Welcoming visitors
On Wednesday, Nicholas Polley, the founder of the Dublin-based company 3rd Dimension was our guest in the IDC. He was invited to give a talk for our students and staff, continuing the Interaction Design Talks series we initiated in autumn (previous speakers were Nicola Quinn and Macdara Butler).
3rd Dimension’s Visualisation and Animation studios are based in Blackrock in Co Dublin. The company is focused on creating design solutions that include 3D visuals, photomontages, visual impact assessments and 3D walkthroughs meant to support their clients planning and marketing strategies.
I met Nick last year at the InnovateMedia 09 event, and approached him to talk about 3dcamp. Nick was open to the idea of coming to give a talk in UL, and we’re glad we managed to organise it.
The talk, titled Inside 3D Visualisation, attracted a pretty large crowd from both our undergrad and postgrad courses: Digital Media Design, Product Design and Interactive Media.
Nick spoke about his own career, about his company’s past and ongoing projects and referred to the processes and technologies involved. I think it was a great opportunity for our students not only to find out about technologies and work processes, but also about how to get a job in the digital media industry. Nick emphasized the importance of portfolios in selecting appropriate job candidates – and gave me yet another argument to push our students to start the work on their portfolios as early as possible!
On the same evening, Nick was the guest speaker at the IxDA Limerick meetup in the Absolute Hotel.
The talk touched on various uses of 3D visualization for Building Information Modelling, virtual decorators, real-time 3D, a new plugin allowing to add 3D representations and walkthroughs to Skype conversations.
In the medical domain, 3rdDimension are doing interesting things in representing the eye, its conditions and interventions to correct this, in collaboration with a Swiss ophtalmologist.
A discussion started around VirtuSphere and its potential use for walkthroughs in to-be-built spaces. It was compared to CAVE – after the InnovateMedia 09 event, both myself and Nick had the chance to visit the CAVE installation owned by IADT. I expressed doubts that bringing people to visit an installation would be as successful as the wide spread visualizations that can be made accessible to anyone, anywhere
Nick blogged about his visit as well. It was great to have him in Limerick and I hope we can convince him to speak at the next 3d camp!
February 04 2010 | Events and presentations | No Comments »