RENNO Communications Group Website design and development. Released under management of RUBICS Business Solutions. Renno & Associates was launched in 1999, to be later re branded as Renno Communications Group, following the regional expansion across the Arab World. It actually took more than a vision; it required a strong will and dedication to succeed not only in launching a relatively new concept in the Middle East, but also in working hard to educate the various markets and stakeholders about the benefit of utilizing the multiple tactics of public relations.

The process is endless and the determination is infinite. This is why our team’s education, multicultural background and experience in the field of communications have provided a solid base for building an agency that is in the lead of providing specialized, innovative and leading edge services to multinational and regional organizations.

Aside from highlighting in this web site our vision, goals, services and tactics, we also wanted to share with you few milestones in our Agency’s history since its founding. We are and will always be proud of our clients and the remarkable partnership we have built.

To our clients, we salute you for believing in our services, and assure our prospective ones that “Your Reputation is in Good Hands” with Renno Communications Group.

Website features

• Full site
• Semantic, valid XHTML and CSS
• Gracefully degrading code (for older browsers)
• Based on TESTO Free CSS Foundation Template. http://petermikhael.com/testo-free-css-foundation-template.html
• Cross-browser compatible, Tested and working in all major browsers including IE6
• Professional design
• Design is created using the 960PX Grid System (wide design)
• SEO friendly HTML code
• Powered by jQuery
• jQuery Shadobox
• jQuery menu slider
• Flash Header intro
• Contact Form

3d logo design – Video Tutorial – Part 1

3d logo design – Video Tutorial – Part 2

3d logo design – final result

I walks through the fundamental decisions, such as what information to include, what size and orientation the logo should have, and whether to use in corporate identity, TV production, Web publishing. I demonstrate how to set up a template and work with type alignment and color. Also discusses animation techniques and preparing the file for printing, TV production, Web Publishing. How to integrate and fill the gap between 6 software is my goal in this tutorial. I’ll use Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Maya, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe after Effects, Adobe Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver.

Topics covered:

Quick Sketching
Logo Exploration
Logo Modeling
Producing Logo to several illustrators formats
Animation approach
Animation Composition
Web Animation and production

3d logo design – Logo Design behind the Scenes – Part 1

01: Intro Goals.
02: 1st stage Sketching ideas.
03: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering and Detail Design.
04: Put the logo into Layout.
05: Illustration stage.
06: 2nd stage animation.

3d logo design – Logo Design behind the Scenes – Part 2

07: animation composition and finalize exporting HD.
08: 3rd stage Web Production.
09: Final Design, animation inside HTML page.

Details:

01: Intro Goals

In the first stage we have a look to our goals before we start working to know who exactly we should do. We will prepare our logo to be ready for printing, TV production and Web Publishing. As a designing apprentice I have always asked myself what is the best method for designing something or that particular logo. It is evident that you can apply different methods for doing the same logo, but the quality of the output might vary according to the method you use.

02: 1st stage Sketching ideas

Then the process of swirling out your ideas begins. It doesn’t matter if the sketch looks like monotone; you are just throwing ideas down onto a white blank page at the moment. I used tablet here. Just try to find ideas and concepts using balance. What I mean with balance is our logo should be physically balanced inside our design. Just imagine if you create that logo in real life with clay or wood and try to put it on a flat surface it should be stable balanced. Once I had placed some ideas down on paper you can scan them in and dive into your image editor of choice if you would like. I’m using Adobe Photoshop for this one. The method I use to create logo could be wildly different from someone else so go with whatever method feels comfortable. The end result will be a series of scaled resources that the OS will use in different views.

03: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering and Detail Design

Then the process of swirling out your ideas begins. It doesn’t matter if the sketch looks like monotone; you are just throwing ideas down onto a white blank page at the moment. I used tablet here. Just try to find ideas and concepts using balance. What I mean with balance is our logo should be physically balanced inside our design. Just imagine if you create that logo in real life with clay or wood and try to put it on a flat surface it should be stable balanced. Once I had placed some ideas down on paper you can scan them in and dive into your image editor of choice if you would like. I’m using Adobe Photoshop for this one. The method I use to create logo could be wildly different from someone else so go with whatever method feels comfortable. The end result will be a series of scaled resources that the OS will use in different views.
Modeling

For a non-organic bending object such as the subject of this tutorial it is wise to use polygonal modeling unless you care about the quality. Polygon modeling has always fascinated me especially with the accuracy it provides for making industrial models and its flexibility. The good thing about Autodesk Maya is that it provides both a strong NURBS system and a multi-optional NURBS to polygon conversion dialog, where by we can convert our detailed NURBS model to a polygonal object with the desired number of faces.

