Collaboration par excellence

Example: Hasselt City Hall, Belgium — The building of the new municipal administration center in Hasselt, Belgium, demonstrates how seamless collaboration in building projects can minimize risks and save costs from the design phase all the way to commissioning.
A joint project of several brands of the Nemetschek Group.
Nemetschek brands involved: Allplan, GRAPHISOFT, Solibri

Pioneering planning and project execution with Open BIM

“The end-to-end use of BIM solutions constitutes genuine added value for all stakeholders in the building process
because it enables seamless and efficient collboration”
Steven Hendrickx, Head Architect in Hasselt

Large-scale, highly complex building projects in particular require ongoing, reliable and efficient coodination between all stakeholders – both internal and external – across disciplines and between companies. Therefore, in association with other market players, the Nemetschek Group is promoting the Open BIM data standard. This is a universal, collaborative approach to designing, constructing and operating buildings based on open standards and workflows It makes it possible for project stakeholders to collaborate, even if the type of software varies from user to user. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) interface has established itself as an open standard and is therefore of central significance.

Sharing and evaluating data throughout the entire product life cycle saves time and money and improves quality. The administration of data is key to this digital transformation, for it is only possible to take full advantage of the potential if each stakeholder can access the data that he or she needs at any given time. This begins with a realistic BIM building model, which is an essential prerequisite for a genuine 5D workflo. This model is no longer limited to just 3D construction data; it also includes data concerning the dimensions of time and costs.

Seamless collaboration exemplified by the Hasselt City Hall

Under the management of the architect team comprising Jaspers-Eyers, MASS Architects and Michel Janssen, a new municipal administration center is being built in Hasselt. The complex, consisting of a renovated building section and a new building, provides approx. 17,000 m2 for the city administration and social services as well as offices. The architects and their most important partners are using Open BIM software solutions for the entire construction process. Three Nemetschek solutions are being implemented for this project: Archicad from Graphisoft for the design and planning of the architects, Allplan Engineering for civil engineering, and the Solibri Model Checker for the BIM quality control carried out by the construction company.

From the beginning, all information concerning the building project is contained in the digital building model – from the draft to implementation – including all design details, desired materials, fire protection requirements, acoustic properties, insulation and building structures, and administration. This constitutes considerable added value for all stakeholders compared to the old standard model, which was purely 3D. Thus, this improvement ensures more than just seamless collaboration between all those involved. The complex project can be turned over to the municipality – the proud building owner – with the required quality, on time and within the specified budget.

Hasselt City Hall is groundbreaking – in terms of design, planning and project implementation.

Independent and yet consistent

Steven Hendrickx, the head architect in Hasselt, recognized four decisive factors with Open BIM over the course of the successful project:

  • Individual partners design their model with their preferred BIM software, and with their own templates. Outstanding collaboration is ensured, though, thanks to a common, uniform standard which is specified in advance.
  • The division of labor is defined at the beginning of the project. Data on statics, for instance, have an essential impact on the architecture and structural design. Data on heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, on the other hand, are also important but don’t generally flow directly into the architecture. These data, for example, can be sufficiently analyzed with the BIM solution for quality assurance from Solibri.
  • Design changes in one area don’t necessarily affect the plans of all the others involved in the project. The architecture and the building stage are inherently the most closely linked.
  • The expertise of the staff, i.e., extensive holistic knowledge of the various building disciplines, is also critical for the success of the project.

Two examples of the advantage of precise planning

In Hasselt, the construction company was commissioned with excavation, among other tasks. An assessment of the amount of sand that needed to be removed was done based on a cal culation using conventional 2D planning methods, which yielded a result of 800 cubic meters. The engineers used the Solibri Model Checker based on Open BIM and the data provided by the architects and arrived at a figue that was just half this amount, i.e., 400 cubic meters of sand. This shows how exact the work with Open BIM solutions can be.

