Morpholio Teams Up with Theia Interactive for an Augmented Reality Home Design Tool
Software developer Morpholio has partnered with the AR visualization company Theia Interactive to develop a suite of new augmented reality tools for furniture design. The home design will be through Morpholio’s Board tool for designers and will create new and iconic furniture designs that can be brought to life via augmented reality by overlaying the digital designs onto your real-world view using Morpholio Board.
The two have also partnered with the furniture manufacturer Knoll to showcase various furniture designs from top designers such as Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen as well as the iconic Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe.
The project has pushed augmented reality to the limits. The Knoll’s furniture collection featured in the tool is not just beautiful but has also been done in exquisite detail that makes the AR fully functional for the design uses. Morpholio and Theia Interactive want to work and eliminate two key AR hurdles in the design industry.
The first hurdle to overcome was how to bring out the vivid detail. When it comes to making important decisions on the scale, texture, space and color of home décor items, both consumers and interior designs rely on this vivid and realistic detail to make their call rather than on sketchy cartoonish shapes. To make the right calls, they will need to see the detailed patterns, finishes and even detailed stitching so that they can get a good measure on how an item might work in their environment and fit in their overall design vision. Both designers and consumers now have a good range detail thanks to the USDZ file format, Apple’s ARKit as well as the upcoming ‘People Occlusion’ in the iOS13. Theia Interactive’s mastery of the popular Morpholio Board App will also help in rendering these objects in great detail.
The second hurdle to be overcome was how to fit augmented reality into the mix. Morpholio wanted to fit augmented reality into a much larger and more meaningful process by plugging its powerful visualization feature into the whole furniture design workflow. This would create a tool that would help both designers and homeowners to imagine and curate their spaces in a very holistic manner.
The Board now makes it possible for users to add every AR product to their mood board alongside the other furnishings, fixtures and models. Through this, an entire project or room can be brought to life through augmented reality. The Board takes the process even further by allowing users to automatically translate their augmented reality selections into furniture lists and cut sheets that they can share with their contractors, collaborators or designers.
Combining all these into augmented reality enabled Morpholio and its partners in the project to transform how people interact with and consider the furniture pieces that will go into their spaces when they are curating their home or office spaces.
These smart design solutions help rethink how designers and shoppers are able to experience furniture in order to make better decisions. The tools can be put into very diverse users; from the homeowner working on their homes to the designers creating interactive presentations. Morpholio is also involved with Dyson, Phase, Porcelanosa, Davis, Hansgrohe and many other industry players in creating immersive experiences for designers.
The idea behind the furniture design innovation is to help both designers and ordinary shoppers to have the tools that will help them design furniture for a very realistic AR viewing experience. This will create virtual furniture that will look so real that users will mistake it for the real thing. Check out the images below.
The tools are freely available in Morpholio’s Board App. The Board AR app is available for iPad and an iPhone version will be launching soon. Morpholio Board can be downloaded in the App Store here.
