Accelerating Product Innovation: The Power of Digital Material Twins

THOMAS MEEKER: Hello, everybody. Thanks for coming to this Autodesk University session, titled "Accelerating Product Innovation The Power of Digital Material Twins." This presentation about material twins is going to be a product demo, and I'm going to be talking today about material measurement and visualization utilizing X-Rite's MA-T12 spectrophotometer and Pantora software.

My name is Thomas Meeker. I'm a 3D solution architect for X-Rite Pantone, and I've been with the company for about eight years. All right, moving on.

I'm just going to sit here for a couple seconds. Take your time. All right.

So my presentation agenda-- so the first thing I'm going to be talking about is just quickly doing an introduction about X-Rite and Pantone. I know a lot of people in this audience have probably heard of Pantone. Maybe about 10% of those people have heard of X-Rite. We'd love for you to learn more about X-Rite, and that's why we're here.

But X-Rite and Pantone are sister companies. We do work together. We're under the same roof-- well, partially the same roof. And yeah, just want to give a little more info about the company and our partnership with Pantone.

The next thing I'll be talking about is what is appearance. Appearance is what we refer to as going beyond color-- so every characteristic about a material. And I'll be talking about that second.

Number three, I'll be talking about our technology. So primarily the hardware, which is our MA-T12 device, and also the software is called Pantora. After that, I'm just going to do a quick MA-T12 and Pantora demo to show you how these two platforms, pieces of technology, work together to help in creating those digital twins.

And then the product of the MA-T12 and the Pantora software is what we call the appearance exchange format or AXF. That's the type of file that's created, that virtual material file. And I'll be talking a little bit more about that, how it exists as a package carrying all the data for you to characterize and communicate your materials.

And then the last thing is about our partnership with Autodesk and all of the tools that our AXF file works with, all the different softwares that Autodesk offers and how our customers are using it today. So I hope you're really excited. Let's move on to the next slide.

So like I mentioned, I'm just going to do a quick introduction. I'm not going to waste your time just talking about our company for too long. But I did want to just introduce. For those who are unaware of us, hopefully, you'll get to know us more.

So X-Rite Pantone, we're about 800-plus employees all across the globe. We have 17 worldwide offices. Our main, or world headquarters, is in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I am today. And then we have offices in Boston and then offices across Europe and China. And there's a few other locations that you see down on the bottom.

So we are a global company. We have representation all over the globe. If we don't have direct offices, we have dealers. You'll find X-Rite pretty much anywhere you are in the world.

So what industries does X-Rite and Pantone work with? We work with all of them. We work with everybody. We're working with manufacturing, people that are doing quality control, making sure color's consistent across their products, whether that's using products like our benchtop in the middle on the top, for textiles. Or maybe you're doing car paints, or you're doing plastics.

Yeah, It doesn't matter what it is that you're manufacturing. We have a device that is used for measuring the color, being able to communicate that color, and then also quality control, that color and production. You'll also see some other devices here. You may recognize our Macbeth charts or the right color checker, formerly the Macbeth chart. And those are used in photography and film.

Also on here is our light booth in the middle. You see somebody looking at samples underneath, a light booth. This is a controlled lighting system, so I can go to different illuminants and observe my samples so that I know that I'm visualizing it in the correct lighting condition. That could be something that's communicated from your end customer who needs it to be in a retail space versus a photography space, whatever that is. This is a light booth for visual approvals.

We also have hardware for calibrating monitors and scanning skin for cosmetics and fan books from Pantone that I'm sure many people are aware of. We have other devices for measuring color for ink and for print and packaging, things like that. And we also have many standards-- or sorry, books of standards, even for things such as French fries, which you see in the bottom right-hand corner. So if color is important in any aspect, we live in that space, and we're there to help people be consistent with their color, communicate that color, and that's what X-Rite and Pantone do.

So I mentioned appearance earlier. So let's talk about what is material appearance.

So some of the fundamentals-- what is material appearance? Appearance is not just color.

So we often talk about color in its own silo. But color, as we is it's one aspect of many that create a material. And we're not just looking at a picture, but we're actually looking at or observing the visual sensation to which an object is perceived to have attributes as color.

And here are some of the others-- texture, gloss, transparency, translucency. You could go on and on-- special effect pigments, all sorts of different characteristics. The list goes on and on and on. Just depends on the type of material.

