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I think from a software standpoint, Blender is perfectly acceptable to use. You could use something like Max, but Blender has gotten to the point that if I were to start all over again I'd be in Blender. The biggest key is less about the modeling software, but your efficiency in it. To work in this industry you need to be fast so understanding all of the tools and plugins that Blender offers to make your workflow more agile is critical. One area to stand out is getting into Unreal and doing work in there. Many places are starting to seriously look at Unreal as a legit workflow, but few places have a true understanding of the workflow required. You need to have a basic understanding of architecture + construction and should be able to read a set of blueprints. You need to be able to find information in blueprints that you may need for reference, so knowing how to find sheets is important. Some projects you will get everything you need from a client, some projects you may need to fill in the gaps. Your work is pretty good, but it is just like everything that is out there. When we hire people and are going through portfolio review, 90 out of 100 will all look the same. The quality of work is high, but it is just so copy-paste from what everyone else is doing that the quality itself does not make it stand out. The world of residential interior renderings of furniture is so overloaded with people that you'll be fighting the bottom feeders for work, the folks that charge 5 bucks a render with unlimited revisions. You need to distinguish yourself from this group of people. Try working on a few exterior shots, but stay away from rainy day in the city shots unless you can do something outstanding and fresh with that as that is another area where people are doing top level work but they all end up looking the same. Speaking of quality. You need to find a balance between quality and speed. It also doesn't help when you find out it took someone 3 months to do a single image and when you tell them that in a studio environment that they'll have 3 days to do the same. They turn a nice shade of ghostly white as the realization sets in.

Jose, Thanks for your post and your appreciation! I find forums like these that are visited by professionals very helpful to someone like myself who, although a professional 3D artist, is new to ArchViz, and all of your posts, yours, @Umer Shafiq and @Ricardo Eloyposts are like GOLD to me because of the tiny pieces of information you all provide in your posts. I've already started a notebook, so please stay in touch on these forums. I promised @Ricardo Eloy I would try harder to keep my posts brief (a hard thing for me), but it's just that I am so excited and enthusiastic to be apart of an ArchViz community. I quoted your sentence about Blender because as someone who couldn't afford Maya or 3ds Max (until I discovered their Indie license), I turned to Blender about 4 years ago and studied and used it solid for over 2-years. However, I stopped using it because I fell victim to those in the game and film/TV markets that said they'll never use Blender because it will never become mainstream or a professional's tool. I once spoke to an owner of a very well-known visual effects company that explained to me why he believes Blender will never be the tool of choice for professionals, and I understood his position. But to me it's a tool just like any other software. The issue that arises, and this is well-documented, is Blender cannot offer the profit-based model tech support that a company like Autodesk is expected to offer when issues arise. And that's really the only reason it is said that Blender will never make it to the "main stream" or an industry-leading "toolset." BUT I LOVE BLENDER TOO! I have an Indie license for Maya and 3ds Max, and so it's affordable for me right now, else I would be using Blender right now to learn ArchViz. I did this project entirely in Blender and UE4 a few years ago and it's been copied since, so I guess that's a compliment. It was a ton of fun to do and I learned a lot about Blender and UE4 in general. Again, Jose - many thanks for your reply to my long-winded post, and I look forward to corresponding with you again on this forum(s).

Yea, hang out with other Viz artist is always fun, since Covid that's what I miss the most for sure. You said that "So for us, we go through multiple rounds of revisions before we send these to clients. As we found out that the clients in most cases do not have the critical eyes to pick up the errors. I am not sure if this is the best way to do it." If it works for you and your client are happy with it, why it won't be the right way to do it? Other studio will tell you what they do, but that doesn't mean their way is the right or the only way, it is just what works for them. As I mentioned earlier, Big VFX studio many times say that they shoot their self on the foot and lose money when they obsess about creating Hyper real scenes or objects. There was a big movement and self critics about their business, because most of them were artist pursuing the very best, but that really hurt their business. Just because it look exactly like a photo doesn't means that is the only way to do it. Again I am not advocating for mediocrity, actually I find myself always pushing more that I was asked for, but there is a fine line to be efficient. In your case I don't dough your modeling is correct, your lighting is fine too, if you want it to look just like the real thing actually you need to introduce 'mistakes' in your models, anything that is hand made is not perfect, anything that is machine produced, has marks of the machine process, like micro scratches, stretch of bending or burning, and while photographing the lighting and environment will reflect on the object. These last renders looks great, but if you look at product Photography studios you'll see there are dark areas in the environment that are left in purpose to create contrast and more interesting shadows and reflections. If anything in your portfolio I would work first on your lighting setup, it seem too even. Then I would introduce scratches and shapes distortion. that will make the object extra believable. If that's what you are looking for. Just the same that looking to actual objects photos I would also recommend to maybe visit some factories that make those products or similar products so you can see how things are made and how that process affect the look on the final product, I prepared this image with comments that I can spot from my Industrial design eye.

