FOCUS — on the great upcoming content
Let’s talk about focus… no, not the designer fireplaces brand, although we will get to it later. Recent studies show that keeping concentration is becoming more and more difficult. The technology that we love so much is sucking our attention, creating the absurdly impractical fear of missing out.
For example, surveys point out that many creative professionals can’t go more than 10 minutes without checking their email. That’s just the top of the unfocussing iceberg. The majority of people never get an hour of focused time a day.
Let’s talk about Focus… the fireplaces brand, this time.
Fifty years ago, the technology wasn’t so distracting as today, but we can still see the reasoning behind the actions of the father of Focus, Dominique Imbert — ditching the teaching in Paris and going back to a place near his hometown Montpellier. There he concentrated on practicing what he loved from a very young age — forging, welding and sculpting, heating and shaping metal.
Maybe if we all do what we really love we can be far more focused?
In his small workshop he designed the first fireplace for his own needs in 1967. The model known as Antefocus became a prototype for the cult Gyrofocus. Born in 1968 that was the first suspended, 360° pivoting fireplace. The handcrafted piece of metal has been exhibited in number of museums around the globe and in 2009, vote as one of “World’s most beautiful object” selection.
The rest, as they say, is history. The fireplaces have always been a symbol of home and had important place in all interiors. Focus added another dimension — shaping them as a practical piece of art. Warming and beautiful.
What we all really love about Focus is that they are not afraid to experiment and follow their own path. As Dominique Imbert have put it:
“What interests me is that which moves me, and I am moved by discovering, hidden in the depths of certain shapes and angles, the inner life, the soul of a material. It is about revealing a dimension beyond the cold, calculating and conventional context of our surroundings. I get immense pleasure in prising a meaning from shapes — a hidden meaning, a sense of poetry.”
Part of our work as agency is helping Focus with product digitalization and virtual staging, while transferring the soul of the original fireplaces into their digital forms.
Below you will find more about:
The project
The team of Focus isn’t new to the idea of digitalization — as you can see from their website they are using some CG videos, 360 previews and augmented reality app to showcase their products. Our role was to produce images and models with better quality. What we delivered:
- Two exclusive residential spaces to present two of their most popular products — Domofocus and Gyrofocus.
- Modeling of 18 different fireplace families. Each design has multiple different materials. Two will be distributed as free 3d models.
The process
For us it was indeed a challenge to prepare for this project as our team didn’t have a lot of experience with digitizing fireplaces — a quite common interior object on one hand, with its very own specifics on the other. So the project manager — Ava, and the 3d team lead — Niki, had to invest some time to get acquainted with Focus product from A to Z. They both were the go-to-person for the rest of the team, which streamlined the communication between the departments and the client.
The team at Focus supported us by providing all kind of visual and technical information they managed to gather. In fact they even ordered from the production department custom sized physical samples for a few really specific materials including the really tricky Hematite Rust and Antic Green Bronze Patina. This helped a lot to accurately capture the real-life appearance of all elegant finishes in which Focus fireplaces are offered.
Another interesting challenge was the creation of photo-realistic fireplace fire. After all, what can be less inspiring than a fireplace without a fire? One of our lead 3d artists — George, had the task to research different simulation software and choose the right approach. After many tests and hundreds of simulations, we decided to go for Chaos Group’s Phoenix fluid dynamics plugin which offered the flexibility to deliver exactly what we wanted. Using the same setup we approved internally, individual fireplace files were simulated for all the 18 fireplace families, including a variation for those with gas fires.
The whole Design Connected team voted for the scenes we’ve created for the representations of the final pieces that you will see on our website.
Our collaboration with Focus leads to a new type of content that will be distributed on www.designconnected.com — designer fireplaces. This brand new product category will be unveiled in September 2018.
You can find some 3d models of Focus’ fireplaces on the popular crowd-sourced marketplaces, but only Design Connected is officially authorized to produce and distribute 3d models of Focus’ products which come with a guarantee for a perfect visual and technical quality approved by the brand.
If you would like to get them all for the best possible price, we might have an offer for you.
The freebie
You can get a taste of what’s coming with the free model of Gyrofocus — the cult fireplace that blasted Focus onto the scene in 1968.