So appearance-- there's a way to wrap this up, not just color. We're talking about every attribute of that material. So if we're looking at this in the context of, say, the automotive industry, looking at a car, we can tell, OK, there's an important part there. That gloss needs to be understood.

There's an important part on that vehicle for translucency, just for straight transparency. We have special effect pigments. Those are all on the exterior, but could be on the interior too.

Color, of course, and then we have texture and also any other types of characteristics that you may see here. Maybe there's an illuminant. Basically, we are looking at all characteristics that make up each material.

So to give a little history for those who have been working in a CG space, have been working in some sort of 3D rendering or animation capacity, have probably, depending on how long you've been doing it-- myself, about 20 years. And I've it's come a long way since I started.

But really, in the beginning is the artists. We're doing this. Artists were doing their best to replicate something that exists in the physical world. Yep, they were making up things too, but often were trying to recreate something that exists in the real world so that we can use it in our designs.

And this was done extremely well by artists. I would say the artists always did a fairly good job. Often, our clients were the ones that made this difficult because the subjective matter of it was still an ongoing process and could be quite tedious.

After we moved from just artistic process, we added like a texture scanner. So that could be any flatbed scanner that you had on your desk or that you stole from the print lab, and you were doing flatbed scans of those materials. That was a great way to get the texture, at least the pattern of the texture.

The color wasn't accurate, but it was a starting point. And then you could take over with some artistic process and hopefully get closer that way.

Well, what we're talking about and what X-Rite has created as tools for our customers to use is what we consider full appearance measurement. So these are physically correct as based on measurements. We're not just taking a picture.

We're taking measurements of those materials. There's a high level of accuracy, even for complex materials, think car paints with metallics, things like that. And they're not seen independent. You can use these materials in every lighting environment that you want.

So often, those artistic materials were built in a certain lighting condition, and then you took it over to a different lighting condition. And of course, the materials look terrible. And so what we're doing is allowing for you to create the material in a way that you can use in any light source and have accurate results.

So that's a really powerful set of criteria that we strive for and that we have accomplished with our equipment-- so full appearance measurement. So let's talk a little bit about the technology.

So in the beginning, I talked about the MA-T12 spectrophotometer and the Pantora software. So I just want to elaborate on those a little bit. This is what I'm going to be doing a product demo of so you can see how it's used. Maybe you'll have an aha moment, see an application for your purposes. Maybe we'll talk more afterwards and better understand what it is that you would like to accomplish and hopefully find you the right technology.

So for our X-Rite solutions, we have both hardware and software. And since we know appearance impacts the overall color-- this is what I've been talking about. It's not just color.

There's so many things we change the color on, say, that plastic. And the grain may not show up as much, or it may be very dull. It won't be as glossy.

We need to really think about all of the attributes that create one material. So it's crucial to account for attributes like gloss, shimmer effects, and paints, plastics, metals, fabrics and meshes, to just name a few. The hardware, we have the ability to take measurements, and that's done with spectrophotometers or spectrophotometers, depending on where you're from in the world. And the MA-T12 that I've talked about fits into that category.

We have our software, which is the Pantora material hub, our file format. So that final file that would be used for containing all of your appearance information, but would then be used for visualization and maybe other purposes. So I'll be talking about the material format a little bit more.

And then lastly, virtual material scanning-- so we also have large pieces of hardware that we keep in-house and can do other types of virtual material scanning for you. This is a service where you would send us materials, and we can measure them for you. Or perhaps give you time with the hardware to do that type of measurement.

So the MA-T12-- so what does MA-T12 mean? The MA stands for multi-angle, the T for something, and then the 12 is for 12 angles. I can't remember what the T stands for. I think it has a name, but it is a multi-angle spectrophotometer. So this device was primarily is primarily used in the effects finishes industry-- so think car paints and other types of coatings and things like that that are extremely complex change their appearance depending on the angle they're being viewed or the way it's-- or the way it's being lit.

There are a number of ways that you could perceive this material. Well, for those types of materials, we really need a multi-angle approach to be able to fully understand that material. And with this one, we're using two pickups at 15 and 45.

I mentioned, it's a spectrophotometer, so we are doing spectral measurement. Those spectral measurements are being done by the wavelength being read by a sensor, and that is where the pickups at 15 and 45 are.

We have six fixed illumination angles so that we can see them, the way that the material may change depending on the illumination. And then we have an RGB camera that's taking images and resolving that so that we can create this high-end visualization accurate measurement. So it's a mixture of sensors, pick up sensors, which are for the wavelength for the spectral color acquisition. We have illuminations and then a camera. And it's those three things working together that allow us to create what you're going to see here in a little bit.

