Why Do We Want Military Visualizations?

Everyone who is involved in marketing, video gaming, video training could tell you sad stories about how much time and money is always spent to create high quality computer graphics. If you want to simulate reality, the simulation must be as real as possible, and this takes a lot.

There's one superstar in CG industry when it comes to military models - Military Visualizations Inc. - who has digital models of probably every military vehicle out there. I have no doubt that military institutions are very happy with such services.

Military Visualizations is not yet on CGTrader (as we're very new market player, working hard to build trust in peer-to-peer collaboration model). We would be more than happy if they join our community one day.

Why do we want them?

• OK, they are superstars, that was already mentioned :)

Military Visualizations is very much about LEAN and TOC ideology, which is fully value oriented. They focus not only on quality, but as well on operations, keeping promises ("on time, on budget") and provide clear customer approach.

While many artists talk about their great models, Military Visualizations focuses on solving problems of their customers. They offer companies to outsource 3D modeling as an external service, they make and keep commitments. To do so Military Visualizations need to operate in very efficient way, eliminate waste and realize process flow, manage many projects at the same time. And, again, everything must be delivered on time.

What Military Visualizations did, if they were a land based factory, it would be called a 'make to order' production environment. In production (when you produce, say, furniture) it is very difficult to combine both business models - 'make to order' (MTO) (when production reacts to particular random orders from clients) and 'make to stock' (MTS) (when products are manufactured based on market demand forecasts). The difficulties occur when dealing with inventory: in MTS, you loose a lot if forecasts were wrong (you lack products if they happend to be popular, and have overstock otherwise. Overstock means less cash); in MTO inventory is not so important, but the production time is critical.

If you want to combine MTO with MTS (and thus expand your market), you need to produce smth to the warehouse when the resources are idle, when there're no orders. You need two more things in order to start doing that: the warehouse and much money for inventory.

Why are we digging so deep?

Military Visualizations business model is very similar to 'make to order' production. But in order to switch to MTS, or, say, start produce products for retail, nothing else is needed. No warehouse, no cash to freeze it into inventory. Nor even changes in daily operations!

In CG business, a particular 3D model produced on customer request can be sold many times online (retail). If Lockheed Martin needs to produce 2 fighters in order to complete 2 sales for US Government, then Military Visualizations can create only one to sell it hundred of times worldwide.

That is why at CGTrader we take no commissions of the particular sale: the models' turnover rate depends on the object and the market demand, not the marketplace's miracles.

And this is why we encourage 3D artists to start selling their works instead of just making models on customer requests.