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Friday, September 8, 2023

The Ride Shotgun family is growing

rideshotgun

Drumroll, please...

We’re absolutely thrilled to share some fantastic news: the Ride Shotgun family is growing with the exciting acquisition of the tech-savvy CGI team at Creative Content Works, currently based in Manchester and Sofia, Bulgaria.

Together, we’re combining our strengths to form one of the largest independent CGI Production companies in the UK. The addition of CCW’s expertise further enhances our commitment to delivering seamless joined-up brand journeys with a team of now over 160 experts at every stage. In short, we’re hoping it’s going to be a real game-changer!

 Mark Mallinder, CEO of Ride Shotgun commented:

“After the successful acquisition of Set Visions last year, we recognised the growing significance of CGI as part of our business proposition. We have long admired CCW’s tech-driven approach to CGI production and are delighted to be able to complete this acquisition. CCW is a brilliant fit with our existing team, both culturally and operationally, so we’re really excited to see what we can achieve together.”

Production Director of CCW, Dimitar Dimitrov, added:

“Joining the Ride Shotgun team has been an exciting journey, and our teams are already working well together to drive both businesses forward. With our rich heritage in tech-driven CGI content and Ride Shotgun’s established brand and creative capabilities and broader proposition, we find ourselves in a unique position to deliver high-quality content, cost-effectively, and at unparalleled speed and scale.”

In this new partnership, creativity meets innovation, and the possibilities are boundless. So, buckle up, and enjoy the Ride!

Interested in knowing more? Contact the studio to discuss the Ride Shotgun group's extensive strategic, design and production capabilities.

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

CGI for home and interiors

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As competition heats up in the online world, it’s vital for brands to use every tool in the box to help them to stand out. Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) has been around in films for decades, but it’s increasingly popping up in advertising and marketing too.

There’s certainly a lot for marketers to be excited about with CGI. Transform your marketing, future-proof your business and engage prospects and existing customers in ways you never could before.

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Furniture giants like IKEA, Dunelm and John Lewis use CGI across over 50% of their sites. They’re not alone. A growing number of businesses across almost every sector are embracing CGI to tempt content-hungry customers and generate extra revenue. Customers have an increased appetite for enriched experiences and personalised products. And this hunger is set to continue in the ever-immersive digital world.

Online shoppers now expect brands to let them interact with quality stills, videos, and innovative solutions like augmented reality and product configurators. Multiply this content by numerous SKUs; that’s a mind-boggling volume of content, complex logistics and extensive costs.

CGI might just be the solution you’ve been looking for. Hallelujah! But if you’re new to CGI, knowing how to weave it into your marketing, comms and merchandising might seem intimidating, costly or complex. We get it. And we got you.

Check out the full article, exploring the advantages and capabilities of CGI in Ecommerce over at our partners site, Ride Shotgun.

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Monday, June 19, 2023

CGI: Real or no real?

Check out this incredible showcase of our CGI team's technical finesse in the world of fabric creation.

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Using supplied material scans and references, our talented CG artists brought the fabric to life in stunning 3D, meticulously adding woven details for an organic flow. Our in-house team took a photographic approach, paying close attention to composition and lighting to achieve the photorealistic images.

The outcome? A delighted client who wanted to put our realism capabilities to the test, all without the hassle of physical samples reaching the shores of the UK!

No matter what material you envision, whether it's fabric or any other substance, we possess the expertise to transform it into reality!

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Contact the team for more information.

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

CGI Foodography

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From juicy burgers to seductive ice creams and flawless fruit and veg, delicious and realistic food CGI (computer generated imagery) product shots are everywhere. Now a staple tool in advertising and marketing, CGI ‘foodography’ is transforming the way brands showcase their products creatively and innovatively.

There are still many scenarios where stunning traditional food and drink photography can’t be beaten but there are plenty of pros of CGI. It allows us to generate otherwise impossible food imagery and push creative boundaries to the limits.

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Over at our partner's site, Ride Shotgun we’ll look at the benefits of using CGI to create food asset libraries, TV ads or packshot visuals, plus find out from our CGI experts how this delicious imagery is created.

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Utilising AR for retail

The Otto Group is one of the world’s biggest ecommerce companies. Based in Hamburg, Germany, they operate in more than twenty countries.

They approached Set Visions, Ride Shotgun’s CGI team, to potentially add to their core base of content suppliers for an ever-growing catalogue of ecommerce sites. The vast amount of visual content required for their numerous retail brands means that an overview production framework must be adhered to by each CGI supplier.

EXPECTED

For this test project, the client was looking to utilise AR (Augmented Reality) as an extra sales tool for customers to visualise a range of sofas from the comfort of their own homes. Our task was to produce-accurate 3D sofas in multiple iterations of different materials, colours, orientations and sizes. Totalling in a whopping 3,000 AR model assets.

Already a big enough challenge, we then discovered that the only technical specifications provided were in the form of raw spreadsheet data, with no photography, RBG colours or product web links.