It's going to be interesting to see where this all goes. I know there is a good amount of trepidation from the Enscape user side that Vray being a part of the development will try to overcomplicate Enscape and turn it into something like Vantage. To me, Vantage sacrifices too much in performance for physical accuracy that most people don't notice or care about. Overall, I'm not super worried about the future of Vray and Enscape, but Corona is another deal. Now that both companies have merged but are under control from financial backers, I can see one of the bean counters wondering why Corona exists when you have Vray and asking to cut Corona since it's not heavily tied to big film and VFX money. In my humble opinion, we're always going to need Vray in Max because real-time isn't there yet and won't be there for many many years. Sure, it's there for single family housing and minimalistic Scandinavian kitchen renders, but it is absolutely not there yet for larger scale projects. Twinmotion/Lumion/Enscape fall down when we try to do an arena project in them and still get the same quality we get out of Vray. Unreal is the only engine that comes close, but still struggles to deal with the sheer amount of geometry when we import the people for the crowds. Sure, if I had Madden or FIFA sized development teams for crowds, it can be done. But in arch viz where pretty much a team of 1-2 people is responsible for every aspect of the project, Unreal becomes a little harder to implement at a large scale. The other thing that is going to hold back real-time, is the current issues we are all facing with GPU prices. Had the the RTX 30 series not hit massive price spikes, I think we'd be a lot closer to real-time dominance, but as it stands no one can really afford (or want to) to pay 4 times MSRP for a GPU. Hell, when I can sell my old RTX 2060 for 3 times what I paid for it, that's a clear sign something is off. GPU's shouldn't be treated as a return on investment item, they should depreciate as soon as you buy them and not increase in value.

1) Make sure your network is fast enough to handle all users and their large files. There's a big difference in 300 users using autocad vs 20 users using max. 2) Make sure your file server(s) can handle the traffic, and have the network bandwidth, processing power and ram to deal with it all 3) If your file server is in the cloud, make sure you have a VERY FAST broadband connection(s). 4) Use max automation, standardization and central max management. In othe words setup startup scripts from a central location to adjust user settings across the company. This can include typical settings, scripts, menu items etc. That way everybody is using same settings. I've setup our scripts to reset and re-install itself each time max is launched (takes 2 seconds). That way if a user messes up his settings, it will be magically fixed next time he starts up max. 5) Make use of either/or/combination of: XREFS, Live links, Layers, Selection sets, Groups (try and use groups as a last resort). And then show/hide/disable things not needed. If you've added trees/plants, those are typically not needed to be seen constantly while you texture your building. 6) If your working from home in the cloud, avoid thousands of small files. Those typicaly kills your sync. For example if you're using Google Workspace as your file server, dont attempt Unreal or Unity projects direct from your Google Drive. Instead, copy Unreal/Unity projects locally and copy it back. This could also be problematic as you may forget. Instead, setup a version control like GIT or Perforce and that will sort Unreal/Unity files for you more efficiently. 7) Make sure your hardware is cooled efficiently. Overheating can quickly become the cause of major instabilities/crashes

In house viz guy here as well, and in the US. I wouldn't say we are a dying breed, but we are undergoing a paradigm shift for sure.

This is very interesting topic! im in my mid 30's , starting my company 5 years ago after 5-7 years become freelancer. Here in Indonesia the market is very stagnan. archviz price is the same for almost 5-10 years. Young talent rise every years while older establish company do diversity and storm the lower end market with their large man power. Some company get "lucky" [ but mostly because their quality is good too ] and focus on offshore market. Singapore and Malaysia market is a bit cruel; so Aussie and US is the "dream". Competing on those part needs lots of lucky and connection for us here. But in general, here ,actually we can survive with income from archviz industry, as daily expense is relatively low here [ with less than 10 bucks we can get 3x meals a day; rent is around 100-200 bucks a month ]. Maybe retirement in Bali can be alternative for some of you if you love travelling ?

