Calling Reinforcements - help my find arguments for going 3d in our company

[Psycho Mantis]

Hi guys,

i need your help. Our company uses 3d to visualize certain locations. up to this date, they do it with vrml(= sucks).

my boss offered me the chance to come up with something new and state of the art. So i want to create a solution that looks good, and gives some kind of interactivity to the user. no big deal at that.

but in order to get green light for the project - i have to setup a presentation and talk to the board of directors, why we should do this, how we do it, and how much it costs etc.

this is where i need your help - to spice up the presentation and instead of giving technical facts that no one understands, i want to convince them with proven facts. what i am looking for:

studies, articles etc about : the effects of imagery on buying behaviour; better understanding of products, because the customer can see it in 3d; drawing attention with realistic visuals; keeping customers longer on the website; increase sales; activate 2play-areas of the brain" by giving interactive applications. etc. i hope you get the point. its about emotion, customer binding, understanding and recognition, persuasion and stuff.

i need at least some rock solid arguments, why we should go to hi-end 3d. (contra arguments are welcome too, because i have to prepare answers for that as well)

if someone has something, i´d be very thankfull.

cheers,
Psycho

[Nukie]

Well. I can not give you anything technical details on things, but hopefully I can help you a bit in the right direction.

You did not, however, told what kind of 3d visualizations your company makes. Do you create walk troughs, trough houses? Or are it photographs of real locations where you put a 3d building in? Maybe 360 degrees views?

Anyway, for either of those:

First of all, there is off course flash. I don't think I need to tell you anything new about this method. You can create almost whatever you want with it. I'm only not sure how real time 3D integrates with it since I don't have first hand experience. I do know, however, that you can create 360 degrees views with it (with a 360 degrees render created in any 3d package). The downside of flash off course is that you need to program it, but there might be some complete flash projects available for free that fits your needs. The plus side, however, is that it is more flexible and better looking than vrml. And nowadays any self respecting computer user has the flash plug in installed.


You might consider any of the free (game)engines. But the downside again is programming (probably knowledge of c++), and off course that clients need to install another plug in to use it.
You might take a look at http://unity3d.com/#freeunity. Its a free program, and as far as I understand it is also available for web. But I have no experience or knowledge of this program. Its just a thought.


The program that I think might be interesting for you is http://www.quest3d.com. I do have a bit of experience with this one (although its a few years back now).
With it you can create visualizations of any kind, and create an executable program OR website with it (not sure how than one works though). Its not a cheap ass program (€ 1290,- for the cheapest version, € 9999,- for the most expensive one) but a big plus here is that you don't need to do any programming. You can create a complete 3D world with only your 3D rendered models, and inside Quest 3D you can link everything together, create bounding boxes etc. There is a learning curve off course, but I think with some effort it might not be that hard.


Again, I cannot give you very much in dept information, but hopefully can help you out a bit with this information.

[Psycho Mantis]

hi nukie,

thanks a lot for you effort you put in this answer. and yes - i have seen all the engines and i am still about to consider which one will fit best to our purpose. ( i cant speak about what we do now, cause its all in development right now)

but - i wasnt asking for technical hints. we have 3d right now, and there will be 3d in the future. but to get a higher budget, and at least the whole project greenlit - i want to explain what value this will add to our website - or the other way around - what effect will it have on the customers. i was looking for scintific research or studies,, on how pictures influence customers psyche. i´m sorry if i didnt made that clear enough.

have a nice evening, and thanks again for your reply.

[Nukie]

Lol, sorry dude. I think I totally misunderstand your question. Or its just my lack of reading.

[Psycho Mantis]

any other ideas?

[katana]

Business people on a board level only understand the bottom line. They generally are very successful people, where there time is greatly more valuable than yours. Were this me, I would make sure I knew how to outline a business plan and then fill in the blanks with the answers to that proposal with what I want to accomplish. So if you want the company to invest in Maya and create a dept. around using that package to finish off a clients request, then all you need is cost versus return.

Cost is broken down into the obvious...the price of the software, how many man hours (training) you will need to implement it, computer upgrades, ect. The return is not so easy, because you can not forecast what profit you have not made, but you can determine how many hours will be saved by streamlining the process to achieve a better looking final product without increasing output. That saves the company money and it makes good business sense.

You may know all this now, so I am sorry if I am overstating the obvious, by your post, it sounds like you were going to make a proposal around a foundation of fluff and filler as salesman would call it. Keep it to the point, keep it brief. You have to understand the trends in the industry to that your company continues to look good to the client, that is always on the cutting edge. Just have all the answers if they want to know.

[Psycho Mantis]

good points, thanks for that, and i will kep this in mind. actually i want to strip the whole presentation down to a maximum of 10 - 15 minutes - and i thought it might be helpful, as a little push - to insert a qoutation slide that says: studies show that 3d graphics increase the will of buying from that site by x%. stuff like that.