RTT and the Power of Visualization

By Jim Romeo

Jereon Snepvangers is the CEO of RTT USA.

RTT is a 3D visualization technologycompany headquartered in Munich,Germany, with several officesthroughout Europe as well as inPasadena, CA, and Royal Oak, MI. Oneof its key products, RTT DeltaGen, takesMCAD data and converts it into usable,photorealistic models that can be manipulatedin real time. Jereon Snepvangers isthe CEO of RTT USA, Inc. and heads up the office in Pasadena.

HOW IS DELTAGEN USED AND BY WHOM?
Snepvangers: RTT DeltaGen focuses onconsumer products that require both highdesign quality as well as high customizability.

  These days, most products needto have both of the above attributes. However,this raises the cost for designers, engineers,and end consumers to evaluateall variants using traditional photography.

  Simply photographing a design prototypeor final product in every conceivable configurationis no longer financially practical.

  RTT DeltaGen uses computer-generatedvirtual reality (VR) to visualize prototypesand final products using the manufacturer’s3DMCAD data. The key is thatit does so at amazingly high levels of realismand in real time, which means thatrather than creating a few still images or afilm, it produces ]animations at]more than 10 frames-per-second.

  The industries that currently take thelead in this revolution are automotive andaerospace manufacturers and their agencies.

  They have traditionally been theheaviest users of CAD data. They alsohave increasinglymore complex productsto design, engineer, and sell. In the lastthree to five years, many consumer productsmanufacturershave begun using RTTDeltaGen.

WHAT ARE DESIGNERS MOST INTERESTED INTO MEET THEIR NEWEST CHALLENGES?
Snepvangers: RTT DeltaGen has changedthe way products are designed from thetraditional physical design process to thestreamlined virtual design process. Thebreakthrough is in its ability to addresstwo main criteria like never before:Visual quality must be outstanding —so high ]in quality] that designers can exactlyreplicate stitching on seats or the reflectiveand refractive effects of choosing one material over another.

  Speed — Not only does the user demandthe ability to pan, zoom, and rotatethe objects in real time, but also to instantlyalter colors, materials, and even alternativeparts, options, and accessories. This,combined with the need to replace entiresections of the vehicle with alternative designs,used to be cumbersome due to thetime computers required to recalculate thescene with every change, which sometimes took hours or even days.

CAN YOU TELL US HOW YOUR PRODUCT IS USEDTO EXPEDITE COLLABORATIVE PROCESSES?
Snepvangers: RTT DeltaGen was largelyresponsible for helping a large transportationmanufacturer avoid building avery costly and dysfunctional physicalprototype — at a much faster pace thanwould have been possible using a competitor’ssoftware. The customer has anumber of different suppliers, meaningthat for every redesign of the product, thesuppliersmust redesign their componentsas well. The OEM’s engineers called for areduction in the thickness of the product’smain material. In order for a door to be flush, it had to be redesigned.

  The suppliers redesigned the door andsent the specifications to the OEM, indicatingthat they were ready to move forwardwith the physical prototype. Whenthe OEM built a virtual prototype of thevehicle using RTT technology, it becameapparent that if the product were to bebuilt as designed, the door would notopen sufficiently. The problemconstituteda total of 11 errors in the prototype; at acost of $120,000 per mistake had a physicalone been built.

  In the apparel industry, RTT clientshave found significant value in virtualprototyping. Consumer product manufacturersdesign dozens of products perday. In the past, designs were often sent toa low-wage country where the prototypes were built, and dozens of prototypes were then sent back to the manufacturer’s facility.

  This multiple-week lag time meant that by the time designers could see their work, they had likely moved on to new concepts and directions. With the adoption of RTT’s software, there is now immediate feedback.

WHERE ARE DESIGN COMMUNITIES HEADINGAND WHAT WILL THEY BE LOOKING FOR?
Snepvangers: The current wave of virtualreality in design and engineering replacesor supplements existing processes, suchas physical prototyping and photography.

  In the future, this will extend to new applicationsin design, where there is no existingsolution.

  Many designers are adopting virtualdesign that allows them to experimentwith different materials in order to improvethe perceived quality of the endproduct. One example of this is automotiveinteriors. RTT DeltaGen has the abilitytomodify the design, such as changingout seat types or swapping leather forcloth in real time,meaning that the resultsof the changes can immediately be seenduring a presentation with no need toschedule another meeting thanks to proprietaryalgorithms.

  Equally, in the industrial design area of consumer products, the emphasis has been on materials as much as on the shape of the design itself. For example, note the mobile phone industry’s focus on hard versus soft, smooth versus textured, and sturdy versus light materials.

  Materialsmust be sustainable in design,manufacturing, usage, and recycling. Virtualprototyping conserves valuable resourcesand enables OEMs to meet theirsustainability goals.Meanwhile, all theseproducts must be developed in recordtime ... In this mad dash, it is key to gothrough as many early prototypes in theshortest time as possible.

  Visualization is by nature an estimationof reality, albeit with RTT a very convincinglyrealistic one. Simulation, in contrast,is a physically correct representation of reality.

One clear example of this is RTT Real-Trace, which produces physically correctsimulations of light refracting and reflectingin real time. The key here is ‘real time.’

WHAT IS THE BIGGESTMISCONCEPTION ABOUT VIRTUAL AND COLLABORATIVE DESIGNS?
Snepvangers: That it is about software. In fact, RTT’s approach is the opposite.

  It is all about changing the process ofdesigning products and in doing so sharingand reusing digital assets (includingCAD) in new ways. The software is justpart of the solution. One example is: RTTDeltaGen can now visualize the digitallyproduced windtunnel (CFD) data onto aphotorealistic vehicle in real time. ShowingCFD data is already possible inmost CADsoftware, albeit in poor visual quality.

  However, the significance here is not that RTT DeltaGen can also show it. By showing it in photorealistic quality and interactively in real time, it has changed the process of evaluating air-efficient (and hence sustainable) design.Whereas in the past, engineers who knew how to interpret poor-quality visualizations could only do such evaluation, it can now be done by top executives, designers, and engineers— all in the same room at the same time. This significantly reduces the decision times and associated costs and risks.

  Anothermisconception is that 3D productvisualization is about design only. Infact, RTT has been founded on the ideathat the payoff in virtual design oftencomes when the 3D data (and associateddigital assets such as visualizations, animations,and technical digital explanations)are used downstreaminmarketing,sales, servicing, parts, and after sales. Allof RTT clients do this, or are in the processof adopting this model.

  Finally, a bigmisconception is that realtimevisualization is the same as CGI (computergenerated imaging) single-image rendering.

  Many OEMs compare the two inthe same big swoop. This equates to sayinga photo camera is the same as a video camera.

  The former gives you ‘a pre-produced view’ of the product,where the latter gives you a full ‘live experience’ of the product.

  With CGI image rendering, you have towait for each angle or sequence to render. Incontrast, with real-time visualization, youcan truly experience a product immediatelyand interactively from any angle andwith any option.

More Information:
RTT USA
Pasadena, CA

  Jim Romeo is a freelance writer specializing in industrialtechnology topics. To comment on this interview,send e-mail to [email protected].