The steel struts to be installed are another example: With the interface function IFC Exports from Allplan, it was possible to use the BIM model to automatically calculate which steel struts needed fieproofing. All it took was a mouse click to obtain precise results, right down to the running meter. In projects that don’t use Open BIM solutions, these calculations are made by manually entering the data from 2D drawings in Excel or some other software and then recalculating and evaluating the data for use in quotations and planning, a process that is susceptible to error and one that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. These errors often go undetected until the actual cost planning is already completed. In the case of the Hasselt City Hall,  it was possible to avoid such errors from the outset.

Converting to Open BIM pays off

As is the case with any change, it takes a certain amount of time for companies and employees to accept BIM as the norm. The best way, according to Steven Hendrickx, is to start out by planning smaller projects using BIM. The experience thereby gained will make it possible to complete successively larger BIM projects. The advantages of collaborating through Open BIM are obvious: The entire workflow is much simpler for all project stakeholders, and building projects are completed within time and cost budgets.

CONCLUSION

Consistent standards and open interfaces in par-ticular are essential for successful building projects. Stakeholders need solutions that can “work together” for all and any individual tasks being performed. Seamless collaboration between humans and machines: This is ensured with Open BIM, and backed by the brands of the Nemetschek Group.

Reference projects on this topic:

BEMO Creates Cinema 4D Projection Mapping Imagery for Vivid Sydney 2019 “Lighting of the Sails”

Maxon Brand News News Company News

Captivating 3D Motion Graphics Content Illuminated Iconic Sydney Opera House at Annual Festival of Light, Sound & Ideas

Friedrichsdorf, Germany (SPW) – Since 2013, Los Angeles-based BEMO, has earned a reputation as a talent-rich creative studio known for artistic ingenuity and technical problem solving for design-driven animation, visual effects and immersive projects. Maxon Cinema 4D has long been a part of BEMO’s production pipeline serving as its central 3D production hub. Recently, the facility lent its distinctive stamp to the popular “Dream Corp LLC” TV series, JLR/Bond Museum Install and the sensational “This is America” music video by Hiro Murai. 

Under the supervision of design and technical director, Brandon Parvini, and executive producer Brandon Hirzel, the BEMO creative team spent a rigorous three months delivering 12-minutes of mesmerizing, grand-scale projection mapping content for the annual “Lighting of the Sails” at the Vivid Festival in Sydney, Australia, that took place May 24 – June 15, 2019. 

In collaboration with director and visionary artist, Andrew Thomas Huang, known for his music video work with FKA twigs, Björk, Sigur Rós and Thom Yorke, the motion designs were projected each evening on continuous loop throughout the celebration of light, music and creativity to illuminate the exterior of the iconic Sydney Opera House Sails. BEMO is also working in collaboration with Australian based creative collective, Collider, the Vivid Festival Group, Sydney Opera House, and City of Sydney.

Dancing Digital Sculptures
Parvini explains the animation team was asked to study human bodies in motion and integrate them with a floral theme for a piece Huang named “Austral Flora Ballet -- with Soundscape by Kelsey Lu”, “…a lush and visceral projected artwork of dancing digital sculptures inspired by Australia’s native flora.” 

Rich Cinema 4D Toolset Used Exclusively to Handle Character Design
BEMO began to establish the foundation of the character design using Cinema 4D as the exclusive software throughout production to handle all of the animation and simulation. “It was important to be able to recognize the dancer for an identifiable frame of reference otherwise it would very easily look too abstract and viewers wouldn't understand the intentionality of the movement,” Parvini adds.

“The rich feature set in Cinema 4D Release 20 allowed us to freely experiment and achieve a nontraditional procedural approach to building characters that were extremely durable, stable and relatively light. Although a 12-minute piece of content requires heavy lifting, we stayed very nimble in the process pivoting and iterating quickly to strike the right balance for each character in the piece”

At Rogue studio in Los Angeles, Bemo supervised a full motion capture session in front of projected images of the Sydney Opera House while capturing the movements of dancer Genna Moroni and choreography by Toogie Barcelo. Once the actual FBX files were obtained from the mocap session, BEMO had an animated female form that matched the rough proportions of the dancer and set off to develop the set of characters.

