3D Visualisation With Jonathan Knox @ Pixogram

At the age of 14 I started a band with my brother Dan in the small Border’s village of Coldingham. There were only 2 of us and we played in the utility room but it was a start and the beginning of an on-going relationship with creativity and the arts. My dad was (and still is) a professional fine artist and encouraged a keen and critical eye for design from an early age.

Later, I received a first class honours degree in interior architecture and an MSc in Design and Digital Media. I have worked in architecture and design both home and abroad including Sheppard Robson Architects and Novo Design. I now live in Edinburgh and specialise in creating bespoke 3D visualisations for built environment professionals, my interests extend from the ultra modern to the neolithic.

Tell us a little about your background and how you came to establish Pixogram.

I began my professional career in interior design. The ability to transform space from the imagined was something exciting and compelling. In 2006 my wife and I started a business in Spain catering for expats and a sprinkling of celebrities. Returning to the UK to graduate and grow, and after a period of employment in architecture, I became increasingly interested in 3D design visualisation at the expense of real world construction. Pixogram emerged as a long term goal; a vision which is professionally stimulating yet affords my own young family the flexibility I once experienced as a child.

Explain to us what 3d visualisation is and it’s benefits

3D visualisation is a communication tool, a means to express design intent, ideas and visions through images (both still and moving) which is at once immediate. Typically, visualisations are designed to be photorealistic, to give the impression of looking through a lens to a reality in space and time. Of course we are not, and playing with the parameters between real and hyper-real is where it really gets fun! Alex Roman’s ‘Third and Seventh’ short is seen as the holy bible for 3D visualisation artists and is a joy to behold.

What projects have you found most challenging and why?

A few years ago I worked on an animation project, the client was a family friend. Looking back, the deliverables were relatively unknown to both myself and the client yet the fee was set in stone. Lesson learnt! Consider 1 second of animation consists of 30 frames and 1 frame can take 1 hour to render and you get an idea of how important understanding deliverables is! Plan as much as possible in advance and price accordingly, not the other way round, it just doesn’t work.

Where would you like to see the industry headed in 2012?

The 3D visualisation industry has a big future, be it in architecture, heritage, film, TV, marketing, you name it, it is already everywhere. The problem the internet brings is globalisation, and in particular a globalisation of ideas and creativity. So much work out there looks the same, attempting to achieve photoreality when, in reality, the technology could be used to create so much more. I hope 2012 brings a flowering of new and inventive ways of ‘seeing’ spurred on by clients who are ready for something new.

What are you currently working on?

I’m about to start work on a heritage animation project to digitally bring back to life a significant crumbling building which is soon to be lost to the sea. Another project, in conjunction with Edinburgh World Heritage and Edinburgh City Council, is coming to an end. My role was to digitally reconstruct an old gas street lantern from existing photographs and photogrammetry so that replicas can be manufactured and installed in the city. As well as doing some private 3D tutoring and a residential architectural visualisation project I’m developing an ambitious pilot scheme which aims to digitally document Scotland’s standing stones in 3D through crowd sourced photogrammetry.
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Find out more about Pixogram and follow Jonathan Knox on twitter.