HiPEC

Shower in your virtual bathroom

To give customers an impression of how their new bathroom could look, more and more interior designers are using computer aided visualisation systems. In the area of sanitary equipment, visualisation elements such as reflections in mirrors and from surfaces are important to give the customer a realistic impression of the appearance of a new bathroom

The customer can plan his future bathroom in the showroom on the computer and then print out of picture of how it would look. To produce a realistic picture accurately representing all the shiny surfaces and mirrors common to every bathroom would however take up to 30 hours on an ordinary PC.

To minimise the computing time the HiPEC project partners had the following idea:
Computationally intensive tasks such as the rendering of a very complex picture are not performed on a single PC, but are sent to an remote high-end rendering service installed on a parallel computer. So the bathroom layout is designed on a PC in the retailer’s showroom, and then sent via internet to a high performance computer. The finished picture is sent back by email and displayed or printed out. So the customer receives a photo-realistic high quality picture in 15 minutes.

Cost and Requirements

The use of this successful presentation method is cost-effective for the dealer. Costs are based on a monthly fee and a charge per picture. The table of prices is:

EUROplan design software: from 2250 to 5000 EURO
HiPEC – Frontend (interface to EUROplan): 500 EURO
Monthly fee: 50 EURO
Cost per picture: 5 EURO

Opportunities

The are many opportunities for the use of HiPEC technology. For example:

Photorealistic pictures to support the sale of all kinds of fixtures and furnishings;
High quality pictures for the presentation of furniture, yet to be made, for the use of design studios and advertising agencies.

For more information on HiPEC have a look at the page from:
http://www.uni-paderborn.de/fachbereich/AG/monien/PROJECTS/HIPEC/

Project Partners