I too am along in years. In my younger years I had the good fortune (misfortune?) of being brainwashed about the sanctity of art. I sowed my wild oats wildly right after architecture school (4 years backpacking in Europe, art school and 10 years doing photography, into guitar playing for a long time (12 Strats) getting my first archtecture related job when I was in my early 30s. So basically I took care of my bucket list in the beginning instead of at the end. The point being, in my case, that you focus on what's in front of you and just keep growing. So I will just keep doing this (could be anything - I like image making) as long as I can. It might be harder to do if your significant other is more traditional but luckily my wife is a painter so we're on the same wave length.

Interesting. I've just hit 60 years old! (f***, how did that happen?) and many of my age group have already retired, so it is something I do think about. I've worked freelance from a spare bedroom for over 30 years and made good money ...well, up until 2009 when the crash happened. What happened to me and may happen to others is that I'm now financially secure. I find interest in other things and my work no longer defines me. It means I no longer stress about being up with all the new technologies, study others' work, look to advance my career and also not worry if no work comes in. I'm very fortunate to be in this position, but I also see it as a privilege of having age (there has to be some benefit, surely!) I don't need to draw a line under my career, I can just carry on until it completely fades out. The only problem I have is renewing my software every year...I need to be sure there will be enough work coming in to justify it.

For this, I would use Xref Scene. The key is a good layer management. Make sure Interior and exterior team uses own prefix for all their layers. Each team can work on their scene and one assembler use xref scene for final assemble and rendering.

I'm an in-house visualization person as well, so here was my experience from 2019. When I had met with my team for our last 2019 team meeting, I had really stressed one singular point. That was the way we are rendering in Dec 2019 will not be the same as we will be rendering in Dec 2020. For us, 2020 is going to represent a another paradigm shift in the rendering world. It is both scary and exciting, but will ultimately lead to great things for our industry. Enscape: We saw our workload drop by almost 50% when Enscape was rolled out. This was both good and bad. Good in that the 500 iteration "what does this look like" rendering process was off our plate. Bad when those renderings were considered "good enough" during client review stages. Where we saw our workload rebound at the end of the year was when these images were made public and tried to sell the product to the public, they were roundly rejected. This was even more so if there was a vote on the project in either city or county votes for bonds to fund it. The public is a lot smarter about CG imagery that we think they are, so they know bad CG when they see it. Even if they don't understand why. I mean, look at the cat-a-strophic results of the terrible CG in Cats. The real benefit of Enscape was realized in those projects that had been through Enscape produced better quality Revit models for us to import, decisions about materials were already made, and we were able to focus back on how well we are visualizing the design intent versus do we like the design at all? Lumion/Twinmotion Same as Enscape. Architects at the controls of this software is good for internal review, but bad for public review. Architects tend to want to show the functional see everything view and twirl-n-hurl animations. They want to break the living hell out of the images with 2-sun set ups, perfectly clear glass on a brilliant sunlit day, and dusk shots where every surface is the same 50% illumination value. These images tend to fail hard when presented to the public, but again, now that the project as at least started in Lumion, we can focus more on art than the importing process. As far as Twinmotion goes, as long as Epic fixes the multiple UI issues then this software is going to be a very difficult competitor for Lumion. Twinmotion has generally always looked better than Lumion, but was beyond frustrating to use so no one ever really adopted it. Substance Designer This is where we are starting to recover our workload. Rather than fight the trend of Enscape, we are now shifting to support our designers. It is no real secret that many architects and interior designers are dreadful material creators and many don't have the extra time to learn how to create good materials. So we can now help them create better base materials using Substance, which in turns gives us as visualizers a better start when it comes time for us to get involved. BimObjects/Megascans These are great and all, but are not really that much of a threat. The reason being is that when working with designers and clients, you can't ever tell them that you can't represent the material or furniture they want because one of those sites doesn't carry it. These sites are great for projects when you just need stuff, but how much work does that really represent? If an architect or interior design has picked out a brick sample, have you ever been able to show them a render that has the brick that has a 50% "close enough" match? Unreal Again, great technology but still has a long way to go to really get adopted. Right now, even with Datasmith, it takes far too long to get into Unreal than it does for Vray rendering or Enscape/Lumion/Twinmotion. If you don't want to spend time in optimization, then somehow you need to convince your studio and possibly your end client that you will need $5,000 or more worth of graphics cards just to view your project. There was an excellent webinar from HOK about using Unreal to visualize the new Texas Rangers baseball stadium, but they were happy with 5-10 FPS when walking around in Unreal with the client. That frame rate was with a Quadro RTX 5000, so no slouch of a GPU. Again, that worked for client reviews but would fail hardcore if that was released to the public. Shitty Models and Cutting Corners In all of the years that Revit was supposed to be this direct link to Max, has anyone reading this ever been able to use a Revit model as-is with no fixes from an architect? Chances are, the answer to that questions is a resounding no. Maybe if the model is in the late CD phase, but not if it is in SD or DD when the model is generally at it's most shitty build. Architects still have a thinking that if we just put this shitty model into Twinmtion that it will look better. Then when it doesn't they blame Twinmotion and never use it again. Revit, ArchiCAD, etc are at their core used for creating construction documents. The extra time it may take to create a complete model for visualization where in real time where someone can't see all of the flaws of the model is going to be a real off putting number for some places. Closing thoughts As I said before, we are undergoing a real shift in our work here in our studio and how we support projects. It will be scary as hell for the next few years as we figure things out, but this is also going to be the most exciting time since 2008-09 when we had to rethink our industry as well. For the big boutique and high end viz studios, the work will always be there for them. Where Enscape is going to be the real threat is for in house viz teams who do not adopt and for the low end el-cheapo visualization places.

