Hyperfocal Design
Hyperfocal Design was formed in Australia over 12 years ago by two game development artists, Jay Weston and Andrew Francis. It is now a specialist HDRI developer for computer graphics artists.
Back in 2002, pre made art assets were typically woeful quality and more time could be spent fixing them than making them from scratch. Seeing a large gap for quality pre-made art assets, Hyperfocal began developing photographic texture maps, eventually gravitating towards HDRI sky specialisation. Games development was the perfect background to quality pre-made art asset creation, as it brings the mindset that an art asset has to work in any situation, from any angle, so if there’s a problem it will show! So Hyperfocal’s images are always clear of background elements and any other objects so you can use them on a flat plain or the ocean if required.
1-Step HDRI Lighting Workflow
Hyperfocal believes that HDRI sky domes and environments should be useable in any situation, and work straight out of the box. There are no horizon elements, birds, dust, seams or anything else that requires touching up. Hyperfocal Design also lays claim to some of the only 1-step, un-clamped HDRIs available, meaning they can be used for 1-step image based lighting solutions in software like 3D Studio Max and V-Ray. No virtual suns required, no gamma adjustments, and no painting in photoshop to fix bad photography.
Equipment
Hyperfocal’s principal photographer and owner, Jay Weston currently uses a Nikon D800E, Sigma fisheye lens, and Kodak Wratten filters. Controlling the camera is a Promote Control intervalometer, all sitting atop a Gitzo or Manfrotto tripod with a Gitzo or 360Precision head. Post-processing is performed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC, The Foundry’s Nuke, PTGUI and LRTime-Lapse for HDRI footage. CGI test rendering is performed in Blender Octane, footage is assembled in Nuke and After Effects.
Clients
Hyperfocal Design’s work has appeared in hundreds of AAA games, architectural visualisations, films, documentaries and even as part of exhibits at the Louvre in Paris.
Clients include EA, CodeMasters, Digital Illusions, Warner Brothers, SteeleVFX, Codemasters, Fusion Creative, MediaSphere, Wargaming.net, Yafka Studio, MarchMade, Sil van der Woerd, ArchAngel Visual, and many more.