CASE STUDY: SEYMOURPOWELL

RICHARD SEALE, LEAD AUTOMOTIVE DESIGNER, TALKS ABOUT THE STUDIO’S JOURNEY INTO VR

Seymourpowell is renowned the world over as a multidisciplinary design agency working across all categories of design from deodorant cans to space ships. It’s now also both a tools creator and pioneer in the use of VR for creative 3D design. Debuted at the London Motor Show last month, SPVR enables designers to collaboratively sketch and model vehicle bodies and parts at full scale.

“We identified a need for a tool like this after using some of the available VR drawing applications,” says Richard Seale. “Those apps didn’t have the features that we wanted, specifically for automotive design. We wanted a platform as close to pen and paper as possible, and something that would be intuitive, with just the right feature-set to sketch and build wireframe models to help with communication between designer, modeller and engineer.” Richard says the problem with the traditional approach to automotive design is that it’s all too easy to cheat stance and proportion at the sketching stage. By taking this process into virtual space, the studio is able to analyse this at full scale. “We wanted to be able to load engineering data, sketch in 3D at full scale, then place spline curves in 3D space and create rough surfaces to help inform a modeller,” he explains. “We keep the emotion, exploration and freedom of 2D sketching, but enhance and accelerate the evaluation process dramatically. Instead of delivering a series of marker or Photoshop renderings to the modelling team, the designer can give them a CAD framework which has been validated in three dimensions against the required engineering hard points.”

While this marks the studio’s first foray into digital tool design, Richard says that the team’s collective knowledge of automative design, user interface design and code-makes them ideally positioned. It also enabled them to approach the challenge from an end-user’s perspective. “We didn’t set out to build modelling software,” explains Richard. “SPVR is very much a creative design tool – one designed to allow designers to create and explore concepts with the same emotion and expression as they would by sketching on paper.”

Richard says it’s remarkable how quickly the studio’s designers have been able to get to grips with the tool: “We have seen people who have never even used modelling software sketching in 3D and placing curves in 3D space within a few minutes.”

Crucially, the studio is also currently beta testing tools that enable designers and teams across multiple locations to share and communicate design ideas. “Multi-user, collaboration mode, and the Real-time AR viewer are integral to our vision for the tool,” says Richard. “The tool creates a collaboration space where colleagues or clients can observe and engage in the creation process... It’s helping us to blur and even break the barriers between sketching, modelling and engineering, streamlining the process and giving us more time to add the intellectual rigour that the work deserves.”