FlytE

Thanks all. Paul I am not a huge fan of the silhouetted people but the people I work with are. In their view there is a commitment undertaken when you start putting real people into concept render you not only run the risk of the visual looking more like a finished space, but you also risk sending the wrong message about the type of crowd that might be attracted to the space. At concept design stages neither of these things are a good thing so the more conceptual (and flexible) you can keep it the better. That being said, in my experience these sort of visuals it don't really work if you have NO people in it as the busy atmosphere is also a selling point, so silhouetted people seems like a happy medium I guess... Justin, although it changed numerous times the section ended up being a crucial image in design discussions and was in some ways the most useful of the lot LOL.

I am looking back at the images and they seem to have been greatly compressed upon upload. The originals are much sharper than this... strange...

Studio/Institution: Graven Images Client: Carlson Group Genre: Commercial Interior Software: Max + Vray, Photoshop and AfterEffects Website: http://www.graven.co.uk Description: All, Thought I would share these with you. Some concept renders produced for the new Radisson Blu that has opened in the Aqua Tower in Chicago. The images were different to the norm in that they were to be moody and conceptual while retaining as much flexibility as possible to accomodate design changes. It wasn't about realism so much as selling the dream. [ATTACH=CONFIG]45604[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]45605[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]45606[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]45607[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]45608[/ATTACH]

I started using twitter not that long ago and I can honestly say that it has absolutely rocked my world - I am kicking myself that i didnt look at it sooner. It has opened up the doors to so many things that otherwise I would have only found had I either spent alot of time specifically looking, or just happened to come across by accident. I enjoy constant updates on vfx, archviz recruitment, media companies, other freelancers as well as links to videos, tutorials, scripts and other useful stuff that people are posting.... and thats just the tip of the iceberg. Honestly? I cannot recommend it enough.

yeah sorry to start your feedback on a negative note arnold. Good luck with your new site

Arnold I am familiar with you on these forums and I think highly of your work so I feel I would be doing you an injustice if I wasnt completely honest with you about your site. I couldn't really look at it for any length of time because the images shifting direction left me with motion sickness.... and I am not being sarcastic with that remark, i mean I literally had to close the webpage because I felt nauseous after a few shifting motions. I am probably an exception to the rule as I get motion sick quite easily sometimes... but I would be interested to see if anyone else gets the same effect. However if you want my honest advice I would suggest making the images fade slightly instead of sliding all the time. Other than the sliding, your site seemed slick

In the nicest was possible, I think I would instantly respect a visualisation company slightly less if I saw they were posting their fees on their site.... if I am being completely honest. My reasons for not posting fees are slightly different though. As much as I respect my local competition (and I do because I know alot of them and have worked either for or with some of them in the past), I am not keen on having my fees displayed to them... and the rest of the world. Its not personal, and neither is it a huge secret as such because I would probably be willing to discuss the subject over a pint or two, but I don't particularly feel comfortable with gift-wrapping anyone the opportunity to undercut me, especially given the competitive nature of the market.

The addition of bad people is the best way to ruin a really good render. Selection of the right kind of person matters alot, as does the sun angle thats hitting them, their style and fashion, which way they are looking and a host of other things. But none of these matter if you don't have the motivation to storyboard, select and adjust the people to a high standard.... and rightly or wrongly I am of the opinion that poor people is either motivation burnout or laziness, neither of which is going to keep you ahead of the game. The people you put into your image should be given just as much attention, if not more, than anything else that has gone into your render. They should tell a story by interacting with each other and with the space. They should loosely be the kind of people that would be generally be occupying that space in real life and the colour of their clothes should be sympathetic to the tone of the render so as not to draw too much attention to themselves. They should have a vibe about them and relevant lighting. You aren't going to find all that handed to you on a platter in a people bundle. So to cut a long story short, yes there are some good ones and some bad ones, but its up the the artist to take responsibility for his/her render and spend some time on making the people look good.

I would have no hesitation in putting specific clients I have done work for onto a website, regardless of who my employer was at the time. I imagine that you would have no problem listing these clients you worked for on your CV and sending it out to people, so is there really any difference? Where I think it crosses the line is if you promote actual work that you did with the last employer because in alot of cases they own anything you worked on, quite possibly under contract.... or in some cases maybe the projects themselves were under a confidentiality agreement. They don't own your experience though chief.

Unless the animation model is extremely heavy, which would drive your ram to oblivion, your machine spec is definitely good enough to handle doing animations. If you ask me, it sounds like some kind of stupid anomaly in your model, a piece of corrupted geometry perhaps? Try doing some trial and error seperation of your model to weed it out. Other things that can cause rediculous crashes are hardware accelleration and graphics driver issues. This is currently happening to me on an occasional basis and has only started happening with max2010 - i am trying to get to the bottom of it. Make sure you have neatly organised your textures and you dont have any that are a whopping great size in your scene. It sounds daft but sometimes the sheer effort for max to find your resources over a network, or load a huge texture into ram, is enough to crash it. For what its worth, in my experience when it comes to animation the most important thing (much more so than still images) is to be REALLY organised. Keep everything your model organised and well named, proxy whatever you can our your model, keep your materials, cameras, grouping, references, xrefs, and project folder well named and organised etc. You cannot be too organised when undertaking an animation. That way you know what everything is and where it should go... and you can troubleshoot your project faster if problems arise. good luck.

Neil, I don't want to comment on individual applications but I will say that there seems to be wide range and that the majority of them have come from outside the UK... which indicates to me that the current state of the market is such that people are keen enough to move country quickly. Joseph, the 3D visualisers within graven work as an integrated part of the design team. We do not tend to produce high end visuals at the end of the design process (in the standard sense of architectural visualisation), but we produce low, medium, and high-end images - both conceptual and photoreal - throughout the entire design process. On rare occasions, entire multi-million pound project designs have been developed and signed off on our 3D's alone with no intervention from 2D cad. That being said however, the quick turnaround of interior refurbishments means that generally our 3D's dont make it onto the website because by that time the interiors can be photographed etc. I have attached a handful of images to show you the kind of stuff that we have done internally. Unfortunately this is just a taster as most of the really juicy high-end stuff is tied up in confidentiality agreements, but hopefully this gives a little bit of an idea.

Just wanted to mention it in case anyone is interested. More info on CGArchitect Jobs. "Graven Images is an award winning cross-disciplinary design studio based in Glasgow, UK. We specialise in design services for corporate, public and hotel and leisure sectors including interior design, branding and communications design and exhibition design. Our people are talented professionals drawn from a wide range of creative and technical backgrounds. We often work in cross-disciplinary teams and enjoy challenges helping to create integrated and useful design solutions."

Work it backwards. Lets assume one image takes you 1 week to produce. That means you can fit 4 images in a month. Figure out how much you need a month to cover your basic living essentials, food, rent, electric bills, project overheads, equipment, gasoline, etc etc. Once you have worked out how much that is, add on how much profit you want to make on top of that.... i would recommend at LEAST 10%. Divide it by 4 and assuming you are going by the 1 image = 1 week principle - thats about how much you charge per image. That being said, Maxer's suggested figures seem reasonable to me.... for what its worth.

I am kinda envious that you met frank ching, jeff. His books were a big part of why i got into 3D.

professional turd polisher or silk purse tailor are two of my favourites.... on a more serious note, i usually refer to myself as a 3d artist or digital artist. It avoids the vague expressions that I am usually given when I mention the word 'visualiser'