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That one guy...


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Now most people in my office accept that when I tell them "this will look good" or "this will look bad" that I am 99% of the time correct. It's taken time to get to this position, but it's a good place to be...

 

But there's always that one guy. I recently did a few photomontages of a building (nothing special, just a red brick healthcare building) and took the photographs myself on a bright sunny day (because who wants rain/moody in the real world of arch viz?) and did the job as was required...

 

All of the images were successful and looked "real" but the comment from the architect is that he wants the elevations in shadow to be brighter; so despite my bleating about how it won't look right I did it anyway and made the north sides really bright.

 

This I thought would be fine, but no he wants them brighter still. So my question is this;

 

How do you simulate a nuclear bomb, supernova or star at close distance? I'm using Max/VRay.

 

Realism is key.

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One big ****-off omni light, then over expose the photography, that should give you look you're after. Lens flare too?

 

We've all got those clients, but ultimately they pay the invoice, so sometimes you've just got to take one for the team, do as asked, drink heavily, forget, move onto the next project.....

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If it is any consolation, i work inhouse at an architect office, and i have to deal with those kind of things all the time. "Why is one of the two walls dark?" "Because they are parallell and the sun comes from that direction...?" "Cant you just insert another sun?" "well, technically i could but it is more tempting to go play in traffic." etc.

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The problem is some people just have to comment, so start adding in deliberate, obvious mistakes. ie add an old crazy cat woman into the scene, or have the brick running the wrong way. The "one guy" will notice these, comment, feel like they've earned their salary, and not care about the rest.

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I have had so many conversions like this over the years, it's good to know I'm not alone and going crazy. many scenes with two suns in order to do what was asked. Architects sometimes forget basic physics and common sense.

 

I once was told during a heated discussion that something can be 100% transparent and 100% reflective at the same time. I asked for a picture of this and after 8 years I'm still waiting. Also, there have been numerous occasions where a designer / architect hovering over me while working in photoshop demanded I rotate the image to show the "other side" which lead to a conversation about what is 2D and what is 3D....

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I get those comments regularly, too. And the same thing with colours.

 

Them: "We agreed to put the same colour on the wall and the ceiling."

Me: "It IS the same colour, but more light is hitting the walls and the ceiling is more in the shadow."

 

But they are slowly learning and I'm learning to anticipate this type of comments and "fix the errors" in advance.

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Lmao this is classic! Working internally in design office as visualiser for many years, my all time classic! The colours are not like the sample, which were scanned in made tileable and colour correct.... but they want a moody dark lighting scene, hence physics tend to change the lighting look! You then asked to colour correct in Photoshop, with architect standing and telling you what to change... To finish off with "ok all the colours are 100% now re render because it doesn't look real any more"..... Wtf.... Well could be because we just painted unrealistic flat colour across the scene. I think the reality of politics in design studios is you will always get that one guy who feels if he doesn't say something, then he is not add value. Enjoyed this topic guys, nice one! Hang in there stay positive and sometimes just take a break and go have a beer.. Lol

 

 

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The problem is some people just have to comment, so start adding in deliberate, obvious mistakes.

 

 

Ah, the duck technique

Parkinson's Law of Triviality

 

This started as a piece of corporate lore at Interplay Entertainment. It was well known that producers (a game industry position roughly equivalent to project manager) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn't, they weren't adding value.

 

The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen's animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation.

 

Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "That looks great. Just one thing: get rid of the duck."

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We call it low hanging fruit, we purposefully (most of the time anyways) submit drawings with things we know that plan checkers and/or planning staff will ask us to change. Its like they have to give you X number of comments so we just waste those on things we want to change anyways.

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The "hairy arm technique", as I like to refer to it as, only goes so far if you're working directly for someone. When you take the hairy arm out after they ask, they just ask you to fix the next thing. I empathize with you greatly with lighting, I've had to re-render or absurdly edit the lights/shadows in order to unrealistically bring up shadows or tone down highlights in order to homogenize the scene. No one appreciates chiaroscuro anymore! I think part of the problem is that most people don't understand the dynamic range difference of camera sensors and eyeballs.

 

Just save out as EXR and play around with that.

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I get the 'thermonuclear explosion' request quite a bit. Usually it's people wanting "lights on in the windows so we can see inside". At midday. In the bright sunlight.

It doesn't make it look "welcoming", it makes it look like the lair of Radioactive Man.

 

I think a lot of it stems from clients still being used to images spat out of AutoCAD or who knows what else and then just Photoshopped. There is a totally valid artistic case for non-photoreal images, but that probably needs to be explicitly stated at the start.

 

I think part of the problem is that most people don't understand the dynamic range difference of camera sensors and eyeballs.

 

This. Though most times even a human eye wouldn't be able to see inside a building or into a dark recess, let alone a camera lens. And creatively placed compensatory lighting can only help so much before things just start looking silly.

