BASF Brings Automotive Colors to Life on Digital Platform

BASF's Coatings Division is offering automotive designers a digital environment through AUROOM that enables the creation of realistic vehicle colors. BASF's virtual color rendering encompasses all aspects of automotive paints, including properties such as brightness and gloss. Designers can apply these colors to automobile models, enabling them to paint virtually any color and achieve realistic results even in the early design phase of the vehicle. Mark Gutjahr, Head of European Automotive Color Design at BASF Coatings Division, stated: "Automotive paints appear quite complex when we evaluate the position and properties of the surface to which they are applied and their resulting effects on human perception. Digitalized colors make it easy to understand the effect of these color parameters on a 3D shape, allowing designers to see how they appear in their own models." BASF produces over 600 colors in Europe, continuously expanding with newly designed shades. This portfolio will subsequently be scanned by cameras, and the high volume of appearance data generated during the scanning process will be processed with a mathematical model. BASF's technical infrastructure and expertise in color contribute to ensuring accuracy. Automotive designers can access comprehensive color data on the AUROOM platform and apply it to various 3D shapes offered by the platform or to their own computer-aided designs. Krzysztof Patryk Stolarzewicz, Global Head of Strategic Marketing at BASF Coatings Division, commented on AUROOM: "Digitalization is a highly important topic, particularly in the automotive sector. We have extensive experience in color creation in our laboratories, and by digitizing these, we can create designs that closely resemble reality. For our customers, this means the color decision process will be faster, easier, and significantly more efficient. By enabling customers to experience all vehicle color varieties that will influence automobile buyers' purchasing decisions, they can use the data for brand-specific automobile configurators."