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Koper, wow thanks for the link, good monday fun indeed. I've been enjoying listening to Yeasayer more and more lately but hadn't watched any videos. Nice to see bands just going for it in terms of total world/concept-aesthetic creation for their videos. That game board kind of cracked me up as well.

taka, really nice work. awesome website as well.

Also, reminds me of one of Dennis Allain's pieces that always makes me salivate... super crisp but great compositing/development. To me it's this kind of deep image where you stop worrying about whether it's a watercolor or cg and go wow that's an amazing space and/or concept. http://www.dennisallain.com/work/2008/24.html

Really nice work, very generous that you shared even as much as you did. It's so nice to see continued experimentation within the medium. It's work like this that continues to make the argument that visualization is very much a critical design discipline unto itself. b

Travis, I just saw your hospital design process video. I really enjoyed it. It was ambitious but just the kind of project that I think raises the bar on what one can achieve if one thinks about the design and visualization processes as very integrated practices. Really nice. I found it looking for info on whether anyone else had trouble animating vertices. I couldn't get vertices to animate using set key for some reason but when I was able to grab the key using auto key. Thanks for sharing the video, very inspiring. b

Ken thanks for the link. I'm extremely excited about XBR. Among the many amazing features planned, documents and node-based render pass management etc. sound like a dream to me personally. Seems like some of the younger folks familiar with node-based algorithmic modeling in Grasshopper will be familiar with that way of working even if they come at design visualization straight from architecture these days. I'm familiar with it from programming, engineering design, and Maya but seems like some of the younger folks would be able to jump right in. Thanks again for the presentation and the hard work on the platform. b

Thanks Jeff, I really appreciate the capture and posting. I wasn't available for the meeting so I was excited to be able to watch later. b

Dave, Thanks so much for the tips. They hooked up the Pro license! Next I need the connection extension it sounds like so as to make it that much easier, however I'm happy they went Pro since it really did in fact look like a dead end with the Free version into Max. Much appreciated. Good weekend to you. b

Anyone know if there's an export/import path from SketchUp (Free) to 3ds Max 2010 without any plugins? In a particular case I'm in an environment where no plug-ins can be installed but I need to pull SketchUp models into Max on a continual basis. Any ideas much appreciated. b

Hahahahah, Michael nice catch, that is in fact Bryce ( http://sketchup.wikia.com/wiki/Bryce ). More specifically it actually turned out to be his twin brother Victor (for Victory), a hack we did to Bryce. It became a kind of running inside joke for us. You had it exactly right Victor says "woo hoo VICTORY!!! my furniture is constructing itself!". I attached a concept storyboard I sketched out to help understand the arc of the story before doing thumbnail storyboards and you can see that Victor is kind of saying "what the hell where'd my hotel room go" then his life takes a turn for the better when he goes "YES! my furniture compresses itself so I get more space and even pay less!" ha. The arc of the story being a giant V for Victor(y) of course... Glad you enjoyed, it was tremendous fun to make. b

Btw I'd echo Ernest's advice that it really helps to map out and do plenty of tests (n house and for client) for NPR rendering styles esp in animation. Render time is often saved but the fact that a client is asking for a NPR often means that they have pretty specific idea of what they want, or think they want which in many cases can be harder to match than reality : ). But you probably already know this. That being said we did tons of concepting, storyboarding, and testing even for that relatively short animation with a relatively simple set of NRP levels. As far as sketchy lines go if the client is after that effect, I've used squiggle photoshop filters over toon shaded layers. I don't know of any off hand but I'm thinking there's a way to set a squiggle effect to wireframes in AE. I'm sure I'll be asked for that sooner than later and will let you know if I locate any info or tests.

Not sure if this will help but I used V-Ray with Toon shader as base then moved in and out of GI as needed for focus per story etc. I used After Effects to composite the shots and make the transitions. Probably should have used Premiere for final edits but just stayed in and rendered out from After Effects. http://www.f-e-e-d-b-a-c-k.com/visualization/hotel Cheers, b

Matt, Forgive my ignorance (and jealousy that I don't myself own one but does the fact that you've got a Macbook Pro necessarily mean that it's new enough to be Intel iron. If so I have a second silly question, have you done the boot to windows config yet (bootcamp setup)? I've run a few demos and working sessions on Grasshopper lately and more than half the students were running Macs under windows and as far as I could tell Rhino running Grasshopper ran fine without exception. So you might give that a try if it's an option. That will open the world of Grasshopper and GC to you instantly. Otherwise anything built on the .NET API's (= Microsoft will freeze over before porting that to Mac) which includes Grasshopper and Generative Components will very likely be years as a native port to Mac if ever IMO. So dual-boot if you can I'd say, hope that helps. b

Hello! Although I've already logged a few posts since officially joining the forum I wanted to say hello and thank you to all for your warm reception and the very existence of this forum. I've been a heavy reader of the forum for a very long time and figured I was incredibly overdue on joining. My purpose for actually joining at this time is to participate directly in and hopefully contribute in part to the discourse and base of knowledge that is emerging from this forum and this forum only. I'm sure I'll say it over and over but I really really wish to express a great deal of gratitude for the very existence of CG Architect and all of it's users, most certainly including Jeff. If you ask me existence is nothing if not a complicated set of questions about the experience of identity and I would say that the creation and continued energy around CG Architect has done nothing less than help give a clear and proud identity, identifier, and a home base to an entire emerging industry. Before there was such a thing as a "CG Architect" there were only some folks trying to figure out what this space "could be", each in a different corner and corner of the world. It's so amazing to witness the ever unfolding conversation about what the field of CG Architecture is... and continued discussion about what it could be... Peace, b

11 x 14 prints mounted to boards is an excellent idea Travis, I really like that. Many thanks. Aaron, on a similar note for a company and/or client interviews I have also had the experience, like Travis, that being able to split the presentation into multiples can be incredibly helpful. One version of an interview portfolio I broke the projects book into multiple booklets so that those booklets could be passed around separately rather than folks waiting anxiously for the "one book" to come around to them. Plus people can focus on the things that interest them and ignore the stuff that doesn't. As far as arch school applications and self-publishing go Aaron, I think a very long time ago what you said may have been slightly true that it was potentially over the top to self-publish but that was way before inexpensive self-publishing services or even digital desktop publishing for that matter and more about undergrad than grad? IMHO for grad school these days a quality printing would certainly not count against you? I think the only potential danger is that when people do self-publishing they can get carried away with the graphic design of the portfolio rather than keeping the "architectural project signal" to "book design signal" ratio high. In other words it seems easy to get caught up in the idea that since it's a "published book" that it needs to be as throughly designed as a professional monograph which may or may not be true for the application. So one design idea that may or may not be useful and is somewhat obvious is to keep the design of the "book" pretty modular so that when needed you can print at the page level OR the project level OR the book level.... but that may be overdoing/too clever for the school app. Just throwing some ideas out there given that it's nice to have a simple modular portfolio that applies both to school apps and/or work. Cheers, b