Meet the 3D Visualisation Team

Over the past year, our 3D Visualisation Team has grown significantly and have been leading an incredible variety of virtual projects on behalf of our clients. From ICE Inspire 360 and the Hologic Faxitron® Trident® environment, to gaming resources such as the Siemens Infinity STARship and Decarbonisation Resource there are a wealth of applications for this niche discipline.

With more innovative projects taking place in 2022, we’re looking forward to seeing how the team develops over time.

We sat down with Ash Mellor, Laura Durham and Julian Luxford to find out more about how they discovered their passion for the virtual world, and their favourite elements of life at TMC. Here’s what they shared.

The TMC 3D Visualisation Team (00:07 – 00:55)

Laura – I’m Laura and I’m a 3D Artist. So I went to university about 11 years ago now but from there worked in architectural visualisation and kind of worked up from a junior to a 3D artist and then went into motion graphics for three and a half years and then came to TMC about 7 months ago.

Ash – I’m Ash and I’m a 3D Artist. I started getting into graphics around about 10 years ago in a quite basic way just sort of teaching myself from home and it’s just slowly sort of spiralled into working here.

Julian – I’m Julian and I’m a 3D Artist. I studied Graphic Communication in university, so it was kind of a more traditional graphics approach but then a chance encounter in my first job after university I met someone who was setting up their 3D design studio. They were looking for staff and we just got talking.

Sharing Childhood Inspirations (00:56 – 01:27)

Laura – As a child I absolutely loved the Titanic film. Yeah so I was absolutely fascinated by like ‘how have they made this ship?’ ‘it’s on a green screen – what is a green screen?’ ‘how is this done because this ship doesn’t exist’. I had this book that was kind of describing all different visual effects and things like that so from there I always knew I wanted to work in film and then it’s just evolved over the years into 3D animation.

Ash – I used to love Bladerunner and watched that with my dad a lot as well, and you know that’s really inspiring. You find out that they made that with just plastic kind of models and whatever – it blows your mind!

Two of our 3D Visualisation team work remotely due to distance, and it is our duty as a company to ensure everyone has a voice and input, regardless of where they are working from.

By utilising video calls, both with regular inter-departmental team meetings and company-wide calls, everyone is kept in the loop with what’s going on and it keeps our team as one. Learn more about our values as a company to see what’s important to us.

Life at TMC as a 3D Artist (01:28 – 01:44)

Laura – We usually start our day with a studio standup, where the three of us and then the design team just get together to say ‘hello and good morning’, ‘what’s everyone working on’, ‘how are you all’ – which really kicks off the day. It kind of helps, especially with us as we’re in different places.

What do you like about working at TMC? (01:45 – 02:28)

Laura – The thing I really like about working at TMC is mainly just the projects. I feel like I’m making a difference with all of the projects that I do. It’s really rewarding at the end of the day to know that I’ve done something that could make a difference to someone’s life.

Julian – What I like about working at TMC is the fact that it feels like a small family community, whereas you know it’s not so big that everyone’s anonymous and you don’t have contact with everyone on a daily basis. You will talk to everyone in the office, which is really nice.

Laura – I think the Monday Morning Coffee (calls) is a really good space that people share projects they’ve been working on so you’re always in the link on what different people are doing across the business and as well as that it’s always just nice to have a catch-up.

What is your most rewarding project to date? (02:29 – 03:47)

Julian – My most rewarding project to date would be Hologic Faxitron. It was part of the breast health portfolio and the client was really keen to see the product inside the operating theatre environment so it was creating the 3D virtual environment with the 3D product in there.

Laura – I think my most rewarding project was a 360 for an office. It was aimed at getting underrepresented individuals into an industry so we did a lot of gaming elements within this project. But the reason it was the most rewarding was because the client just let me have a lot of free reign on it.

My favourite part of the projects is the end of the projects when everything starts coming together and it’s really exciting because a lot of the projects we work on are really long, they can take a month or two, or just a few weeks. But it’s when it comes together and it’s really looking amazing is the best part of it.

Ash – Yeah I find that, there’s like a level of excitement of what you’re going to start doing, then a build-up and then a kind of middle where you go ‘is it going to work’ and then the final relief at the end makes it really worthwhile.

Julian – All the hard work, the groundwork goes into the beginning to get all the animation done and setting up the project and then you let everything render out, composite it at the end and then that’s when you kind of get the reward I suppose.

Learning 3D Animation: Teaching yourself or education? (03:48 – 04:20)

Ash – I would say, rather than going to uni, because I did it from home and it taught me stuff that was out of date, so I would say try to find someone or some way of getting the most up to date stuff. You can then just go on youtube and it’s about as current as it gets.

Laura – YouTube is an absolute trove of information. It’s amazing – I mean I still use it on a day to day basis if I get stuck on something, so definitely start watching YouTube videos and start making your own projects from beginning to end.

Julian – There’s so many industry professionals that are putting out tutorials content online.

How can clients benefit from 3D animation? (04:21 – 05:13)

Laura – So, there’s a lot of benefits that clients can achieve from using 3D technology. We can put people in spaces that don’t exist, that they’ve never seen before, so things like that right the way through to product design and animations. The sky is the limit.

Julian – If you were doing a product animation, you wouldn’t need to hire a studio or get the camera crew in, you know, organise people to be there on the day. You can do everything from one desk.

Ash – I used to make products for people who would then be able to go and visit the online shop and see that product in essentially real time looking realistic and then you could also change the colour of it and change configurations of it to say okay if it was a car you could have a different colour, different wheels – whatever it is you could change it around and see it at any angle. Close up or far away, just move it around and have a look.

Our 3D visualisation team can create virtual environments and products that are specifically designed to your needs.

Our process begins by listening to your requirements and evaluating key components such as audience, messaging and objective. We then build the journey around the user.

This media allows for greater connection and engagement in any location – whether it’s an existing space or something completely made up. Our virtual environments help to bring immersive new dimensions to your organisation.

The Future of 3D (05.14 – 06:22)

Julian – Looking towards the future the 3D discipline will change quite drastically. We can already see the introduction of virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence changing processes. Since this whole remote working has happened, or the pandemic has introduced restrictions on people being there in person, I think there’s going to be a continuation in the use of 3D animation and technologies like that in order to produce a project.

Ash – So VR as well, do you think would be a big thing?

Julian – Yeah, it’s out there. It’s a bit slow to kind of catch on and be taken on board by a lot of people.

Laura – I think for me, the technology is always changing, and it always feels like we might be one step behind because it’s changing every single day and it’s difficult to keep up sometimes but I think the one thing that always reassures me is that there’s always going to be a person behind that computer that’s making that thing and that’s where we come in.

Interested in learning more about our 3D Visualisation services? Get in touch to find out how we can help you to bring your organisation to life with virtual environments.