About Ombrae
Ombrae generates a distinctive visual language
OMBRAE STUDIOS has developed a revolutionary software-based image generating process called Ombrae which allows architects and industrial designers to transform a wide range of materials with customized patterns and images. Any digital source image can be translated into a three dimensional surface texture that is cast or formed into the surface of the material. The resulting image has a dynamic visual quality that is unlike any surface treatment that has ever been produced. The appearance of Ombrae generated images transform visually as light levels change, and as the viewer moves past the image.
Ombrae images are made from three-dimensional pixels - optical tiles.
Images are created by casting and/or machining into materials such as interior and exterior concrete, glass, metal, and fabric. The scale of the image may be as large as a building face or as small as the sole of a shoe. The images are integrated into the material rather than applied. The images are composed of thousands of raised cylinders, much like Braille. The top of each cylinder, or optical tile, has a beveled top surface pointed in a specific direction that reflects a particular quality of light. Each optical pixel creates just the right amount of light and shadow at just the right place on the surface of the material to represent the image. There are no lenses, laminate layers, printed dyes or inks – the image is in the material
Images and patterns can be embedded in a wide range of materials.
Ombrae can be adapted to a wide range of manufacturing and material technologies. Images are created by casting and/or machining into glass, resin, plastics, stone and cast stone, concrete, metal, leather, rubber, composites, fabrics and others. Ombrae offers stunning visual effects.
Unlike other imaging systems used in design applications, Ombrae has unique morphic and visually dynamic effects which capture attention and engage the viewer. An Ombrae image is never just a static surface, but morphs with changing lighting conditions and angles of view. Ombrae surfaces are highly responsive to changes in environmental light and changes in viewer position. It stimu¬lates and encourages viewer interaction, creating a truly unique surface characterized by a dynamic web of shifting relationships between surface and image, light and shadow, viewer and space. Co¬lours change and the image never seems the same as it will appear to shift, moving with the viewer as they move. There are unlimited combinations of material, colour and transparency that allow de-signers a palette of choices and a wide range of solutions for any design problem, inside or outside, at any scale and in any material.