Caesarstone Table Design Competition

[schultzeworks]

I won a design competition a few months ago {LG phone competition} so now I've got the bug to try it again. The competition is sponsored by Dwell Magazine and Caesarstone to "design a modern table using Caesarstone.'' You can read more here http://www.dwell.com/services/contests/caesarstone.html

This is a work in progress, so feel free to comment and critique. That's why I am posting here!

[schultzeworks]

Some new explorations

I'm developing one design line more towards an extend-able and modular system. This effort showcases the tremendous range of colors and finishes as well as honoring the planar form factor.

[Travis Serio_cg]

Re: Caesarstone Table Design Competition

Hey, Dave. These are great. I really love the reflections of the table in the ground plane in the 3rd image. I also really like the rotated perspective. I think slight rotations like that always help make the image look more appealing.

[schultzeworks]

feedback reply

Thanks for the feedback! Besides the design, I am researching two new directions for the renders.

1) having the floor texture fade before it hits the horizon, to avoid the sharp / distracting edge.
2) using some 2D vector people for scale

Update coming soon.

[Travis Serio_cg]

Re: Caesarstone Table Design Competition

Well without going into a complex studio setup with some ramping back grounds that could get tricky with a complex material like your ground plane. You might get lucky just with some good old DOF to blur out the hard line. Worth a shot if anything. If that doesnt work I guess youll have to either change your angles or make a nice ramped back drop.

[schultzeworks]

Update : solved the floor problem

The floor was resolved relatively easily. I used a two-layer diffuse material. The top diffuse layer had the basic wood texture as well as a radial gradient in the transparency map, allowing the wood to gradually fade from solid at the center to white at the edges. The bottom diffuse was the basic white throughout. It came out quite sweet! The only trick was in playing around with a few radial gradients, but PhotoShop made it easy.



The design is actually quite a bit different now, but I will wait to post the final renders until after the competition is closed on November 2.

[Travis Serio_cg]

Re: Caesarstone Table Design Competition

Excellent idea, Dave! It looks fantastic.

[schultzeworks]

Final entry as submitted. It's done!

The deadline was today [Nov 3 2008] and I'm pretty happy with my final design. I submitted the four pages below, but I just found out the sponsors have decided to publicly post all of the entries. If you're curious, check 'em out here http://www.dwell.com/services/contes...esarstone.html

[fpedrogo]

Re: Caesarstone Table Design Competition

Great Job! Very impressive.

[sheva_29]

Re: Caesarstone Table Design Competition

Hi Schultze! Well a few things about it, I found interesting the way you can play with the system (tables) in different contexts as you shown in your slides.It looks very sophisticated; well I know it's a very subjective appreciation but it's what the form communicates me. For the legs structure of the system, especially the one for the retail environment I'm not sure if it's going to be as reliable as you hope for the different environments, for example: In the retail one it looks like you cannot put a lot of stuff in it because of the legs of the table as I mentioned look very fragile maybe you did a test about weight and all the stuff with the tables and the design of the legs but I think it is something to have in mind in case you haven't done it. But meanly the design is very clever, and for the renders I have no words they are stunning!

Congratulations! What a nice job.

[schultzeworks]

Thanks

Thanks for the feedback and critiques. Most appreciated!

sheva_29: I agree with you on the structural issue, but I was envisioning the table to be only supporting clothing. But, you are right; all of my calculations were purely "eyeball engineering," which is to say I focused most of my time on making it look as damn cool as humanly possible.

Besides the thrill of competition and glory of winning, other goals included creating a viable and marketable system that might get the Caesarstone company interested in production. Also, the co-sponsor, Dwell magazine, is one of my favorites and I can imagine the winner getting a fair amount of valuable publicity.

For anyone who is interested, I found competitions are the best way to add a killer project to your portfolio. You get almost total design freedom, no budget, no client, and a multi-month deadline. Its a great opportunity to see how good you really are.

I also used this competition as a testing environment or several techniques I wanted to try, but never found the time during client projects. Those were the (1) floor material fade shown above, (2) depth of field blurring, (3) scale people 'cut-outs', and (4) HDRI lighting and linear color space, which resulted in some very nice saturation and contrast.

[schultzeworks]

Tips for linear color space | gamma correction using curves

Working in linear color space (gamma 2.2 corrected) gets better results, but it can also make your renderings more predictable and require a lot less testing and tweaking. I found that the key to this is the curve adjustment. The curve works by moving the "hidden" detail into a color space where you can see it on a monitor.

General rule : Vray typically renders in linear color space, but you lose all that extra information in the highlights and shadows when you save to a JPG or PNG, which just does not have the bit-depth needed.

One workflow is to save the renders in the HDR format and then tweak the curves & contrast in PhotoShop. However, that's not necessary if you take advantage of Vrays built-in curve adjustment. While watching a training DVD (by gnomon) I found a fantastic curve tip that works almost every time. Here is a A vs. B comparison of the same rendering using this curve adjustment -- and how to duplicate the same curve for your renders.

[schultzeworks]

Competition Update : Top 3!

I have posted this information before, but it bears repeating now that I am currently in the top 3 submissions for the "Most Popular." I'm actually not sure how they calculate that, other than total page views (maybe,) since I have far fewer comments than many others.

It also looks like the competition generated 236 entries, which is quite low. The other huge difference from other competitions is that its not blind, meaning that all entries were publicly displayed within a few days of submission -- including the person's name and city! All the other competitions typically keep entries secret until after they award prizes. That makes sense, since you want impartial judging.

OK, check out all the other entries at http://www.dwell.com/services/contes...esarstone.html
Check out mine at http://www.dwell.com/services/contes.../33833564.html

All entries you see can be commented upon, so its kind of fun.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Caesarstone Table Design Competition

Congrats are in order Dave. No matter how they figure it out that's very cool. I like the third comment on the page...seams like you've made a believe out of a true skeptic. The only shame is that they don't have some larger views of the boards as they were very well put together with some very nice renderings.

[Micha_cg]

Re: Caesarstone Table Design Competition

And if you flatten the curve at the upper part, than you get a curve like from an anlog film material - that helps to get more details in the white burned out areas and smoother transition at burned out areas (I mark one of this areas). I use it often, it's something like a manual HDRI tonemapping.

The frame buffer curve is a powerful tool. (It's part of my individual online trainings in german language too. )