Image(s): 640*480

Jpeg Image (38 Ko)	Jpeg Image (35 Ko)
Jpeg Image (43 Ko)

Author(s)

• Bruno Simon
  • Biography : Bruno Simon is in charge of Computer Images in the CAD/CAM Industrial Design Management Department at Renault. Bruno Simon, born on July 24, 1962, has always lived in Paris. After obtaining his baccalauréat, he spent a preparatory year at the Penninghen Atelier Met before sitting the higher art school en rance examination, and being admitted to the Paris Belleville School of Architecture.
    Why architecture ? The answer is summed up by three key-words: creation, technology and sociology. Even before obtaining his Diploma of Architecture in 1988, Bruno Simon sought a firm which used computer graphics as a tool for creating objects. This quest led him to sign on for a six-month course in the Renault Industrial Design Management Department. During this course, he made his first computer graphics film for automobile design, based on the Mégane car concept. A post was created for him in July 1988.

    After a year of research, and after making a second film on another car concept, the Laguna, company investments allowed Simon several weeks to make a third film on the Scénic, in 1991. The computer graphics activity of Renault Design is currently two fold. On the one hand, it undertakes communication actions centered around the theme of creativity in design at Renault, manifest as prestige documents on car concepts and vehicle images shown at all major public events. In parallel, the Department acts at a purely design level via a project baptized "Léonard", which provides designers with dynamic displays of their products in a virtual environment.
    This simulation is an invaluable means of verifying the pertinence of new trends in automobile style, both in absolute terms and with relation to competitors, before proceeding with the onerous phases of scale models and prototype construction.

Institute(s)

• Renault Design
  • Country : France

Film 1	Video QuickTime ->	(2.1 Mo)
	Jpeg Images ->	(18 Ko)

Film 2	Video QuickTime ->	(3.5 Mo)
	Jpeg Images ->	(15 Ko)

• Date : 94

• Category : Simulation

• Theme(s) :

  • Other techniques
  • Augmented Reality

Technical Information

• Bibliography :

  Bruno Simon "Virtual reality and computer aided design" Imagina pp26, 1993
  
  

• Abstract :

  Research at the realistic image level at the Renault Design Department began a few years ago, with the commercialization of increasingly powerful video terminals. The first strictly internal developments allowed visualization of volumes which nowadays look rather coarse, but at the time represented a dream come true for creators: display of a 3D computer model as a fully fledged object.
  The only obstacle was the level of computer skill necessary in those days to become "the magician".
  Interactivity and user-friendliness were not the high points of these revolutionary display techniques, and poor rendering of the initial images probably had a negative influence on the way CAD was perceived at the time. Hence, although steady progress in 3D-generating software provided increasingly realistic results, it took several years to develop an "applied tool" from this technological ghetto.

  Virtual reality has become a veritable creation and decision-making tool, but its implementation is not only subject to technical considerations. Industrial integration must take into account financial and human factors; the Renault Design Department will consider virtual reality as strategic only insofar as its applications remain pertinent.
  I shall successively review past, present and future technical choices, and the axes for use of virtual reality at Renault in the design, product definition and communications sectors.
  
  

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• Some internal links :

  Same Institute

  Les Citadines

  Racoon