The aim of this tutorial is to provide a practical guide for the novice Polygon modeler, whereby he/she can practice the basic methods through designing a somewhat complex object. Of course, this tutorial does not cover all Polygon commands but rather most of them.

Now observe and contemplate the above sketching image for a moment; try to visualize it from front, the front view: that’s the key point in making the logo.

First we will begin with a set of primitives for different logo parts. I make a sphere (polygon sphere) then 4 twisted cubes. To make twisted cubes in Maya it’s just easy. Make a cube then go to deformers panel and use the twisting toll. After made a 1 twisted cube, duplicate it 3 times with 90 degrees. Then put them together to fitting in the sphere.

That’s exactly my idea represented. I have a point in this logo which I can say the sphere represent the red word and the 4 twisted cubes represent how mush it’s secured.

The next step is to create mental ray subdivision from approximation editor panel. I like to make the N subdivision as a 2.000 points for sure that’s give me a good smoothed mesh and also at any time I can go back and make any changes in low poly mode.
Texturing

The texturing stage is the most important part. Everyone who’s worked before with 3D texturing knows that every texture have an advantage and disadvantage. We can see that the Lambert shading absorb lights. Also we knows about the phonge shade it’s reflect lights with angels and have a different characterizes instead of blinn shade. So I render the logo 3 times 1 with blinn shade, 2 with mia_material and phong shades. By this way we mention that we have the logo in 3 different characteristic so we can use this 3 together in later steps.
Lighting and Rendering

Let’s talk about lights. I use in this scene 9 lights. Our goal in lights is how to use a minimal number of area and point lights to recreate all direct and indirect light sources for a logo. They are 8 area lights and 1 point light. The 8 area lights have a very small intensity. Also I used the white light color. In This technique we use Global Illumination and Final Gather.

Final step in lighting and rendering is to render the logo in 3 different images every image with a different shade.

04: Put the logo into Layout

lets go to Adobe Photoshop and open the 3 images we exported from Maya. Actually I like to export images as a .TIF images. Taking the 3 images and put it together in Adobe Photoshop blind them together. I used overlay blinding mode. Then finish by company name and the caption.

Also I simulate a deep shadow behind the logo. Its give me a nice look.

In this stage if u would like to represent that logo to the client u have or to your boss. That’s will fair enough.

05: Illustration stage

For the first time I present this tutorial someone ask me… hay the logo u created now is fine but do u think is it ready for print in big scale like billboards?..

Actually it’s a very good question because for sure we need the logo to be ready in everything from print to TV production to web production as we agreed in statge1. So I’ll start now to give u my approach for how to export our logo as a vector (scalable) shape. We will go back to Maya and use logo model and exporting into a different illustrator types. I used here Maya vector render and I use some options like curve tolerance and detail level to end up with different logo versions. 1 with dark colors, bright colors, and wire frame, etc… everything is vector we can export it as an AI file and import it to adobe illustrator. Easily u will find that our logo is now ready to use it in printing elements safely if we need to print it in higher printing elements or huge billboard.

We finished now the stage 1 which is creating a 3d logo ready for print production.

06: 2nd stage animation

Okay… Let’s animate. We will go back to Maya and starts animate our logo. I start by prepare my timeline with 72 frame. This will give me 3 seconds (24X3=72). Animate the sphere shrink in then shrink out until its stop. Then about the 4 twisted cubes I animate it in 360 digress reversed. So it’s give me a very nice effect. So what we have now is shrink sphere and 4 rotated cubes. I think it’s Looks good for me now. For sure I’ll go to the timeline and play the frames fast, slow, reversed, etc… Check if anything looks weird or out of scene.

So we have now 72 frames let’s render it in .PNG sequence of images. And have a look for the animation when it’s finish render.

07: animation composition and finalize exporting HD

So we end now with 72 PNG sequences of images. If u thinks about composition for sure we will think about Adobe after Effects. You can import the 72 images directly to Adobe after Effects but in this tutorial I convert this sequence to 1 MOV file using quick time. So I open quick time then open the sequence of image and save as a MOV file.

So let’s import the MOV file to Adobe after Effects and start composition. First effect I have used is the auto level effect. It’s just makes the logo looks fine and has a deep look. Also I just check some other effects like rippling and bouncing and I end up with the 3D rippling animation. I make a radial gradient for the background to give me nice look when the logo animate. So I’m happy for what I end up with now

Let’s render our MOV file from Adobe after Effects and finally the logo now composite fine and ready for TV production.

