Light Perspectives Book

Now it is here – the new ERCO Book! Their new books come only once in a decade, so you might have to wait a while to see the next one.

We worked on the architectural lighting illustrations for this publication over the last year, and we are really happy to finally see it coming to the stores. The first meeting was almost exactly 2 years from now, but there had a lot of concept work to be done before actual production could start. And there are many many more images than the selection you are seeing here. Light Perspectives is an extensive compendium on all apects of architectural lighting, and we are very happy we could do our part to create it.

You can take a look a sample chapter, or get the book on i.e. Amazon.

ERCO Media Walls l+b 2010

For light+building 2010, the leading fair for architectural lighting in Frankfurt, ERCO decided to carry their traditional concept of two opposing main walls over to the digital world.

The so called light wall displays scenographic content playing with current cooperate topics in an abstract and colorful way. The artwork was not prerendered but real time, which means visitors could play, similar to a giant ‘windspiel’, with huge forms and over a thousand of motor controlled reflectors via an infrared camera. Which they did. The other wall, called the didactic wall, is all about clear and straight forward information. This year both walls were fully digitized for the first time. Carrying the concept over to digital did not mean to forget about the reputation ERCO got in infographics, rooting back to the works of Otl Aicher. Typical line art, didactic diagrams and photorealistic renderings were coupled with a sophisticated control software, augmenting infographics with real world lighting, and that way offering new ways of communicating lighting concepts.

ERCO Media Wall l+b 2008

Photography: Frieder Blickle Fotografie

Virtual Product Photography

Rendered product photography came up in the recent years more and more frequently. During the course of 2009 i worked on the creation of virtual prototype photography/rendering for the new ERCO Quintessence product line. But this time the challenge was not only highest quality, but as well quantity: several hundred of distinct models had to be processed. The solution was based on a semi-automatic batch process controlled by Python and Maya. With the help of material mapping in between construction colors and photorealistic shaders, the CAD models could be imported automatically from the ERCO internal construction pipeline and processed at the same time. During that automated setup, the fitting HDRI lighting environment and camera was referenced into the scene, and a batch rendering list was written, which could be run with a single click over night. It sounds so simple when you explain it.

Tutorials on 3D Lighting

Here are two tutorials i once created for clients. Both are not brand new, but i’d happily say everything still applies.

ERCO Guide on Simulation

This document is aimed at architects and designers without knowlegde on 3d computer graphics. The PDF is a beginners introduction, and not focused on a certain software package or tricky tech information.

Official Autodesk White Paper

The focus of this 35 page PDF is advanced technical and in depth information for designers and artists already a bit familiar working with 3ds Max and mental ray, and wish to go deeper into lighting techniques.