A scientific concept, built as a brand system.
Schrödinger — Chemical Space Cloud
SCHRÖDINGER · 2025 · SOLO: HOUDINI / SIMULATION / LOOKDEV / RENDER / COMP
Schrödinger’s business rests on searching chemical space — the theoretical set of every possible molecule. It is a concept with no fixed picture. Other organizations have visualized it, each correctly, each for their own scientific purpose. None of them belonged to Schrödinger.
So I built one — a procedural asset that would generate media for a range of use cases.
The problem with a borrowed picture
Chemical Space is a theoretical model of all possible molecules and chemical compounds. (wikipedia)
Various interpretations of chemical space. None is incorrect — each answers a different scientific question.
A brand element has to do two things a scientific illustration does not: hold up across print, video, and web, and survive being used by people who did not make it. A one-off render fails both.
Whatever I made had to be defensible enough that Schrödinger’s scientists would sign off on it, and flexible enough that a designer in another department could use it a year later without me in the room.
The asset
I built the cloud in Houdini as a procedural HDA: point count scalable to 80 million, shape and color driven by parameters. One asset, re-shaped and re-colored to sit inside whatever it needed to — a print spread, a video background, a web header.
I worked the science out with Schrödinger’s scientists first, then simulated, rendered, and composited it end-to-end.
A library, not a deliverable
Once the asset existed, output was cheap. I rendered a library from it — backgrounds, textures, feature imagery, motion loops — and put it where anyone building content could reach it.
New material stopped being a request that waited on a designer. It became a render.
Use Across the Organization
The asset came to be used in every facet of company engagement: event banners, booths, leadership presentations, etc
Application-specific branding
The same asset carried each product’s identity. Maestro, MS Maestro, LiveDesign, Bioluminate — each got its own region of chemical space, rendered from the same HDA with different parameters.
Media Assets
Procedural Renders for Still Library
Splash screens, loop backgrounds, still library. One system, four brands, no rebuilds.
For more about this project (and lots others), please reach out!