Over the past ten years we have seen the phenomena that is Harry Potter evolve from start to finish, from when the first book was published in 1997 to the last in July of this year. The last ten years have also seen CGI’s (Computer Generated Images) emerge in the property industry, from a niche market to being common place in large schemes. One man has been there, in the thick of it!

HMA3D Director Steve Pickup, celebrates ten years with the company this month. Steve, who was one of the first people in this field in the UK back in 1997, has seen CGI’s within the property sector increase in demand throughout the decade since he left university and joined HMA.

“Demand for CGI’s in the property market has rocketed in the last few years. They are used for numerous reasons with wide reaching benefits, including securing planning permission, off plan selling and fixing funding for prospective developments,” said Steve.

31 year old Steve started at HMA3D in Yorkshire and now works from their London office designing CGI’s for the countries property market. Working with developers, architects and town planners alike, Steve has been involved in some landmark developments over the past ten years.

Indeed the first projects he worked on included Chelsea Village the redevelopment of the Chelsea FC ground, Barratts Thames Barrier Development and Barratts Kensington, all of which are now well and truly part of the landscape. Earning both national and international recognition – what a ten year legacy?

Subsequent clients have included Cancer Research, HBOS, Marchday, MEPC and Scarborough Developments to name but a few.

“Years have proved more and more competitive but we have the reputation for delivering with the need for minimal client input due to our vast experience. It has, in a way, become second nature - we can read between the lines and fill in the gaps if necessary which is essential in some instances. Our clients know of our reliability when it comes to projects and even the little things like planting, interior decorating for schemes is something we pride ourselves on. These are things that architects are not always able to provide in the early stages,” said Steve

HMA 3D’s current projects include The Sands, Scarborough a development by Benchmark Leisure Ltd, an animation being used to secure a pre-let on one of the north east most prestigious office parks and internal imagery showing the proposed designs for a new office development in Reigate.

“I am looking forward to the next ten years! With computers still pretty much doubling in power every couple of years, it means we are now really able to harness this power to create more and more realistic animations and illustrations. Over the past five years global illumination has really established its self as the lighting model of choice with rendering software and as software companies hone this technology further it just gets better and better, allowing us as illustrators to create more and more realistic imagery in much shorter time frames than we ever thought possible,” Steve continued.

He continues: “One area that I think is really going to make a big difference is real-time 3D. It’s been around for a while in the game industry allowing you as a user to walk around a 3D space and not be constrained in what you can look at. Its making the transition over to the architectural visualisation market for a few years now and is still in its infancy but with increasing graphics hardware capabilities and more mature software being developed, its starting to look like a very promising and interesting area over the next few years.”

Email: claire@hma.co.uk