This is a high-resolution camera, so the DPI is actually over 1,000. We can get some very accurate images and use those for resolving the material. We like to call it post-processing the material or fitting the material.

But basically, it's yeah-- just it's creating that final material. So we're getting accurate color because we're doing it spectrally. It's based on spectral image measurement. And that's what I was talking about on the first bullet there.

We are also doing a correlated gloss measurement. This is really well suited for paints with effect pigments. I think I brought that up earlier. And it's also optimized for quality control. So yes, there is the need to create the digital twin for visualization.

But the goal is-- and because we're using actual spectrophotometers and these accurate measurement tools-- we also have the ability to do quality control. And that may be for R&D, wants to check two parts of the vehicle.

There's a lot of different things that I could mention, but just keep that in mind. Yes, we're talking about visualization today, but I am going to just talk about the QC aspect of it too, which is work that we're doing right now.

So that was the hardware. Here's the software. So we call our software Pantora.

We refer to it as a material hub. This is where you're going to connect to our tech 7, which is one of our other scanning solutions or other-- other spectrophotometers. And I'm sorry. I'm starting at the bottom here. The MA-T12 I just talked about, that is one of the other spectrophotometers.

So I can control those devices, I can download the data, I can process that data, all within the Pantora software. We do have a rendering engine right inside of our software, which is our viewer. It's an OpenGL renderer.

We also have an editor. So this is primarily used for those types of materials like you see on the screen here, where they have a pattern, and I need to make it-- I need to tile it. I need to make it seamless. We have tools inside the software-- a very small subset of tools that is extremely powerful and can do what you need to do, much easier than the way we used to do tiling. It could be very laborious and very frustrating-- so some great tools there for editing.

We also have the ability to do recoloring because we can do measurements of colors. We can do recoloring because we're working with measurements. We're not just moving RGB sliders. And then it's also an asset manager. So I am measuring 10 materials, hundreds of materials, thousands of materials.

We have customers that are measuring tens of thousands of materials, and they're using this platform to help them organize, search, and really, yeah, primarily just organize everything in a way that somebody else on the team can sit down and know where to find what they're looking for. So that gives just a quick-- a quick peek at the Pantora material hub software.

And I wanted to show you. So the workflow of this device-- so we've talked a lot about OK, what do we want to do? Here's some hardware. Here's some software.

Now how do all those pieces work together? And I think that's best shown through a video. So here we go. Sorry, I was a little under the weather when I did this, but hopefully you can hear me OK.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- All right. So I've opened up the Pantora software and underneath the Connect tab, we're going to have a list of devices that we're connected to.

So in this case, we're going to use the MA-T12. It'll give the serial number. We can also check that it's calibrated. In this case, it is.

So the next step is choosing what type of job we want to do, naming it, and then telling it where we want the final file to go. What we're doing is we're creating an ASF file, which is an X-Rite file for appearance and that we call the appearance exchange format, and we're going to add it to our material tray when it's completed.

We also can add metadata. So just know that this is another option if you want to add things like the vendor and the catalog or whatever other items you want to add, that is possible.

So for the measurement program, we have three different types of materials we can measure with the MA-T12. We have what's called an NEBRDF, so that is homogeneous materials. Think like single color plastics and paints and things like that without texture. We can also do CAR paints, and we can do textured materials.

So this one is-- says any NESVBRDF, and it applies to our textured materials. You'll also see that there is help over here. So if I'm clicking, I want to know more about what I'm choosing. We do have help, comments as well as sample images.

So the first one I'm going to do is a car paint. So in this case, I'm going to measure this car paint here. And so we need to basically tell the program, what are we looking for. So in this case, we have a clear coat. We have effect pigments and a number of other options that we can change to better realize or measure the material.

So the last piece here has to do with, do we want measurement data? Well, yes, in most cases, you'll probably want the measurement data. We also can choose our color format. You have two options, SRGB and spectral.

And again, in most cases, you're going to use spectral because the rendering program will do the conversion to SRGB for you. But you'll be able to store spectral data as well inside of the final file.

So for this one, I'm going to place the material under the device. You'll notice there's a preview here. I'm going to capture. And in the measurement process, you'll notice that there is a summary up here. This is what we've added into or told the program what to measure.

