Press Release 1

If necessity is the mother of invention, ingenuity is its midwife. With only a modest budget and considerable ingenuity, Digital FX has been able to provide Porsche-quality digital images at Volkswagen prices to the smaller end of town.

Michael Tomlinson, a former 3-D graphics programmer from Defence Department’s troubled Jindalee over-the-horizon radar network (JORN) project, joined forces last year with professional photographer David Fardon, who had founded a small business specialising in digital photography and graphics.

They started a new company, Digital FX, and rapidly established a niche market designing fly-through 3-D graphics to pleasantly surprised architects, few of whom had considered the potential of computer graphics to pre-sell their projects, for town-planning visualisations, or to show local government development projects "in the round" during the approval process.

"Architects are now realising they need computer graphics for town planning, project approvals, or for advertising and pre-selling their projects," Michael said.

"But few can afford to a full-time person and a dedicated computer workstation for 3-D computer graphics work, nor do they have the in-house expertise to develop this capability.

"So far the response has been very positive – our clients are surprised that we can provide photo-real images at such competitive prices, and at our fast turnaround times."

They have also done some work for smaller advertising agencies, but their efforts to establish themselves with big advertising companies have encountered scepticism.

Michael says the big advertising agencies appear to associate "cheap" with "nasty"; they’re so inured to paying massive premiums for sophisticated 3-D images and animation produced on high-end, dedicated graphics workstations that they don’t consider there might be a cheaper alternative.

"Yet we believe we offer a service and a product that is equal of, or superior to, their existing suppliers.

"We run Windows NT on very powerful Intel workstations. It gives us a huge cost advantage over companies that use very expensive Silicon Graphics International workstations.

"We also have a cost advantage over companies that have bought brand-name systems from Intergraph, Digital, Hewlett-Packard or Compaq."

Digital FX designed and built its own workstations from the ground up, and while it runs standard software (3D Studio MAX), Michael’s 10 years as a 3-D programmer means the company doesn’t have to send out for graphics modules that may not even exist – he simply writes them in-house.

"David’s artistic background gives him an excellent understanding of lighting and architecture, so for a small company, we offer a unique combination of skills.

Animation of everyday objects, product prototyping with 3-D graphics, and product visualisation are all within Digital FX’s capabilities. "Anything that needs to be advertised or explained, or which needs to be visualised before it exists, is a suitable project," Michael said.

Digital FX can also supply high-resolution, photo-realistic digital prints up to A3 size, video animation for Web sites or CD-ROMS and broadcast-quality video. It also offers a service to law firms, supplying animated reconstructions of almost any type of accident that might be the subject of legal action.

Examples of Digital FX’s photo-realistic images can be seen at its Web site, at http://www.digitalfx.com.au

ENDS