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GEOMERICS SPOTLIGHT The light side of R&D
Geomerics’ next collaborative research and development project takes them to a galaxy far, far away. Founder Chris Doran discusses the value of these projects and how to attract funding for such a venture
GEOMERICS RECENTLY WON its fourth collaborative R&D award from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), leading a project with Industrial Light and Magic, Electronic Arts and Disney Research. Our goal is to push real-time game lighting technology to the point where it can be used in the film production pipeline, and we will have the opportunity to work directly with Star Wars film content, undoubtedly the most exciting project we have been involved in to date. Looking back, research awards like these were often crucial to the progress of Geomerics. Our first award was received in 2006 for research with Cambridge University looking at animated characters and lighting. This led to the character lighting solution in the first version of Enlighten. But the importance of the grant went well beyond the technology. It gave the investors comfort that we knew what we were doing. Winning a grant award in a competitive environment demonstrated that other people agreed with our technical direction and made it easier to attract follow-on funding. Our second award was for a more ambitious project collaborating with the Computer Graphics Department at UCL. This three-year project started in 2008, and the key technical challenge we investigated was scaling Enlighten from its initial prototype to technology that was appropriate for large high-end games. Developers were making demands of scale far beyond our early prototypes. The research funded by the
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grant was critical to our ability to deliver technology to DICE, for example, as well as generating research papers and PhD material for UCL. Not all of our Technology Strategy Board projects have been collaborations with universities. Our next project, which started in 2009, was with another UK business and looked at applying game technology to the problem of managing
Research awards like those from
the TSB were often crucial to the progress of Geomerics. Chris Doran, Geomerics
a complex IT infrastructure. This project led directly to the formation of a spin-out company, which went on to raise investment and build its own team. This highlights how R&D grants can be used to investigate spin-out possibilities. Despite this success, my preference is to have an academic partner on board so that someone on the team can step back, carry out a thorough literature search, and plan the research properly.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER Geomerics is also part of an EU project looking at mobile GPUs. We joined this team as they needed a partner with experience of high-end GPU applications.
The project timing was ideal for us as it helped fund our move into mobile. EU projects are not as scary as they may seem, but if you are going into one, make sure you find a lead partner with experience of these projects. The odds of a successful bid for a project led by a partner with no experience are tiny. Many companies are put off applying
for R&D grants by the paperwork and the competitive element of the award. It is frustrating putting effort into a proposal only to lose out, and we have not been successful with every application. My view is that you should treat applying for these awards as you would a sales opportunity. You won’t win them all, but you shouldn’t give up trying. The Technology Strategy Board runs a two-step process for most of their competitions, and entering the first stage is not much work. If you do get through, you are in a position where 50 per cent of projects will be funded, and with those odds it’s worth the effort. My final advice is, if you have anyone with an academic background in your team, ask them to write the proposal. The skills are quite similar to those academics gain through applying for research grants. I would urge any technology company in the games industry to seriously consider applying for the next round of awards.
Dr Chris Doran is founder of Geomerics. He frequently offers free advice to UK technology companies thinking about applying for R&D grants.
JULY 2014 | 51
Geomerics aims to bring game lighting technology to film quality, and it has been given the opportunity to work directly with Star Wars (main) film content to achieve this goal
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