Seeing is, as they say, believing. But how do you ‘see’ something that hasn’t yet been built? The answer, for Encore Event Technologies, is to use the Vivien virtual event designer from CAST Software which has been an integral part of Encore’s sales process. Vivien allows Encore to show prospective clients exactly what their event could look like – and, in effect, creates the blueprint from which the event will be delivered.
A key feature of Vivien is its support for 360° image export, Vivien’s first step into VR. The feature allows a prospective client to step into the virtual event, become immersed in it, interact with it and experience its look and feel.
“Encore and its hotel partners are closing business by allowing the client to virtually experience event sets in the virtual event spaces or in a full 360º view through a web browser,” explained Encore’s Joseph Settipani, who is Director of Visual Sales Development. “We capture more business with more visuals in our sales cycle because of the virtual view render export. It has truly changed the future of our rendered visual deliverables and the way our design planning visuals are utilized from first client contact through to event execution.”
“Within the first six months we produced hundreds of Vivien 360° panorama virtual tours,” he added, noting that Encore has also deployed Vivien in other markets beyond the USA including Canada, Mexico and Australia.
As well as its support for 8K resolution, one of the beauties of Vivien’s 360° image export is, according to Joseph, is that it is lightweight; there is no app, no log in and no large file to send to the client – just a simple web link.
In addition to its use of Vivien’s 360° image export, Encore also takes advantage of other Vivien features, such as 2D layouts to scale with dimension labeling, and the seating wizard.
Vivien is simplified CAD software with many custom features developed specifically to aid the 2D and 3D event design process, with over 10,000 library items available to drag and drop into any design project.