So for this one, you can see metadata, one entry. So after I finish the first one, you'll see there's a second-- ability to capture another one with the car paint. This is great if you want to have multiple measurements, multiple spectral measurements inside of the file. But for this one, we're just going to use one.

So I click Finish. I jump over here. And there it is. It showed up in my material tray.

So I'm going to jump over to our viewer, place the material on our blob object, and you can see that we are now looking at this inside of our render engine that we have right inside the Pantora software. For a car paint, I may want to use something like a point light, so I can move the light around to better see things like color flop and also effect pigments, like flake.

All right, so I'm going to jump back over to our Connect tab. And this time, we're going to do a different type of measurement. We're going to do the textured measurement. We're going to rename it, click Next.

Move up to the measurement program. Choose the textured or any NESVBRDF. And I'm going to measure this plastic. So you'll notice there's a couple of different grains, a larger grain and smaller grain.

So I am going to measure the larger grain. And you'll see we get another preview here. I'm going to click Capture. And while that's running, I've already preran some of these materials. So let's take a look at some of the materials that we're already measured with the MA-T12.

So going first to our plastic, here's the larger grain on this one, and here is the smaller grain version. So I did this red leather here. We also did just a powder-coated gold material. And lastly, a more textured basket weave material.

[END PLAYBACK]

THOMAS MEEKER: All right-- excellent. Well, hopefully that helped illustrate the process, how fast it is, the portability of the device, and also-- oops, I hit Play again. Let's go to the next slide. And actually, I talk about it right here. So let's just jump into this slide.

The MA-T12 and Pantora material hub-- so what are some of the benefits of this workflow? So it's portable and fast acquisition of multi-angle spectral and resolution image data. So again, it's this multi layers of information that are incredibly important are going to be, if not already, data that you can read into your 3D program will be.

I know Autodesk VRED has introduced spectral rendering. So this is-- just adds another level of complexity and accuracy to your material measurements. It supports workflows for both design and production quality.

We have a lot of companies that are using it for car refinish. They're trying to match-- after a car's been in an accident and they need to replace a panel, and they want to match the color. Well, of course, this is very difficult. It's an older car, and if they can start to do some of this work digitally to see if they're starting to match before they ever spray something, that is a huge win for them. And it's already being used that way.

The data can be combined with our TAC7. Some of you out there may already be aware of the TAC7. TAC7 is about the size of a refrigerator, does thousands of images. And it's something that we still have, and we can do for scan service, something that we would love to talk about. So you can talk to us about that.

But the idea is that the TAC7 can do certain things that some of our spectrophotometers can't, but with the ability to measure spectrally with the MA-T12 and a couple of our other devices, take that information, and combine it with TAC7 information. Do a lot more, a lot faster, and it really helps to create this more scalable solution.

So we've talked about measuring it, the software, how we would use it inside the software. And the last thing that I want to talk about is the AxF file. The AxF stands for appearance exchange format. So when you get a file from X-Rite from one of our devices, it.s .AxF, and AxF is integrated into many of the softwares that this audience is using today. We have the ability to use AxF natively and Autodesk VRED, VRED, whichever one you call it.

And then we have plug-ins for V-Ray, specifically for Maya and 3ds Max, and those are X-Rite created plug-ins to use the AxF in both Maya and 3ds Max. So it is a file format that many of our partners are utilizing and has become the gold standard for car paints and many other materials.

So our mission-- so this is more than a strategy. It's more than technology. What we're really trying to enable is the ability to design, develop, deliver and promote the adoption of a universal file format that offers a standard way to capture, store, edit, and communicate complex color and appearance data. We can also contain metadata. I mentioned it in the video a little bit.

But there is an opportunity to create a great deal of metadata, some that is created automatically in the process of the measurement, but also user-inputted metadata of a material in one single file, thus enabling communication of highly accurate, achievable digital materials or what we call digital twins. And just to again elaborate on that-- so what we want to do is allow the customer, the creatives, the ability to create highly accurate digital material databases that enable brands to create photorealistic, achievable designs and prototypes having more confidence. That's the buzzword.

It's how do I have the confidence that what I'm seeing is correct so that I can go to my boss or my colleague and say, this is correct because I measured it? That's what we're trying to give. And that is what we're giving to our customers now. So this is enhancing innovation, speeding time to market, improving customer engagement for brands.

So the other thing, which was getting into with that confidence, is enabling digital validation and control of materials and virtual prototypes throughout the supply chain. So this doesn't just have to live in design.