I recommend LearnSquared which offers an ArchViz course by industry professionals, covering both technical and artistic aspects.

VRay for sure. It's the only render engine I've used professionally during my roughly 20 years in ArchViz and has only gotten better. Not saying Carona is crap because I don't know, but I've never had a need to use anything else. If you freelance, you can use whatever you want as long as the quality is there. I am of the belief that any of the major rendering engines can turn out quality equivalent to VRay if you learn it well enough, especially taking post-production into account. But yeah, most companies, especially those of particular size/reach/clientelle typically prefer the "industry standard" combo of Max and VRay. Take job postings with a grain of salt. Sometimes they list a slew of CG skills to get more exposure but may only really need to fill a narrow role. If a posting lists anything within your wheelhouse and you are interested in the company, location, etc., just apply. You can gauge better what the actual role is if they contact you. If the person doesn't have actual duty specifics, ask to set up an interview. I got my current role this way. The job was listed with a long list of desired skills, many of which I was not fully onboard with. But after months of no real solid opportunities, I had grown curious what they were doing that needed all the extra skills on top of the ArchVis stuff. All said and done, they just needed someone to render their Revit models in Max with VRay. None of the other stuff was even a factor! Couldn't believe my luck. I guess that's big corporate for you. So don't sit on a job posting if you're unsure.

Hello. I am doing house architectural and interior design. Hope to share my works and learn from other members here. Please check my work to get home plans and beautiful designs

I'd be curious to know if any of the western world architecture firms have declined to continue working on projects in Russia, or if they'll just keep whor'in on as architects do.

Me too. I actually scheduled an hour everyday for trawling the forums, I got quite uppity if anyone in the office moaned- "THIS IS WORK!" I'd say, reaching for my headphones... I'm glad they were active when I was "learning my craft" (still am of course), it must be a bit harder these days for beginners. But I'm as much to blame as anyone, can't remember the last time I was here. First click, a thread with VelvetElvis in, so I consider that a win! Sorry Francisco, can't really add any useful comments re your question.

Yeah, I too miss the old days of forums. Chaos group, Polycount, and CGArchitect kept me from actually doing work during the day. However, all web traffic is down across forums due to the rise of YouTube, ShitTok, Gumroad, etc. The web has become a vastly different place for information and forums don't seem to be the way any more. Epic/Unreal has some great learning resources on their website and YouTube channel that can get you a long way in learning the program. Willaim Faucher's YouTube channel is also fantastic, https://www.youtube.com/c/WilliamFaucher

I wouldn't necessarily be too down on yourself, your work is quite good. Where I think you can find improvement is more on camera composition. One thing that stood out on your work, is your camera views are very similar. Understandably in rendering architecture, there are generally limited camera options but I do feel you can really explore this aspect of your work. There is also a lot of great resources on Artstation Learning, which is also a free resource for everyone.