EXCEEDED

Our Dev team wrote a custom script that cleverly loaded the web page of each product in the spreadsheet by constructing it from the SKU data, downloading the JPEG colour swatch and sampling it to get the sRGB data. Then writing this back into our Google sheet for later reference. On review, the client decided that we couldn’t rely on the accuracy of their own web colour swatches, and so they wanted colour to be referenced from the product photography from their website.

To achieve this, we created another custom script to download the hero image from each product web page, this provided a facility to mimic Photoshop colour sampling to capture an average RGB colour which was automatically registered on the Google sheet.

Thanks to this custom process, what would have taken days in Photoshop, now took mere hours for users to sample and record the colour of 3000+ sofas, group them by fabric type and create base textures of these materials.

Our custom script allowed us to take the appropriate base model (from a range of 50+), orientate it, apply the correct fabric and colour and the generate a ‘low poly’ model to be exported to Android or Apple file formats. These were validated against technical criteria to produce a 3D render of the model.

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This was then fed in our custom testing app, which cross-reference the render to product photography. A simple keypress enabled the user to approve or reject it, with everything automatically fully tracked on the spreadsheet.

Having successfully delivered on our maiden project for The Otto Group, look out for more CGI collaborations in 2023…

Monday, February 13, 2023

Scale Up Your Content

Set Visions render automation service produces endless product visualisations quickly and cost-effectively. Our bespoke service provides essential content for e-commerce retailers and product configurators. Colours and finishes can be quickly changed, with interior design updates to match.

1000s of product combinations are rendered automatically driven by our bespoke production code. The software uses spreadsheet data when connecting to our render manager, distributing the tasks to our render farm. By removing manual input, we can reduce the unit costs for our customers.

Ecommerce is a highly competitive market. Savvy online shoppers are turned off by low-res swatch shots, and the infamous phrase "also comes in..." Our service helps convert your online shoppers to purchase with our high-resolution product images. 

The volume rendering service is a brilliant solution for product configurators or creating an 'asset bank' for multi-channel marketing campaigns, with fresh visuals every time. 

To discuss how our batch rendering and configurator service can improve your eCommerce offering, contact sales@setvisions.co.uk to arrange a friendly, informal call or in-person meeting. 

Monday, January 16, 2023

A guide to using CGI

CGI-brand-ecommerce

As competition heats up in the online world, it’s vital for brands to use every tool in the box to help them to stand out. A growing number of businesses across almost every sector are embracing CGI to tempt content-hungry customers and generate extra revenue.

Customers have an increased appetite for enriched experiences and personalised products. And this hunger is set to continue in the ever-immersive digital world.

Check out the full guide over at our HQ site, Ride Shotgun.

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

New Year, fresh new CGI portfolio!

We've reviewed roughly 2,000 client renders produced last year, picking our favourite images to update our portfolio.

From glossy mags to eCommerce omnichannel content, our CGI team is made up of retrained photographers and CG industry experts at every step. Our team loves what they do, so each photorealistic render, augmented reality asset, and animated product video is designed to connect and communicate with your customers.

In addition to these selected shots, we have plenty of fresh KKB content and photomontage adverting images. If you'd like to see more of our portfolio work, contact the studio at sales@setvisions.co.uk.

CGI Set Visions Ride Shotgun

Friday, December 2, 2022

Interactive Showroom Tour

As part of the Ride Shotgun group, we can offer our immersive 360 environment tours as part of a unique strategy, design and production service offering under one roof.

Benchmarx boasts over 150 branches, yet with when Covid-19 restrictions came into force that all-important store footfall was suddenly massively reduced.

They needed a way to replicate this experience and maintain traffic to their website. Benchmarx needed an interactive solution to build brand engagement that wasn’t a quick-fix gimmick, but rather something that would showcase the premium nature of Benchmark’s kitchen range in a highly credible and engaging way.

Check out the full case study here.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Trend and Trade

Our existing client came to us with a great challenge; design and create a series of cost-effective images for their entry-level kitchens. The competitive market is geared at the entry-level consumer and the buy-to-let market with a critical focus on young and trend-conscious customers.

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Sold in-store ‘off the shelf and online all the visuals needed to work within their broader marketing strategy down to the in-store POS.

To maximise the visual output, our CGI teams created three basic room sets that could accommodate several kitchen layouts, Galley U, Shaped, L Shaped and Utility.

Screenshot 2022-11-15 at 15.39.32 wickes-kitchen-trade

By repurposing each scene, we created 40 unique kitchen images of varying interior design trends and scenarios with an average production time of 1 day per scene. This strategic plan maximised our output whilst being budget-friendly.

The results? 4 core kitchen room sets with 75+ revisions in total!

Contact our team to learn more about our budget-friendly approach to CGI kitchens.

Blog

The Ride Shotgun family is growing

Drumroll, please...

CGI for home and interiors

CGI: Real or no real?

CGI Foodography

Utilising AR for retail

Scale Up Your Content

A guide to using CGI

New Year, fresh new CGI portfolio!

Interactive Showroom Tour

Trend and Trade

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The Ride Shotgun family is growing