Edited by Richard7666
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I think that chances are if clients, your directors and architects are asking for things like 'let me see inside the windows' its because there is something lacking in the images presented and the person giving the feedback is struggling to put their finger on it so goes for the easy point which is 'turn on the lights'

 

its pretty irritating to be shown an image that looks like a bad photo with the qualifier of 'well you cant see inside windows on a sunny day'

no mate that's not it. put some interiors in or a really nice reflection.

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In sales they say "The customer is always right". I think this should also hold true, in general, for arch viz.

 

Most of these posts seem to be thinking of the client/designer as the enemy/villain which I think is a mistake.

 

Instead of rolling your eyes and getting pent up with frustration and resentment, find a way to make it work and provide the service you are getting paid to do.

 

Like with colors - it doesn't have to be either all flat colors or dark shadows. You can find a middle ground and turn corners with darkened edges, for instance. Sunlit windows can have a hint of an interior.

 

Our #1 priority should be to make the client satisfied, not perfect photo-realism. Of course there are extreme situations where we can advise the client that something is really disturbing and will go contrary to their marketing goals.

 

I have one designer client who is in a state of perpetual negativity because his "perfect" designs are always being compromised. His hair is falling out in clumps, he's got stomach problems and is always tense.

 

I think you should treat unreasonable requests as a challenge and be as flexible as possible. Healthier both physically and mentally.

Edited by heni30
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I don't think it's an adversarial relationship as some of the recent posts suggest. But rather, when people know they are looking at a rendering, they think it is fake because it is not a photo and therefore what they aren't seeing isn't technically accurate.

 

The problem with this line of thinking is first, photography is no longer an accurate representation of anything. Architectural or otherwise are so heavily manipulated they are essentially renderings in of themselves.

 

I work in an an architecture firm for the firm, technically I don't have clients, i am an architect working with other architects and regularly have these type of conversations. These aren't stupid people or people with no 3d knowledge.

 

A couple years ago we were redoing our office. A hallway was to be painted all white with one wall bright green. I objected and said the white would appear light green and the bright green would appear muted. In short, ugly. I did a rendering where the exact thing happened (even though I could have corrected it in any number of ways). I was accused of faking it to prove my previous objection. They went ahead with the design.

 

One week later the principle walked in and said, "I didn't think it was possible to design a hallway that looked like cancer." Needless to say, the hallway looked as I said it would, as the rendering indicated it would, and still several architects couldn't believe it. It was repainted.

 

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

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I think that chances are if clients, your directors and architects are asking for things like 'let me see inside the windows' its because there is something lacking in the images presented and the person giving the feedback is struggling to put their finger on it so goes for the easy point which is 'turn on the lights'

 

its pretty irritating to be shown an image that looks like a bad photo with the qualifier of 'well you cant see inside windows on a sunny day'

no mate that's not it. put some interiors in or a really nice reflection.

 

It's one guy, not all of them. I'm fairly sure my experience creating compelling images trumps his. What's more annoying is that this guy approached me to do the job instead of our other 3D guys on account of he loves all the stuff he's seen me do for other people - stuff that said other people have simply let me get on with and do properly. It looks good because they didn't all try to throw their two pence in and make absurd changes.

 

 

In sales they say "The customer is always right". I think this should also hold true, in general, for arch viz.

 

I wholeheartedly disagree.

 

I think the point you're missing is that I am averse to making changes that will look absolutely ridiculous. I am not averse to making changes. If you re-read the first post you will see that I did in fact accommodate his request to make it brighter and that the problem lay with him wanting to push it further and further.

 

By the same logic could I demand that the architect move the entrance to the rooftop just because I think it might be better, despite his years of experience telling him otherwise?

 

It's a simple case of letting people do what you pay them to do. It's the sole reason you pay them to do it.

Edited by Macker
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The "hairy arm technique", as I like to refer to it as, only goes so far if you're working directly for someone. When you take the hairy arm out after they ask, they just ask you to fix the next thing. I empathize with you greatly with lighting, I've had to re-render or absurdly edit the lights/shadows in order to unrealistically bring up shadows or tone down highlights in order to homogenize the scene. No one appreciates chiaroscuro anymore! I think part of the problem is that most people don't understand the dynamic range difference of camera sensors and eyeballs.

 

Just save out as EXR and play around with that.

 

Ryan is close, maybe its a regional colloquialism, but we call it 'The Hairy Elbow'.

Seriously though, try and stand your ground.

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Resisted the "make it brighter still" changes. Spoke to him about it, he pulls out a crappy toner ink print out of it saying "but it looks dark when it's printed". I said that's a problem with the printer, open it on your screen.

 

He agreed it was more than bright enough.

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Some interesting reading about the subject and that is Parkinson's law of triviality.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality

This started as a piece of corporate lore at Interplay Entertainment. It was well known that producers (a game industry position roughly equivalent to project manager) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn't, they weren't adding value.

 

The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen's animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation.

 

Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "That looks great. Just one thing: get rid of the duck."

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