Oct 15 2010
X-Rite along with Autodesk, has introduced its new spectrophotometer, the MA98 to provide Industrial Designers a new and better way to render the complexities of effect paints for digital prototypes.
Autodesk Showcase Professional 2011 3D Visualization software using X-Rite’s MA98 can allow and stage-manage data taken from real material samples. The MA98 has been crafted mainly to quantify metallic flake paints that are used by appliance, automotive and other industries.
In the past, designers employed a trial and error method, to try to exhibit life like paint color on digital prototypes, after a long and laborious process, ultimately delivering unsatisfactory results. The MA98 has a simple click and render feature in its Showcase Professional 2011, with which Industrial Designers can take measurements of true surfaces and also precisely catch and reconstruct the metallic flake’s material individuality, which could then be immediately applied to digital prototypes.
According to Brian Teunis, Industrial Market Manager of X-rite, engineers and designers are in a position to apply matter-of-fact and high quality versions of effects paints to their 3-D digital model systems, allowing product development teams to do an efficient appraisal of projects and take better decisions. He also says that when compared to other portable instruments, this instrument measures more angular information of test surfaces. The MA98 data is used by the X-rite shader modeling software, and X-Rite’s material models, both of which are incorporated into the Autodesk showcase, to produce real and precise renderings of effect paints and also other materials, on digital prototypes. The MA98 also meets the ASTM standard for measuring effect pigments, by making use of dual illuminators and sensors to measure more out-of-plane and in-plane angles, as opposed to the other similar instruments available in the market.
Source: http://www.xrite.com