Even more room for 3D services on Polish and global market

Since 60s, when The Swedish Institute of Technology managed to produce the first 3D animation ever, 3D technology has been rapidly developed, exceeding another milestones. Twenty years later, in movie Tron (1982) over 15 minutes of its material was generated solely by 3D technology. Another decade and we had pleasure to watch in cinemas The Terminator 2 and encounter the first realistic animation of human movement. Not mentioning groundbreaking year 1995 and Toy Story, the first full-length movie, made entirely in 3D technology by Pixar Animation Studios.

But 3D has not been used only to entertain, but primarly to design new products. It was far easier to prototype new devices for heavy industry than to make real prototype and test it against pre-determined conditions. It all started in late 50s with Douglas T. Ross from MIT and Pierre Bézier, french engineer who created UNISURF which has been fundament for CAD software development. In the next three decades CAD systems not only evolved into primary tool for engineering, but also was adopted by many companies from all over the world, confirming its important role in rapid advancement of XX century’s technology.

In 1982 John Walker and 12 other programmers founded Autodesk, corporation, today leading in providing software services for media, engineering, manufacturing, construction and entertainment industries. Today Autodesk has many specialized applications to match certain needs of every industry, like Revit for architecture, 3Ds Max for 3D modeling and animation or Inventor for mechanical design.

Today, 3D technology is present in almost everywhere. Starting from movie industry and architectural visualisations of construcion projects, ending with the most ads we can see on TV or internet and whole gaming industry. Even traditional fields like product photography is threatened by the rise of 3D technology, because is so much easier to design products in 3D program than to organize their photoshoot.

According to TMR research titled “Global 3D Modeling, 3D Visualization, and 3D Data Capture Market 2018–2026,”, 3D software market in 2025 will exponentially grow to over 25 bln $. And that’s only software.

Best example for a rapid growth ot the market for 3D services  it’s Hollywood. During shooting of Titanic(1997) over 300 scenes was made using 3D modeling and animation, twenty years later in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) it was over 3000. The amount of work that needs to be done in modern movies is so overwhelming that movie studios are hiring several VFX houses, which still has to offshore some of the work.

The key to successful 3D offshoring or outsourcing is relation between quality of the product, time and of course price, but there’s another factor – quality of communication between hired studio and third party company. In many cases time supposed to be saved by outsourcing service is spent on managing the outsourcers work, and that brings question – whether outsourcing is right choice. But still for many studios it’s a whole lot easier to outsource some jobs to other companies than create jobs in-house, mostly due to the costs of workstations, software and wages of high-skilled professionals.

When it comes to polish production houses, there’s a big advantage in quality of their services and beneficial currency ratio. And it comes without saying, that polish 3D artists are one of the most proficient English speakers in the world, which means that communication during projects execution is running smoothly comparing to the studios located elsewhere. Maybe that’s why more and more gaming and movie studios are outsourcing their work to Poland, it seems that this trend will be growing in the future.