Hey guys/girls, I've imported some (originally fbx) geometry from another max file into a new file so that I could grab some materials from it, but now no matter what I do I can't get rid of it. I feel like I'm going mental. The geometry shows up as "linked geometry" when selected, but I have no files linked in any of the 2references" options. I have tried creating a box primitive and attaching the offending geometry to it, then deleting it - but this seems to create & delete a set of duplicate geometry rather than getting rid of the original. Pulling my hair out here trying to work out why it won't delete.

I am also a in house artist, and as you read everyone that post here there is not a 'single straight answer' The System that Autodesk created and developed is base one a perfect utopian workflow, that it doesn't apply to anybody LOL. The same as @VelvetElvis mentioned our REVIT model bounce from one designer to other, to interiors, structural, electrical and many more. and each one of them push a pull the building as they need, it. REIT is not designed to create visualization, is to create BIM Data. no matter how much they try to sell you otherwise. Just like @Tom Bussey I been digging a little more in to REVIT, doing my views cleaning elements in there before exporting. Though I do not change the geometry at all, because all the people involved on the project, I don't want to deal with a structural engineer that didn't connect a column with a beam because he already has a detail for that corner. I just hide everything that I won't need for my views and then export FBX to 3DsMax. Inside max I try to keep that live link as much as possible, I usually use family or elements no materials, because the issues already described by others/. I try to keep the link live just in case someone move a wall or delete half of the building. I put edit mesh in top of the linked mesh and try to work that ways until 3Ds Max won't let me do more. I also rely on Raiclone a lot to build parametrics elements and I use lots of scripts to collapse material repetitions, cleaning textures, welding vertex or copy and replace objects, to optimize the scene as much as possible. What I been doing successfully is opening the REVIT model inside REVIT and setup cameras and doing preview images with Enscape and send them right away to the designers or clients, that way, the overall design shows, lights and shadows really shape the building, holes and dual geometry pop right away and you can then have a good talk with designers and try to minimize futures geometry changes. I know this workflow is not perfect and still I have big dramas from time to time, and changes always will be there. But if you output images right away, they really help the designer to see the model with fresh eyes. I also been pushing our designers to use Enscape as much as possible, this really help me, because they can see how horrible the model is when they thought it was "done and great, ready to render' Best luck.

Those scenes look far too heavy for your GPU. Remember also Windows 10 takes 2GB of your video card by default so you only have 4GB left. Windows Task Manager will not show you the correct usage for GPU, you need to use HWinfo Try running the render while watching hwinfo and report back your usage, more than likely you will need more GPU Ram.

Well this forum is full of tales and experiences shared about all this. jut look around. As a quick recap, whatever software that you feel comfortable working with, is the 'best choice'. Nothing wrong with model in REVIT and render in REVIT or render in Lumion, 3Dmax or excel. Having said that, each software has its strengths and limitations, and that's where 3D Max is recommended to do the renderings and animations instead of REVIT. Because it is designed for that, compared to REVIT that is a BIM base modeling app. Both software can talk to each other just fine. Now working with REVIT and Lumion is also pretty fluent. To get to the next level is all in the details. The more care you take on the models and quality of textures, shaders and entourage, lighting, composition ETC, the better the image will be. Learning or not learning 3D Max, is always better to know more, more software gives you more flexibility and more choices to to express your creativity. Best luck.

It really depends on what your intentions are. If you are going to import Revit into Max, change none of the geometry or textures, and just use Max + Vray then your output won't be any better. You'd be better off sticking with Vray inside Revit and stay in the same software ecosystem. Just know that rendering inside Revit has always been tacked on, so it's never going to be a solid integrated process as you would have in Max. Since you are starting with DWG files to begin with, you could full move your workflow to Max only and skip the Revit part. No matter how you look at it, Revit geometry imported into Max isn't always the best stuff to use. They have gotten a lot better at the import process, but it's still not there yet. Unless of course, you need a set of prints which then Revit would still play a role. Max is a bit of a beast to learn, so don't expect to learn in within a week or even a month.

