Texturs, HDRIs, 3D software plugins and more
15 years ago, on 23 July 2009, it finally happened: 48DESIGN launches zwischendrin.com, a portal for all CG artists. Here you can get everything that makes the heart of a 3D designer leap for joy. From photos and textures, HDRI panoramas, ambient sounds and video footage, right up to motion capturing data, we've got it all. And all this at extremely affordable prices.
It all started with a small website for sending digital postcards, which Sarah Groß programmed in her spare time. The German name of the website, meaning "in between", originated from the fact that the motifs were mainly created "between dusk and dawn".
When Fabian Groß's interest in HDR panoramic photography grew, the idea came up to sell these panoramas via the portal as well. Soon we added textures, which enabled the extraction of bump maps and normal maps, as well as specular and reflection maps, thanks to software emerging at that time.
In order to finance the website, an own Shop system with connection to various payment providers and an own invoice generation process has been developed from scratch. A Content Management System perfectly adapted to our needs has evolved, as well as a system for "product scouts", who can sell their works via our portal. Gradually, we developed our own tracking and newsletter system as well as a functionality for generating and monitoring voucher codes.
When the first orders arrived and strong interest in our products became clear, we decided to expand our product range. In addition to textures and HDRIs, our offer was extended with ambient sounds, video footage, motion capturings and scripts/plugins for 3D Studio Max. Due to the large community in the 3D industry, zwischendrin.com was accessed and used by CG artists worldwide in a very short time. For us, this was the occasion to have the website translated into a total of eight languages.
One of our products exceeded all expectations and has been sold hundreds of times worldwide. We are talking about SnowFlow. What is SnowFlow? It's a software for generating virtual snow on 3D objects. With the scripting language MaxScript, which is part of the 3D software 3D Studio Max (Autodesk), snowfall was simulated using particles and these particles were then converted into a three-dimensional geometry. Since the particle system was called "ParticleFlow", the product was named SnowFlow.
Thanks to further development of SnowFlow using the programming language C++, the speed of the calculations was drastically increased over time. The plugin, renamed SnowFlowPro, broke all records. Today there is hardly any Hollywood studio or a company from the computer game industry without at least one SnowFlowPro licence – worldwide!
So, chances are that you have already seen thre results of SnowFlowPro in action in a computer game or a movie!
Do you have a similar project? We would like to realise it with you.
Get in touch with us!