sun span solar

solar,
made simple

the
client

Sunspan Solar is a solar technology company building a new kind of infrastructure for distributed clean energy. Instead of relying on conventional flat-panel systems, the company uses patented tubular solar modules and a lightweight cable-supported structure to reduce mounting cost, improve energy production, and unlock new deployment formats. This allows solar to function not just as an energy source, but as usable infrastructure—spanning parking lots, agricultural land, and bodies of water with systems designed to generate power more efficiently while making better use of the space beneath them.

simplified message

Sunspan makes solar panels that are way lighter, cheaper and faster to install.

product
visualization

Sun Span solar’s product is conceptually quite simple: a solar panel turned into a tube. That said, we did our best to capture the little details that sell it in close-ups.

design
challenges

A tractor working in a greenhouse with rows of leafy green vegetables under solar panels.

I bridging multiple use cases

The hardest communication problem Sun Span presented was the fact that there 5 unique use cases. Despite it’s simple appearance, the product itself has a multi-hypenate feature list while offering different value propositions for each context it is deployed.

Electric car charging station in a parking lot with multiple cars plugged in, surrounded by city buildings and people walking in the park nearby.

II resource intensive 3D scenes

Hundreds of cars in a parking lot, a farm full of glass tubes, cramped urban architecture - these would all be massive lifts to render out with traditional 3D tools. The simple design of the product allowed me to leverage AI tools for the first time in a serious way, briding the gap between technical difficulty and the needs of the project.

A truck unloading large blue cylindrical solar water heaters into a body of water in a desert landscape.

III innovative AI + 3D workflows

AI video content can be tricky for client work because specific feedback is hard to incorporate without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. By designing scenes in 3D first and using AI to build on that, we were able to isolate any element in the shot - combining the control of 3D with the power of AI.

The visual throughline for this project was elemental. Sun, Wind, Water - each individual context needed to feel distinct while anchoring the design choices around Southern California. The goal was to make everything look photoreal as possible, and using AI to punch above our weight for the budget.