Couldn't disagree more. Sketchup is phenomenal.

Also anyone get the distinct impression that when an architect looks over your shoulder they expect you to be looking at a finished image at all times? ?

Hey guys. I thought I would share with you a series of tutorials for creating architectural vizualisations in Blender. They are arranged according to difficulty level, so if you are new to Blender, you can do it one after another and build your skills gradually. By completing the whole series, you will create a Blender-made industrial styled loft bedroom visualization. Blender picture frames in 5 MINUTES! Quickly add images to your scene and add adjustable frames using curves in Blender. Enhance your interior with all the art in just 5 minutes. Blender tutorial | photorealistic pallet A tutorial showing how to model and texture a photorealistic pallet in blender 3d. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Cyz9WBH9U Blender loft interior tutorial series | part 1: the floor An opening to a series of tutorials for intermediate users who want to improve their interior visualization skills with Blender 3D. The series will cover making a full loft bedroom interior scene including modeling/texturing/lighting as well as some free high-quality assets for download. This first tutorial covers creating a photorealistic wooden floor with a powerful archipack addon (preinstalled in blender 2.79) and using just cc0 free textures Blender loft interior tutorial series | part 2: the factory This part covers creating walls with windows and a concrete ceiling with powerful archipack addon (preinstalled in blender 2.97) and using just cc0 free textures (download links below) Blender loft interior tutorial series | part 3: industrial feel in this episode, we focus on adding stylish industrial details to the space like the metal staircase (using archipack) or the ventilation tube. Blender loft interior tutorial series | part 4: the bed This part covers creating a bed with a base of pallets. Blender loft interior tutorial series | part 5: the lamp This part covers creating a detailed rusty lamp using different modeling techniques such as bezier curves and mesh modeling, procedural, and image-based texturing. We also take a look at the blender's texture painting mode. Finally making a decorative retro-styled lightbulb. Blender loft interior tutorial series | part 6: the rug in this episode, we create a realistic hairy cowhide rug using the blender's particle system and procedural textures. Blender loft interior tutorial series | part 7: the details In this episode, we are taking an overall look at the scene and think over finishing it with necessary assets. Finding inspiration and reference is important to deliver a specific and interesting style in your renders. Blender loft interior tutorial series | part 8: the camera This time DJ sets the focus on the camera as the crucial tool to make your renders really great. How to make a frosted window in blender cycles In this video DJ shows his frost-covered windowpane shader for blender cycles and breaks down his node graph creation process. How to model realistic curtains in Blender In this tutorial, DJ shows how to make a realistic window curtain using the wave modifier (you can do similar stuff by hand using proportional editing with appropriate falloff too ) and blender's clothism along with shape keys. How to make realistic translucent curtains in Blender (shading nodes) Setting up material nodes can seem daunting but it is really fun and easy especially in the new 2.80 (beta) which gives some workflow improvements such as the wrangler addon by default. How to make a camera fly-through animation in blender 2.8 tutorial In this tutorial, DJ jumps into blender 2.8 beta to make a camera fly-through animation out of the loft interior scene created in our tutorial series (but you can use the technique for any scene of your own). Fire simulation in Blender tutorial A very useful tutorial explaining how to create fire simulation in Blender. You can use this technique to create a fireplace adding a warm mood to your interior visualization. I hope you will find them useful

I feel your pain. I'm forcing myself to learn both Rhino and SketchUp and it is slow going, even with some really good tutorials. The biggest hurdle for me is I'm completely engrained in my Max keyboard shortcuts that I hit them all of the time in another program and end up turning something on that I have no idea what it is doing. I would echo what Nicolai says about the SketchUp plugins being life savers, I've got quite a few of them and they make some tasks so much easier to do.

interesting read. especially as I will be in near future totally open to consider in-house job (london) solo and studio experience here, around 12 years. different perspective, different needs - just refreshing I guess. lumion/enscape/tm/d5/whatever? As if a painter should be concerned about new type of brush putting him out of business? ridiculous. if you are a decent illustrator you will get decent work out of ipad. tool is just a tool. if it seems to be doing the job better than others in certain circumstances - embrace it. do not be the one-trick-pony that is best in setting up precalculated irradience map for animations.. (btw: if those max people with 20y exp and crashing plugins are not able to design a tool/setup within max to give you those sketchup lighting permutations - something is not right) regarding quality - as more and more content is being produced do not expect all of it to be top notch. its not needed. world is speeding up and “good enough” is the new “good”. I agree that the forum is quite lacking in content like this one. thank you for the topic and discussion.

