Saravanan Saravanan

Technocreative Solution

Challenge

I am leading a creative team which supports Pre-Sales department. My team’s responsibilities  include creating digital and multimedia assets production for Pre-Sales department. Our work  includes all kind of creative stuffs needed to boost sales of our company products; it includes some  technically challenging solutions. One of the project on which we were working was technically and  creatively challenging, it’s an interactive 3d models of our company’s product. Team was divided  into different geographical areas such as India and USA. We were developing 3D models in India and  need to show (cross check) it to our manager and product technical managers, to know whether 3d  model is technically fine or not? But problem was, uploading this complete 3d model on internet  which was rendered with lights, animation and other settings due to heavy output (in terms of file  size). This complete process just to show one model needs 2 days of time. And it’s just a single  model, we had lots of models in our project. And in case of feedbacks, again same 2 days(approx..).  My major concern is how do I reduce this time frame and speedup/overcome this process.

Selection:

First, we need to find out that it’s a problem. Second, we should know that it needs to be solved. So,  I focussed on problem, started searching and brainstorming about ideas to solve this issue and speed  up my work. I than zeroed on a unique plugin which we could use inside 3ds MAX software (3d  model making software). Flare3d is a platform for creating interactive 3D content for web and  mobile devices. With a powerful Stage3D rendering engine and an intuitive IDE. They also provide a  plug-in, which one can install into 3ds MAX (3d software) and directly generate SWF (file one can  play on browser) as output.

Application:

I just use this plugin i.e. Flare3d in of 3d (3ds MAX) software, and interestingly it was free. As  described above, our previous process was export 3d models into different 3d files where lights and  another setup was done and from this final file, we export our video as MP4(video format). As due  to light, animation and other effects final video output size was very high and transferring this on  email/uploading was again a task. Another drawback was that this was just a video file and not an  interactive file, so viewer can’t rotate, zoom etc. for proper checking.

Now with this new plugin i.e. Flare 3d, we now easily export a SWF file (Adobe Flash player format)  directly from 3ds MAX software with just a click. This SWF we can directly run in browser (with some  other files as a package) and its interactive too. Now any person who have this package will rotate,  zoom, move this model. This plugin export video with automatic lighting which saved our lighting  setup time as well. Interestingly. final file size is very small and can be transferred on email also. This  reduced production time from 2 days into 2 min.

Insight and Approach:

After this incidence I got to know the importance of spotting an error or problem and then start  finding solution. Due to this problem we get to know about this plugin and find out solution out of

Saravanan Saravanan

this. People know this software for interactive development purpose, but here we had a different  problem, which we solved with this Plugin in our own style. It reduced our production time from 2  days to 2 min. which was very impressive. Final file size was so less that we send files on emails. It  was very useful for the receiving person also as they can see this file interactively (rotate, zoom,  move etc.) that too without spending a penny.