Fluid Animated Composites Rendered in Cinema 4D and Redshift
With a robust pipeline, BEMO generated nearly 30,000 frames of 4K footage over several active systems using Cinema 4D on both Redshift and Octane renders running for weeks to create aesthetically pleasing and fluid animated composites. During the Lighting of the Sails, the video content was displayed from a central Disguise d3 server and projected on six laser projectors from different locations to ensure proper illumination and coverage on the Sydney Opera House sails.  

Tapping into the hair dynamics, constraints and rigging tools in the MoGraph toolset in Cinema 4D, the BEMO team sampled the elements from the source flowers such as stems, twigs and petals, and ‘broke apart” all of the motion capture to create roughly five three-and-a-half-to-four-minute dance sequences. Each was designed to accentuate the character and different personalities represented by the Australian flora.

“Some animation scene elements were attached to the physical skin of the character or were attached to the bones system,” says Parvini. “For example, we would use X-Particles to help create a root serving as a leg or flowers as torsos with different arms coming off of that, grab the underlaying splines and mesh and bake it. Or using the deformers in Cinema 4D we could project our generated forms to the rigged mesh or attach it via a tracer system referencing the original bone structure.” 

Alembic System in Cinema 4D R20 Ensures Character Stability
BEMO also took advantage of the new Alembic system workflow in Cinema 4D, debuted in Release 20. This allowed for baking sequences into the rigging system to ensure the stability of each character and avoid having to re-simulate elements. “The Alembic files are an extraordinarily important to our workflow as they can handle splines, hair, particles, color, vertex maps, and more,” Parvini added.

Working from a 3D model of the actual Sydney Opera House, BEMO used the layover and foreground modes in Cinema 4D to mask and coordinate elements that represented the sails in order to calibrate a camera lens that could be used to match the shape of the sails from the perspective of the projectors. “Our experience at the start of the creation process knowing images would be projected outdoors with limited low level ambient light available helped inform our creative decisions to introduce bright and colorful elements and avoid mid-to-grey tones,” explains Parvini.

“Cinema 4D is brilliant because you can find a myriad of ways to do the same thing and often times I felt that I had to go through multiple iterations to find the right solution, says Parvini. “Vivid was one of the most challenging of my career demanding that I build on previous creative experiences to firmly grasp fundamentals and build on them like stories on a house. This is definitely one I have stacked up a few new floors.”

BEMO Image Resources
For Vivid Sydney 2019, LA-based creative design studio, BEMO, relied on Maxon Cinema 4D to create lush and visceral character animations inspired by five of Australia’s native flora for the Sydney Opera House “Lighting the Sails” activation. (All images courtesy of BEMO)

Video images of floral character profiles are available here — https://www.dropbox.com/sh/feitsrju1m61296/AACpK4W-OigrlCI5jD-h1Eina/Character%20Profile%20Video%20MP4?dl=0&subfolder_nav_tracking=1
Still images of floral character profiles are available on request. Please contact vicky@ambientpr.com.

BEMO Credit List
Director: Andrew Thomas Huang
Producer: Olivia Hantken
Design and Animation: BEMO
Executive Producer: Brandon Hirzel
Design/Technical Director: Brandon Parvini
3D Modeler: Patrick Goski
3D Artist: Kenneth Robin
Compositing: William Mendoza
Post Supervisor: Dennis Shin
Music Score: Kelsey Lu
Dancer: Genna Moroni
Choreographer: Toogie Barcelo
Motion Capture: Rouge MoCap

About Maxon
Headquartered in Germany, Maxon is the developer of Cinema 4D, recently recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a Technical Achievement Award. Maxon software solutions are used by creative professionals worldwide to produce VFX for film, broadcast motion graphics, game cinematics, product designs, medical illustrations, architectural and industrial visualizations, and more. Maxon is part of the Nemetschek Group.

All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contact
Vicky Gray-Clark
Ambient PR
vicky@ambientpr.com | 408-318-1980

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