product visualization
- heatpumps
client: Energy Save
duration: 1 week
delivery: 2025
brief: create teaser animations to showcase the R290, the new outdoor heat pump from Energy Save. The animations should highlight the product’s technical sophistication while visually aligning with the refreshed Energy Save website.
intention and process
The latest update for Energy Save’s website features a bold new color palette inspired by the brand’s new identity. Their Swedish roots can be felt in those colors as well as in a key brand video, where northern lights symbolize power from the north.
Could we use this video of northern lights for our product animations? Yes! And it was the core of our intention: to use this video as a digital light source, casting the same vibrant energy onto the heat pump and creating a strong visual link between product and brand. (photos below are from Magnus Lundin).
“Let’s take the brand footage of northern lights and use it as a light source in Blender 3D to cast vibrant light on the products.”
To create the animations, we used a combination of software: Blender 3D and Premiere Pro. We started with Blender 3D with key steps:
- optimize the heat pump model by deleting duplicate surfaces, optimizing the topology and organize the different parts into a clear structure (bringing more flexibility for changes).
- create new or apply already existing materials
- and then ideate on camera placement, framing, movement speed, light set ups... to eventually find the right camera angles and exposure to highlight key features.
For each animation, the process followed the same logic. The first step was to ideate on the camera movement to showcase the right feature of the product. Then we added light (in this case northern lights), and refined this light environment to reflect the right message according to the feature we are showcasing. Eventually we refine both the camera movement, speed and light environment to create something coherent.
There is a quite nice balance of lighting in this animation specifically. The white studio lighting shows the heat pump as a commercialized product, efficient and reliable, while the blue animated light from the northern light shares a more emotional side of the energy that the product is producing.
I particularly like this animation as it acts more as an abstract teaser of the heatpump. As a viewer, if you don’t know anything about the product, you will wonder what this is. I thought these tubes and protective grill (that we call the evaporator) reflected the light in a very nice way.
Once the animations were rendered in Blender, we imported them into Premiere Pro for further editing and final refinements. Through recurring feedback loops and flexibility, we constantly ensured alignment with Energy Save’s needs.
Eventually, Energy Save was very satisfied with the final result while we are proud of it and grateful for our learnings.
Our goal was to translate the technical and precise details of the heatpump, by either emphasizing the edges of the product itself or how the light hits the surfaces.
This resulted in several animations, with their respective message and uniqueness. Some animations are more abstract, playing with simple camera movements while letting the surfaces and volumes of the heatpump speak for themselves and reflect the northern lights. Other animations are more informative, focusing on technical details of the product, or the system the product is part of.
“Some animations are more abstract, playing with simple camera movements and northern light reflections on the product. Others are more informative, focusing on technical details or specific features.”
Extra animations for the indoor units!
When people trust the design process, they usually want more out of it. That’s what happened there, as Energy Save came back to us, some weeks later with a new request: animations for their indoor units!
We quickly decided to maintain a similar intention than for the R290, using the northern lights as light source. However, the brightness of the product itself made us adapt the background slightly, balancing out the contrast of the animations.
HEMS illustration for social media
Part of the assignment was also an illustration request to illustrate how these heatpumps are part of smart systems called HEMS (Home Energy Management System). This illustration was used as a discussion support around the topic. For this simple work I first used Blender 3D to model the base and then used Photoshop to add more graphical elements like the blue gradients and outlines.
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