Those files could then be used by marketing. It could be used by third-party marketing who are doing commercials or brochures or whatever, whatever else you need. It could be used by multiple people across the supply chain. And this is resulting in faster approval loops.

So if my suppliers also have this type of software and hardware so that we can communicate across the globe digitally going back and forth without having to ship physical samples, at least make quicker approvals. Say I got it. You made it. You just measured it.

I see it. I don't like it. Don't bother shipping it. Let's try again. The whole idea is trying to do faster approval loops and reduce the amount of prototyping and shipping costs.

So the AxF file-- I keep talking about it because this is the thing that you're going to be using. That's the most important piece in the end. The file is the digital twin of a physical material sample, comprising full appearance measurement information plus metadata.

I always like to show a couple of these. So this usually animated, and you had to guess which was which. But the goal of these slides is to show, OK, on the right is a photograph that was taken with a Canon 6D DSLR in our SPLQC light booth, the X-Rite SPLQC light booth. And then we created the virtual version of that with the settings from the digital camera and then did a rendering of the AxF that we created on geometry and used Maya with V-Ray to do the rendering.

So, we're trying to have the confidence in that digital twin of the physical material. But that's just part of it. I may want to use multiple rendering platforms, like Maya with V-Ray and Autodesk Red Professional.

So not only do I need it to look like its physical counterpart. I need it to look correct across my rendering platforms because we know there's always somebody that wants to use something else, and we want to make sure that material is being represented just as well across platforms.

So the partnership-- so I mentioned a couple of products already that X-Rite has great partnerships. And I just wanted to talk about a little bit more. So earlier this year or late last year, we worked with the Autodesk Red team, Pascal, and think a couple others in the development. This is when we first launched the MA-T12 to be able to do more than car paints, but actually do other materials like fabrics, leathers, and textiles and other materials as well.

So what we did is we actually bought this shoe, and then we got the 3D model for it. Then we measured with the MA-T12, the handheld device that you saw in my demo video, and we measured all of the parts of the shoe. So what you're seeing on the right are all of the thumbnails of the AxFs that were created for each one of those materials. And then we brought it into VRED and applied all the AxFS to the different parts of the shoe.

And what you're seeing on the bottom left is the rendering that was done. We have an Autodesk-created-- VRED created an amazing virtual version of our SPLQC physical light booth, and it is available out there. If you have any questions about that, be happy to talk to you more about it and help you get your hands on it. And so did a rendering of-- in a D65 light booth. And then I thought it'd be worth sharing a quick video that he created.

So you can see the level of detail using that handheld device. And those materials were measured and processed in less than two minutes. So you could be doing some very quick iterations, some very quick concepting all in one day. We're not waiting for samples to come in.

I've got a whole-- a whole room full of samples. I want to see what some of these other ones look like. So it really opens up the opportunity to do things faster, make decisions faster, all of those lovely things that we're all trying to do.

And then lastly, I just wanted to show some behind the scenes. So whenever you see TAC, that's our Total Appearance Capture. It relates to our TAC7 scanning device, our MA-T12 device, our metaview device. And really, it's about our appearance or capture hardware and then the other piece of that being the Pantora software.

So we did some work with the VW group and Wolfsburg, and this is their lab in their studio. And they have TAC7. They've got one of our virtual light booths. They also have our MA-T12 hardware. They're using everything that we have, and they are building a library that is now in the thousands of materials So that they can call on those for any type of work.

It could be-- yes, design. It could also be the heads-up display. It could be-- yeah, anything where you want the material to be accurate. This is now a library that they've built that they can pull from.

And here are just a few renderings. So these were done with VRED. Here's an interior shot. We've got a couple of seats. Car seats that were also done in VRED-- close up one.

This just kind of breaks down what is their material workflow. Well, they're using our hardware. They're using the Pantora software. They're using our virtual light booth.

They're building their own material library, and they're using-- and you'll see on the bottom the base layer is the AxF. That's what enables all of this. And in the last column on the right, you're seeing renderings done in different rendering engines-- so VRED and V-Ray and with Maya and maybe one of the real-time gaming platforms as well.

So it doesn't just sit on its own. It's not a one-time-only material that you're using for one shot. This is something that you can use across all of your rendering engines, different workflows for different purposes.

So that is it for my presentation. I hope to talk to many of you during the conference. And please come find me. Thank you very much to Autodesk for inviting me and X-Rite to speak today at this event. Looking forward to a really great show. Thank you.