Volvo Cars needed to make a change in their processes for creating images for marketing purposes. Shorter product development lead times, limited access to pre-production vehicles and high costs for photo vehicles were all reasons accentuating the need for this change.
After a proof of concept project, Semcon Informatic now uses its proprietary tool Illuminator to prepare and standardize data for digital 3D models in a solution called ‘Digicars’. Using CAD data straight from the R&D department as input, Digicars contains the digital resources required to describe all Volvo Car’s models and all available visible options and features.
The 3D data in Digicars can be reused for both marketing and aftermarket assignments. From just a few test images the number of CGI images produced for Volvo Cars has increased and today Semcon Informatic produces some 150 000 digital images, animations and films annually. Use of these images span internal product presentations, launch films, campaigns, advertising, press releases, brochures, owners and parts information just to name a few.
By shifting to CGI, Volvo Cars has gained from reducing the need for physical vehicles, significantly reducing lead times, and retained or even improved image quality. At the same time Volvo Cars has succeeded in decreasing the costs per image dramatically, to about a fifth of the earlier used traditional approach. The great benefits of using CGI has led to Volvo Cars today using a majority computer generated 3D renditions for publishing on the web as well as a large portion of images for printed publications.
Illuminator is Semcon Informatic’s proprietary visualisation tool. It can handle a multitude of CAD formats as input data, and use this input for creation of repair methods or illustrations. With Illuminator, Semcon Informatic can make sure we deliver top quality information products at low cost and with short lead time.
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