08: 3rd stage Web Production

After we have our composite MOV file let we think about web animation. Actually Adobe Flash is the solution. First I prepare my stage in Adobe Flash 640X480 as we rendered our files and also prepare my timeline and frame rate 24 FPS. Now we are ready to import our animation file. But the MOV file has a huge size and we shouldn’t use it for web. That does will take a lot of time in loading. So I think about converting this file to FLV file using Adobe Flash CS3 Video Encoder. Start encoding and we have now a small FLV file. So import the FLV file and check it in Adobe Flash. After everything is looks fine and small size the only one problem is the frames looping. So I add one Action Script behavior to stop the animation when it’s finished (played for 1 time). So our file now ready for publishing from Adobe Flash we will end up with HTML file contained the flash SWF file.
09: Final Design, animation inside HTML page.

The last step in our entire tutorial is to open the HTML into Adobe Dreamweaver and center the flash object (SWF file) and we can easily type welcome to red secure website and it’s now ready for Web Production.

So that’s the end of the tutorial. I hope u like it… See u

http://www.tareknour.com/

Tarek Nour Communications website it’s a big project which I worked on it. for about 6 months i started developing this website.

I’m actually make an article about that website because it’s really deep and have a varieties of designing and developing concept and techniques.

Guys Who Involved with me in this project:

Tarek Khalifa – IT Manager

Mahmoud Mokhtar – Senior Programmer

Mohamed El Messeiry – Business Solutions Developer

Marwan Zaki – Senior Technical Specialist

Mohamed Farag Abdallah – Technician

website structure:

Flash Version:
using Autodesk Maya, Adobe Flash, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Illustrator

the whole structure

1: the intro page created with Autodesk Maya,, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Flash. combined the 3 different tools together to make the start up animation and the rotated 3d corporate logo.

2: the whole flash website controlled by Action Script 2.0. the all pages separated with different SWF files.

header section

1: full functional flash photo gallery u can use controllers to skip forward or backward for latest press ads. also u can pause or play the image play frames.made by Action Script 2.0.

2: 5 main menus contained the most common links in the whole website. menu driven by Action Script 2.0.

the main page structure

1: 55 pages driven by Action Script 2.0 using numbers. every page have a unique number in the whole website. the number mean unique thing for every box including the logo and page content.

2: the all boxes are actually 1. and duplicated 45 times to reduce the size of the frame rate and the whole website size

3: all pages separated with a different SWF files and every page have a unique loader.

4: every box animation built in Autodesk Maya and exported as SWF file frames.

the small boxes footer structure

33 shortcut functional tinny boxes. I’ll represent every box from right to left

1: random page: choosing a random page from the 55 page in our key frames agencies, companies, menus.

2: animation 2: loading the website start up animation with different animation style.

3: home: shortcut to the home page

4: 4 different colors: shortcut to 4 different colors to change the whole boxes color driven by Action Script 2.0.

5: wire frame: shortcut to change the boxes to wire frame style exported from Autodesk Maya and finalized in Adobe Flash.

6: 3 different makes shortcuts: mask the website to 3 different main list of links. Ad agencies, communications, main links.

7: drag and drop page: this page actually convert the all links to drag able boxes snapped to the mesh box structure. driven by Action Script 2.0.

8: sound control: controlling the sound on or off with changing the led animation. driven by Action Script 2.0.

9: randomize mode: this mode randomize the boxes to different positions with a smooth animation. driven by Action Script 2.0.

10: the next bunch of other is shortcuts to the most common links.

inner pages structure

1: all pages have an animation with unique design and a shortcut function to move to any page with one click.

XML our work and news pages structure

1: our work
our work page have a 3 main links landmarks, today’s TVC’s, programs. the flash page opened by JavaScript behavior centralize the pop up page in the center of page.
the actually player and list of files driven from XML file content ( XML exported from admin area). the other function of the our work is the combo box flash option which is mask the videos or agencies.
also when uploading the video to the admin page it’s converted to FLV video file and take a snapshot from the uploaded video everything exported automatically.driven by Action Script 3.0.

2: News
news page also driven from an admin area converted to XML and displayed in a page with scrolling. all this pages also have individual link. to represent the article.

HTML:
using Autodesk Maya, Adobe Flash, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Illustrator

the whole structure

the website have a 3 different designs with the same layout driven from CSS rules. the all design changed randomly in the home page. after random page the design stick to the end of navigation.

header section

1: the header 9 boxes created with Autodesk Maya, Adobe Photoshop. represent diffrent direction of everypage.
2: the header photos is a 22 press ADS changed randomly.

left hand side

1: the left hand side videos loaded from the database the last 5 today’s TVC’s and when clicked the actual video played in the same video interface.

main content

1: the main content for the all pages.

news page structure

1: this page contained the all list of the news articles have a each inside the all news titles and content and jump to an chosen article from combo box.