Solar Racking Assembly Animation for Nuance Energy's Osprey PowerNEST®

The brief

Tom at Nuance Energy first asked for a 20–30 second assembly video. He sent the full STEP assembly and described the order: foundation rods, base plate, top plate, purlin, tilt bracket, solar panels, top clamp, then cable bracing. For each part he wanted an exploded view, then the part coming together, then a pause with text about the engineering.

We looked at the part count and the pauses and told him straight away it would run closer to a minute. Every pause needs time to read, and cutting them would defeat the point. As steps were added along the way, it grew to just over 90 seconds, which Tom was happy with.

Two moments mattered most to Tom: the top clamp and the tilt bracket, the only complex parts in the system. And he wanted to see the top clamp's teeth actually bite into the solar panel frame. That's the detail that tells an installer the panel isn't going anywhere.

Planning around a 10-day deadline

By the time the project was approved, the launch date was 10 days away. There was no room for a big revision late in the game, so we set up the project to catch problems early:

• A call before starting. We went through the product and the instruction document with Tom on a video call, so the brief was clear before any modeling.
• A low-resolution draft of step 1 first. Before building out the whole video, we sent a rough draft of the first step to confirm the direction. Tom confirmed it and clarified one thing: only the foundation depth needed a dimension on screen, not every spacing.
• A full draft, then all feedback at once. When the complete rough cut was ready, we asked Tom to collect every note from his team into one list. Changing the animation after the final render would cost a full day, so one consolidated round was the only way to hit the date.
• A text style check before applying it everywhere. We sent two sample frames with the title and caption style in the brand orange, and only rolled it out across the video once Tom approved it.

Tom was quick to respond throughout, often late at night his time, and that made the schedule possible.

Getting the engineering details right

The audience is solar installers and the people who buy racking for their projects. They'll judge the product by whether the animation matches how it's really built.

• Real materials. Tom sent sample photos of each material: galvanized steel, fiberglass rebar, aluminum, steel cable and stainless steel hardware. We matched each one, so a viewer can tell the fiberglass rods from the steel plates at a glance.
• The top clamp teeth. Our first version showed the teeth bending. Tom sent photos of a real clamped panel: the teeth don't bend, they slightly bite into the frame. We changed it to match.
• Tools without the cost of modeling them. Tom wanted to show the crimping tool and the cable tensioner. Modeling both in 3D would have added cost and time the deadline didn't have. Instead, we kept the crimping animation with arrows and showed photos of the tools beside it at the right moments.
• A new part mid-project. Partway through, Nuance Energy added wire management clips to the design. Tom sent the new STEP file, and we added the step after cable bracing.
• Showing scale. The video ends by pulling back as more full assemblies appear in the field, to show the system works for large solar projects, not just one table.

We delivered two versions, with and without the earth anchor step, so Nuance Energy could use the one that fit each installation type.

The last 24 hours

The final render was already running, on extra rented GPUs to make the deadline, when Tom sent an urgent message: their engineer had spotted that the cable bracing steps were in the wrong order. The choke loop at the base plate had to come first, then the top plate connection.

We stopped the render, reworked the cable bracing sequence using the engineer's sketch and a reference video Tom sent, and rendered again. Getting it right mattered more than the extra hours.

Then came the text. Tom asked for "vertical rods" to become "foundation rods" throughout, and said one longer caption was hard to read in time. Rather than stretch every caption, we gave long captions 0.75 seconds more and left short ones as they were.

The video was delivered on the launch deadline. A few hours later, Nuance Energy's CEO reviewed it and sent a list of 14 final changes: a new logo, longer holds on key shots, text edits and one stray arrow to remove. We turned all 14 around the same day.

What Tom said

When the final version came through, Tom's first message was:

"This is fantastic. Thank you! … What is crazy to me is how well it turned out."

And in his review:

"Astounding attention to detail and strong work ethic. Very satisfied."

— Tom, Nuance Energy

Before the project was even closed, Tom was already planning the next ones: rooftop renders of the PowerNEST, and videos for the new ground, tilt and rooftop versions once the designs are finalized.