

SiNi Software is also essential for us as a team. Their forensic tool is used daily to clean and optimise scenes as well as their sculpt and scribe apps for cleaning up rogue geometry.

What’s your current biggest challenge in terms of the effectiveness of your work? How are you planning to solve it?

In order to be effective, either in our day to day project work or on long term planning and scheduling we have begun integrating a number of communication and project management tools to help streamline that process. It is, however, important to avoid doubling up on unnecessary duplication of data, adding to more admin tasks which we’re constantly trying to reduce as it takes us away from the creative. Basecamp has just recently been integrated into our workflow, acting as a go to homepage for everyone in the company. A typical project might come into the studio whereupon the project manager will organise the project folder structure, adding the relevant information and agreed views which is then shared out amongst the partners and artists involved who receive notifications of these steps. Information can be requested and to-dos per project can be added all within a clear intuitive interface. We’re still exploring the full advantages of this system and its many available 3rd party plugins.

Slack is our go to app for fast communication within the whole company as a general chat or for more specific projects. Wunderlist, we use for very general day to day checklists of tasks for personal use or can be shared amongst a team.

We feel very strongly that clear communication throughout the whole company is essential to overcoming any challenges in effectiveness with any problems arising throughout production being dealt with at that early stage rather than it becoming a much bigger problem at a later stage. We also advocate and support for continual artist progression, whether that be by strengthening new or old skills in seminars or workshops on new software tools or by visits to exhibitions events in the city to widen our scope of influences and new trends, all of which feed back into the work that we produce.

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The Boundary   

Founded by Peter Guthrie and Henry Goss, the visualization studio is aiming to create the perfect environment for creativity. They rightly believe that team’s cohesion is extremely important.

They’ve partnered with renowned brands like Renzo Piano Building Workshop, KPF, Marvel Architects, and Herzog & de Meuron.

 

Which tools do you use on a daily basis? How they make your work easier?

As a studio, we use the following toolset:

* 3ds Max with Corona Renderer

* Forest Pack Pro

* Railclone

* V-Ray

* Phoenix FD

* Ornatrix

* SiNi Software

In addition Adobe CC, Rhino, Autocad, Deadline, Marvelous Designer, and Pdplayer. Connecter by Design Connected is our digital assets manager of choice.

What’s your current biggest challenge in terms of the effectiveness of your work? How are you planning to solve it?

Connecter fulfills a crucial role in our day to day use of 3ds Max, but we have realized that the more time that goes into the organization of assets the more effective our 3d artists can be.

Therefore employing a 3d artist to work specifically with Connecter is something we are looking to do in the next few months.

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Talcik&Demovicova   

Juraj Talčík and Veronika Demovičová have created a true digital boutique focused for architectural visualizations. Proof for the outstanding quality of their craft is the list of clients they worked with that features the likes of Herman Miller, Zaha Hadid, and B+H Architects.

The words below are by Juraj Talčík.

Which tools do you use on a daily basis? How they make your work easier?

I use the bare minimum of tools I need to complete projects these days. It could be the nature of our more intimate, smaller scale projects as we focus heavily on interiors with a smaller amount of assets (of any sort) that automatically diminishes the amount of busy work in favor of creative decisions needing to be done at a deeper level. To illustrate that point, on one image, populating it with assets could take 10% of the time compared to 90% of look development, so adopting tools that would streamline those 10% would yield diminishing returns and might not be worth the mental effort to integrate.

Though to be honest, it's not necessarily approaching I advocate as sound. When I hit a roadblock of busywork (needing to complete some manual hang-up more than 20 times), I’ll look if there is the solution for that and usually there is, it is then that I adopt the tool. And there is now a massive amount of them, during the year I either win in some competition or receive for free or to test a handful of plugins that promise to make our work easier. But unless I absolutely must, I stay lean without them, my main objection being that it detracts from clear focus and might also make me too dependable on overly complex workflow (and one that I would have to teach the rest of team, doubling the initial headache).

With that said, some essentials are such clear cut case of absolute must that it was no brainer to adopt them, and I will always fanboy hard for Connecter. I call it my pursuit of “The Sims” workflow. You know how you can build and decorate complete house in that game under 5 minutes? Without any library manager, for CGI, those five minutes would be spent browsing hard-drive, looking up thumbnails, navigating to said folder afterwards, merging and praying it will merge at correct scale and place inside 3ds Max along with texture paths and draining your life force in process.

Fun trivia: Over the years both us and our clients (ranging from small designers to big corporation) went through multiple project management tools (Basecamp 1&2&3…etc.. ) and organically, we all dropped it. It might be absolutely necessary to keep the cogs spinning in larger productions (VFX&Games) but for us and surprisingly our clients likewise, it was added work on top of work despite its purpose. I personally went back to paper & white board (and digital version of whiteboard for team work, Miro).

 

What’s your current biggest challenge in terms of the effectiveness of your work? How are you planning to solve it?

I will always be my biggest roadblock, rather than set process or lack of tools, the primary example being good work/life balance, secondary division of labor and coaching/tutoring rest of team. I would say in context of this, maximizing effectiveness while staying lean and happy. We don’t want to (for now and near future at least) grow the studio, we want to keep doing smaller select work and keep having great life alongside, to do that, some practicality and processes are necessary. To solve that, I look forward to stretching my set ways and ever-growing neo-Luddite attitude. I also always keep one eye actively open for great tools entering the market, lately, the machine based learning craze making photorealistic materials a breeze (Artomatix, Alchemist, etc). Anything that will let me skip straight into the role of a virtual photographer is welcome.

Or maybe I’ll just buy one of those 4 nanoseconds week motivational book and search for deeper answers…

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We would love to learn your answers of those two questions — you can share them in the comments.

Annual subscription for Connecter Server— the digital assets manager preferred by some of the best studios in the world — will be part of the prizes for the winners of CGarchitect Architectural 3D Awards.