We finally had some time to rerender and recomposite the best what we had in the last year and put it into a short movie.
This was the first thing we have ever done in fullHD. For a more bandwidth-friendly version check out the same thing in various resolutions on our youtube site.

During November we were busy working with Zsolt L. Bordos – a well-known 3D artist – on a new video mapping project. We were working in a tight team together with a couple other visual artists to chant a unique atmosphere twice a day on the famous Vorosmarty square in Budapest.
Complete list of artists working on the project: Kovács Ivó, Szalkó Dániel, Reikort Gábor, Lóránt Demeter, ZOA, Tripod VFX
Projection: Visualpower
Thanks to Kepp Showroom for having such a great balcony.

The 2011 fall fashion show of the Kepp Showroom is probably one of the most interesting experiments going on in the visual scene of the Hungarian fashion world. It is a three-dimensional projection of a pre-recorded fashion show using a single projector and screen divided into paralell segments and fixed in an arrangement to develop 3d effect. After the original show that was displayed in the showroom, downtown Budapest, it went on to be displayed in the Design Terminal.

Clothes: Kepp Showroom | Video: ZOA | Camera: Mark Viszlay

ZOA participated in this architectural design contest in June 2011 under the wing of Aspectus Architects, an Architects Studio which was formerly already known for it’s contemporary office buildings. The 3D Visualization for the proposed 6-storey glazed building was created in a rather short period of time. After having received the raw 3D model of the buidling – which the Architects supplied as an ArchiCAD model – our team had to finish 10 high quality renderings (of which 6 were to put into photos taken on spot) in less then a week. Balázs Götz – senior architectural visualizer – led the team strong-minded. The technically hardest part – when creating the resulting 3d renderings – was to make the glass facades look natural and at the same time blend into the atmosphere.

design: Aspectus Architects

Click on one of the images below to access the interactive 3D PANORAMAS.

I’m wondering if Zoa’s mission in this project was difficult rather because of the surroundings, than the representation of the quality architecture. Good thing is that it is possible to make such computer generated images where vegetation is not awkward any more but rather actually brings out the architectural design.
Working together with architects and landscape designers resulted in beautiful natural landscape. Of course, a huge number of data that has to be dealt with. The latter slows down the process and makes our work particularly difficult. Dealing with so much of data – i.e. meaning millions of polygons in the virtual space that gave us a chance to show lots of details – forced us to use additional mathematical scripts and program several phases of the whole procedure that could be done automatically by the computers. This was definitely worth it’s time; we could avoid spending time with the repetitive mechanical tasks and focus on the substance.
design: Gábor & Svejkovszky Építésziroda

András Miklós Balogh and Zoltán Kovács participated on the 2011 paintup – Budapest video mapping contest, and have fascinatingly won 1st prize. Enjoy the 3d mapping video in fullscreen mode!

A 3d projection mapping video taken on spot can be seen on Youtube

The Buda Castle Project was definitely the largest-scale modeling project we have ever done. Our customer’s – KÖZTI – goal was to completely revise the present stage of the Castle Hill, which is situated in the very heart of Budapest. The planning ranged from public transport to landscaping and the revival of several disused monuments. KÖZTI’s proposal consisted of dissection of actualities by presenting a detailed map, that focuses on problems and a master plan which gave answers to the problems

ZOA was requested to create the 3D Digital model of the complete site as a support for the design procedure and the creation of the master plan. After finishing the model that represents the present stage, we added certain elements, which were torn away during the decades past, or bombed in the world wars. These elements are indicated with an orangish color in our images. The whole modeling procedure took 2 month for 4 people.

The modeling – which we did mainly with editable polys – was divided into two parts:

1. One team was working on the buildings. This part was split up into smaller fragments. Managing teamwork was probably the most difficult task. Most of the houses were modeled individually using reference photos, several surveys created after the 2nd world war and google earth. In case of the more significant buildings – like the Mathias Church, Castle etc. – we were given more specific plans from archives.

2. Modeling the terrain was a completely different procedure. Getting decent 2D vector plans of the 150 acres area was pretty easy, but making it three dimensional was way too difficult. Just to get the z coordinate data out of three different sources (archive plans, GPS data and Waterworks of Budapest had a plan with height data of all their gullies) took us about a week. With all this data we had to develop a method where the 2D road-system was mapped onto a 3D proxy-terrain.

We are about to create video tutorials on how we have modeled the two above steps. Sign up to our facebook page to be among the firsts to see them!

Architect: Betti Boldis, Polla Bauer & ZOA

Evermotion and AAndres furniture firm started a jointrendering competition. This image has not won a prize, however it is not really disappointing to lose in such an awesome field.

Competiotion website: Evermotion | Rendering: Tamás Medve @ ZOA

Talentis Project is probably the biggest regional development project today in Hungary. Similarly to the story of Silicon Valley, the whole project is based on investment into every level of educational institutions. Real estate development connect to this kind of development of the region. This promotional video had to express this very complex subject.

First we had to grab the most important thoughts about the Talentis Project with eye on the limited length of the clip. Than we sought for the right visual content to express the sentences we came up with. Few hours of raw material was converted into a solid video with the help of the Rubik’s Cube effects which was meant to be a metaphor for invention and knowledge. However simple it might seem to be, it was just the opposite, we struggled to link visual content to what we wanted to say and harmonize both with the rolling cube and each other.

Project page and Client: Talentis

Project page: Piarist High School | Client and Designer: M-Teampannon

This wonderful villa can be discovered through an unusual web page. ZOA designed this web page using its own imagery. The home view is one of the best looks of the building and one can change its illumination to see how the villa looks throughout the day. Users can pick an apartment through another view of the villa: lights of the chosen apartment will turn on as the mouse rolls over.

Project page: Mátyás 46 | Designer: 3AD Architects Office

Project page: hg hu | Pecha Kucha Budapest | Concept and photos: Barcza Gergő

Project page: 22 Dandar Park | Client:Solidum | Designer: Kima Stúdió

A company constructs an up-to-date five star hotel right beside the mind-boggling turkish medieval bath and the proper foyer building by architect giant Miklós Ybl that is called Rácz fürdő. ZOA had to visualize the spa part of the project. In the focus of our graphics it was haziness and intimate illumination as for the Medieval bath and flamboyant details as for the 19th century building. The prior demanded a bit more experiments since one can start to deal with water and haze in very different approaches in CG. It is worth to look around before deciding which way to go. The latter – to visualize a 19th century building full of details – simply accounts for a lot of modeling work. While modeling ornamental details can be quite tricky it is also rather giving: details contribute a lot to the aestethic of an image.

Review: Építészfórum | Project page: Rácz Hotel & Thermal Spa | Client & Designer: Budapest Architectural Art Studio

It was easy to catch the feeling of the very colorful building designed by Gábor Turányi and Bence Turányi: colored stripes fill the building and its neighboring space with colors. By the way it responds nicely to the project logo as well. ZOA likes to make any task challenging regarding the technical means. ING, the owner of this project left us enough time and energy to find the right challenge, and we believe this can easily be felt watching the final version of this video.

Project page: Simplon Court | Client: ING Real Estate Hungary | Architect: t2a

Review: Építészfórum | Client & Designer: Shambala Home & Aspectus Architect

These images were submitted to the YCON 2005 visualization competition. All of these have a bit different story. The surpise is fast evolution in visualisation in general: good materilas and nice illumination were enough to win a competition in 2005 while you have to come up with more serious staff today to get a prize: subject, details, composition, effects all has to be appropriately done. Well, this is hell of a dynamic market… Let’s go to work!

Competition site: Építészfórum