Creating individualised content for ABI with Effekt-Etage
Driven by its mission to create pioneering digital user experiences along the entire value chain, Effekt-Etage is an award-winning innovation driver for visualisations, as well as digital brand and product experiences.
“We develop scalable solutions for the entire process of digital imagery. That means starting from data preparation to create a digital twin, all the way to the production of all media assets for all touchpoints of a contemporary customer journey,” explains Björn Kowalski, Managing Partner at Effekt-Etage.
As it delivers highly-automated visualisation solutions embedded in modern IT structures, Effekt-Etage is perfectly placed to support Audi Business Innovation (ABI) with its product staging and portfolio of innovative technologies.
Commenting on the partnership, Kowalski says: “As a framework contract partner for ‘Content Production, Realtime Visualisation and Development’, we have now worked with ABI for nearly three years in a very inspiring partnership. The great thing about this partnership is the collaborative mindset and that all processes are organised according to agile methods.”
“You could say, in short: we don't talk too much ‒ we roll up our sleeves and just get the work done. This kind of cooperation is one based on trust, which is not only very enjoyable, but also efficient. It is the perfect breeding ground to drive innovation together,” he continues.
Together with ABI, Effekt-Etage helped shape the development of the Automotive Visualization Platform (AVP), as Kowalski states:
“With the Unreal-based visualisation pipeline AVP, ABI consistently follows the path of the single source of truth approach. This means that, on the basis of the digital twin, all touchpoints are served with content from a central data source. The results are pre-rendered images, content on demand, streaming solutions and real-time applications.”
“But Unreal is a game engine. It delivers great results, but it still comes from the gaming world and automotive clients have some special requirements. For example, the still very common technology of layer based online configurators, could not really be mapped in Unreal. But an Online Configurator is a very important asset. Therefore, we developed new tools for the AVP that now allows Unreal to provide content to these configurators in a highly automated way. A milestone for the single-source approach, which now really includes all touch points,” he adds.
Looking to the future, Kowalski outlines how he hopes to develop the partnership further: “Together we have achieved a lot, but our journey does not end here. We want to provide the customer with even more individualised content in a more and more efficient manner. That means more content for less budget. And we want to continuously develop touchpoints like VR and AR so that these technologies become more and more accepted and thus further integrated into our everyday lives. We also want to integrate new requirements for upcoming touchpoints into the AVP. After all, we want to continue to be the benchmark in the field of visualisation.”
