Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tait Towers: Custom Stage Design
Autodesk - AutoCAD - Customer Showcase: "Founded by lighting designer Michael Tait in 1978, Tait Towers designs and constructs entire concert stage sets, making the visions of the music industry’s top artists and concert production designers a reality. Tait Tower’s innovative approach to stage design, engineering, and construction enables increasingly dazzling shows. From telescoping towers to huge video displays to intricately choreographed lighting, Tait Towers’s design professionals model each element in AutoCAD® software. They use Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design software to review near photo-realistic visualizations of stages with their clients before manufacturing. As a final step, Tait Towers’s manufacturing team employs AutoCAD designs to help guide the construction of the sets. Recently, for rock band Bon Jovi’s The Circle Tour, Tait Towers used a combination of AutoCAD and Autodesk 3ds Max Design software to help"
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6 comments:
Having spent a week at Tait last year, I can say that this is actually a pretty good description of what they do and how AutoCAD helps them. Usually, articles like this don't do a very good job of describing the entertainment industry, because the author doesn't really know the industry. It's nice to see an article that's knowledgeable and well-written, and it's nice to see a company get some recognition outside of the entertainment industry.
What Tait Towers Does is absolutely fascinating. earlier this school year i visited Tait and during my visit was given an in depth tour of the inner workings of how Tait Towers functions from a friend who is a Production Manager there. the system of design and the complexity of their projects require and uncanny amount of preparation and organization to be productive. thier is also an inherent level of professionalism in the compay which is astounding. it is no wonder tools such as autocad are what is used to make such large scale and impressive projects possible. from my knowledge of the use of autocad it is a great tool for fully realizing any design and it is one of the quickest ways to render and full conceptualize a design.
I liked the video format of this post over most and the fact that I learned both about Tait's use of AutoCAD and this particular application.
The two things in the video that intrigued me most were the truck pack plans - this essentially looked like playing tetris in CAD - and the labels; Sam, do you know if AutoCAD automagically produces the labels they use for their carts based on the different pieces they have within their designs? Automating such a potentially tedious task is really cool.
This video was interesting proof of the need for effective management, oversight, and planning. Productions / show / sets of this magnitude really do require an immense amount of planning, and I've never been involved with anyone with even a fraction of that amount of forethought. Seeing the office with dozens of guys drafting out shows and components was neat.
Like Daniel I also really liked what they did for truck packs, and the labels are even cooler. Automating that type of paperwork that is so vital is neat. They've made concert sets into Ikea furniture. Cool.
It is nice to see the practical application of some of the things we are learning on such a grand scale. it is also interesting to see what people are capable of on such an enormous budget. the spectacle itself is impressive, but when it is taken into consideration that this concert tours, and brings all this machinery with it, the scale of the project becomes even more impressive.
It is also interesting to think that this amount of raw monetary power is being used for entertainment. obviously these are his resources with which he can do what he wants, but when the fact that 80% of the worlds resources are used by 20% of the world this spectacle begins to look wildly wasteful.
What I found interesting was that they didn't talk about how they have there own mods for Autodesk to integrate into their paperless management system. Autodesk is essentially a vary powerful tool that is a large cog in the machine that is the Tait towers Production & Project Management system.
Tait's usage of the Autodesk suite is perfect for what they do. For the lower end projects, you have to ask if it's worth taking the time to 3D a project. A lot of places don't have the time or resources to work in this fashion. There approach is great not just for construction, but on the road support as well.
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