Sonance: The Invisible Living Room

Imagine not having to deal with giant speakers taking up your entire living room, but you can still enjoy the ultimate audio experience of the big game or your favorite film.

Thanks to the collaboration between Sonance and James Loudspeaker, you will no longer have to choose between immersive sound and a clutter-free environment. You can have speakers that "disappear" in the walls to open your space while still sounding as good if not better than visible speakers.

The Client

Established in 1994, Sonance has since become a top brand for speakers that disappear within the architecture of any residential or commercial space. The company joined forces with James Loudspeaker in 1999 to bring a higher level of quality to both innovative brands.

Since both organizations believe that speakers should be aesthetically unobtrusive, Sonance and James Loudspeaker sought to showcase the superior quality of their products by seamlessly incorporating them into the surrounding environment. Sonance created a studio model of a living room with their Invisible Speakers at their headquarters in San Clemente, CA to demonstrate how the speakers could be situated within a space and how the quality of sound is maintained even when "invisible."

The Project

Sonance approached red point with an idea of creating a 360-degree replica of their studio in San Clemente using 3D animation and CGI to show how their speakers "disappear" within the architecture of a residence or business by having the walls and ceiling "melt" to reveal the speakers. Digital Marketing Manager, Christian Serge explains that:

When you tell a customer that we have an invisible speaker that sounds as good if not better than regular visible speakers we’re often met with, “What?”, or “How did you do that?”, or even, "I didn’t even know they existed. Let’s hear them." So we wanted a way to communicate what a Sonance Invisible Speaker is, some of the applications where they can perform well, and why more an more customers are switching to Sonance Invisible Speakers in their homes and commercial spaces. The idea that you can have sound all around you with no visible technology is hard to explain in words, so we decided to take the idea to red point.

Serge invited our team to their studio in San Clemente, CA for both a tour of Sonance’s headquarters and to discuss the possibility of future projects, such as the Invisible Living Room. Serge explained how Sonance wanted to include an interactive 360-degree digital version of the room on their website.

We agreed to support them in bringing this idea to life, and then, we got to work!

Pre-Production

Once our team returned to our Akron office, our team initiated the collaborative effort between Serge and Lauren Moore, one of red point’s in-house 3D animation artists. To help Sonance achieve their goal making the digital Invisible Living Room feel like the actual studio room, Moore had to model the animated room to be identical to the studio in San Clemente, CA. The two of them engaged in detailed discussions about the room's specifications, including exact measurements and reference images of each element, such as the shelves and couch.

Sonance supplied our team speaker assets via STEP files, allowing Lauren to apply consistent textures and materials. For the remaining room elements, we needed to make an exact replica of their studio in San Clemente, so we utilized the collected measurements to create the other assets in-house.

Post-Production

After creating the 3D assets, Moore and the Sonance team collaborated to bring the concept to life.

Moore used the assets to recreate the room in the Sonance studio, and then, she collaborated with Sonance to create blue-line tracing along the beams of the room to encourage the viewers' eyes to follow where each Invisible Speaker is throughout the room.

"As we worked with red point, the idea shifted from telling just the product story to taking one of our spaces where Invisible Speakers were installed and peel back the layers."

-Christian Serge

After the 360-degree version was complete and on Sonance's website, Serge asked us to take the idea one step further and create an entire video of the Invisible Living Room to both demonstrate multiple invisible speakers fleshed against the walls and to go into more detail about the history of surround sound speakers and introducing James Loudspeaker.

 Moore collaborated with the Sonance team to expand on the blue-line tracing and incorporating more 3D elements, such as the technology evolving over the years and adding more details to the environment of the room.

Challenges

No project is without its challenges, but we welcome them as opportunities to think outside of the box and stretch our creative muscles!

For Christian Serge, "The biggest challenge when doing any pure animation project is to have clear storyboards and vision. That’s something we learned. RPD was key in helping us overcome that. Their team was always willing to send wireframes or stills of what they thought we wanted. This project came out just as envisioned and we couldn’t be happier."

For us at red point, the biggest challenge was ensuring that the digital room was an exact replica of the Sonance studio. Aside from using the reference photos and the 360-degree images we had, Moore overcame this challenge by recalling her experience in her 3D Texturing Class when obtaining her degree at Kent State University!

Results

With both the 360-degree room and the full video out the door, Sonance was able to demonstrate the quality and "invisible" capabilities of their speakers in a realistic setting.

Looking back on the projects, Christian Serge said:

"Nothing can replace FaceTime over a phone call or Zoom when explaining how a physical product works. Speakers are best heard in person as well. This project has helped thousands of visitors who come and learn about Sonance in San Clemente, understand the Sonance Invisible Speaker, how well it performs, and just how invisible they are."

At red point, we especially enjoyed this project because it gave us the opportunity to continue developing our technical skills in a way that's creative and innovative, and we were able to dive headfirst into using Cinema 4D, which is a favored application for our animation team.

For our animator, Lauren Moore, the Invisible Living Room was a fulfilling and challenging project that "helped me fall in love with my career more!"

Enjoy the full 3D experience of the Sonance Invisible Living Room below!

The 360-degree Room

Invisible Living Room full video