Innovators vs Imitators

Where the real architectural 3D smarts come from

It's almost certain you have seen and heard many stories about innovation and imitation in the computer age. Microsoft vs Apple vs Parc has always been a long running discussion around the water cooler. Apple users will say that Windows users "stole" the operating system and Windows users will say that Apple stole it from Parc first anyway. Some companies innovate and some companies imitate. Imitators often try to cover or justify their actions by renaming them and trying to gain the perception of ownership and most innovators just get uptight and move onto the next challenge.

Archiform 3D is an innovator in the 3D architectural visualization field. This includes architectural renderings, 3D virtual reality, architectural illustration and an entire range of digital media services to support the artwork and animations. Like most innovators we are a small group of highly talented, deep thinking people <insert "artistic geeks"> who love their work and are always exploring new ideas. That is how our people entered the 3D architectural rendering and presentation market, through seeing an avenue to develop a new technique, being excited to try it out in the real world and having the "guts" to follow it through. Imitators soon followed – people that are "gut-less" or would rather we spent the time and money on research while they just reverse engineered other people's ideas.

Some Archiform 3D architectural visualization innovations
(no doubt soon to be imitated)

Live Presenters in video and 3D virtual reality

To our knowledge we were the first to introduce live presenters to our architectural 3D virtual reality scenes, and consider that we are still the only company to have done so with a strong portfolio to back it up. We created our blue screen studio, perfected an economical way of shooting our presenters and then integrating them into virtual reality architectural scenes.

Interactive fly-through/walk-through and architectural visualization DVDs

We learnt that DVDs have so much more functionality than most people know, and apart from some of our competition in Canada (worthy competition, we add) this has not been touched. The imitators don't have either the expertise or desire to make a DVD presentation that can be navigated interactively. Archiform 3D DVDs can almost think for themselves, ensuring that a real estate sales presentation runs exactly as you need it to. The addition of 3D virtual reality interfaces to the DVDs enhances the user experience and understanding of the project further. The alternative to an interactive DVD is a simple autoplay disc or one that contains just basic menus.

Interactive virtual reality web modules and complete web sites for real estate

We successfully introduced web modules years ago, not just simple templates, but rich interactive self contained presentations that seamlessly integrate virtual reality architectural visualization and fly through animation with no additional plug-in than what comes stock standard on today's computers. Many companies struggle with this and often only include basic web movies or work from templates. Straight web movies have no interaction and lack "polish". Templates are the cheap solution, and are not suitable for the competitive real estate development industry.

Stereoscopic 3D virtual reality

To our knowledge we are the ONLY 3D architectural rendering and animation company in the world that is producing anaglyph stereoscopic stills and animations. Put on a set of red/blue 3D glasses and be virtually immersed inside a new real estate property development as though you were really there. You can view samples and download our stereoscopic architectural show reels.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3