The Big Picture

A high-bay warehouse is decorated with a 28 m x 17 m image! A herculean task that was mastered by MAXON CINEMA 4D.

Not only did the pet food supplier Josera build Germany's largest high-bay warehouse they built it completely out of wood. Its size alone attracted a lot of attention during construction. The public's curiosity regarding the warehouse was not the only reason Josera gave the world a peek into the new facility. They also decided to take advantage of this curiosity for advertising purposes by decorating the building's outer faade with a huge image that gave onlookers the impression that they were peering into the warehouse itself.

Because of this project's unprecedented nature, the agency doing the decoration Kreuzer Design decided not to use traditional photography but rather CINEMA 4D to create the image. Whereas a photo depicts a single moment in time, the interior scenes modeled in CINEMA 4D according to the building's blueprints offered an unmatched degree of creative freedom. The scene's lighting could be fine-tuned to precisely meet the project's needs, which could well have been a nightmare to do using traditional photography.

There was another challenging factor that had to be dealt with: rendering an image 28 x 17 meters in size is not the easiest thing to do. The resolution had to be 150 dpi. This means that an image of this size would measure 162,000 x 102,000 pixels! The team at Kreuzer Design used a Tile Cam Expression to render the image in segments, which were later combined. CINEMA 4D's multi-pass rendering, with a total of four layers, was also used. Near the end it turned out that the image didn't require 150 dpi but 80% of the image had been completed. The 120 dpi that was actually required was child's play for the team at Kreuzer Design.

The next hurdle that the team had to master was the warehouse wall itself. It had an uneven, wavy surface and the client wanted to be sure that the image created a convincing illusion regardless of the wall's irregular surface. What the client worried about most were shadows and distortions that could be caused by the wall. Kreuzer Design created a simulation in CINEMA 4D containing a model of the warehouse wall with the image draped over it that was used to show the client that there was no need to worry about the warehouse wall causing any major problems.

Kreuzer Design was impressed by CINEMA 4D's stability and dependability. Alexander Keutzer stated: I didn't think it would be this easy to render and print an image of this size!

Web site Kreuzer Design:

www.kreuzer-design.com

LINK:	http://www.maxon.net/en/news/singleview-default/article/the-big-pictur...
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