In house, based in NZ. As Scott ^ has alluded to, a serious shift underway for us over the last 18+ months. Incidentally, I was going to start a thread that touches on this topic, in a sense, and I'd be interested to hear how others are dealing with this issue. With the rise of software like Enscape (which I enjoy using and supporting design teams with), I feel we have a new battle, one of quality apathy. I'm interested to hear how other teams around the world grapple with the "this image the design team has pumped out of Enscape and Revit for a competition/RFP/concept/DD /etc document is good enough to use and we won't bother with the viz team" attitude. I have moved to Enscape almost fulltime, supporting design teams. It has been really successful for the most part, with almost high-end quality produced in a fraction of the time, but we are finding some studios/individuals still resist. It constantly surprises me how low the standards of designers are when it comes to visuals - clients I can somewhat understand, but it does feel sometimes like visuals become this bartering tool where teams cut any budget from their projects just to keep clients on side. This isn't a chicken little "I'm going to become irrelevant" situation - I'm busier than ever, but certainly I'm seeing more people just accepting quick and dirty enscape renders. As a side, I have a full series of tutorial videos on our intranet, have studio contacts and travel to these studios regularly (bar our Australian studios for obvious reasons). I'd just appreciate any ideas on how to encourage a focus on quality and consistency and actually giving a damn rather than the "this'll do" mentality. Open to critique of course.

Here is a list others and I experienced in the past decade and learned it the hard way: 1. Commitment Phobic When you ask your regular 50% in advance payment. They say “Let me get back to you” and then never do. 2. Trivial Pursuits Belittles the work with descriptors like: “it's just”, “ a simple edit”, “something quick”, “throw together”, “not hard”. 3. Empty Promiser Promises exposure, future opportunities, and referrals to get a lower price 4. Family Guy Has always someone in their family with incredible artistic talent “I know someone who can do it for less” 5. In-decider “I'll know it when I see it” or brings a second opinion from a non-professional 6. Time Traveller Needed it yesterday. Always in a rush. Last-minute procrastinator, poor project and time manager. Their emergency becomes yours. They are the ones who will procrastinate your payment too! 7. Bottom feeder Ultimate bargain hunter. Has an abundance of time to shop around for the lowest bid. Haggles over small amounts of money. 8. Buzz hype-year Uses too many buzzwords like: global, epic, never-before-seen, revolutionary, viral, lit, paradigm-shifting, evergreen, epochal. 9. Neo Dodges direct questions, gives vague and inconsistent answers. Won't give you vital information for you to do a good job. 10. First-time discounters Never worked with you before and immediately asks for a lower price as a “trial”. 11. Never do test jobs! I am seeing and experienced this at the local market and this is upmost the most disgusting! (even here among job posts) A company that asks you to do free test jobs in the hope that you will get their job despite having a portfolio is the worst. Test jobs deteriorate the market, have zero respect for the industry and for creatives. This is a very bad sign if a company asks you to prove yourself to them. Work for free. As well the decision will be based on subjective perceptions like: I like this image, I don't like this image, rather than a design based on strategy. They don't even bother getting back to you after you devoted your time to them, as well as they will look down on you and see you as a homeless beggar, and even if they accept your work, they will force you to sign a contract that will be only beneficial to them and not to you and for a lower salary. Because they don't care if you are just a graduate hoping to get work, or lost your job because of covid, or the industry is just fell over. Even if you remained without a job, if you do free test job you will regret it later and will be just a waste of your precious time what you will never get back! They don't value and respect your time and just want to get another option and they already evaluating you from a low perspective. 12. If you see if a client does not keep their word even in their most trivial thing like promised you to call you and did not, or did not messaged back to you, promised to start the project and never did, or coming back with shady excuses and lies, is a good sign that he/she will be a problem later whom you cannot trust to form a good business relationship 13. Someone who offers you a share, instead of payment They do this only because they don't believe that their product will be successful, otherwise they would never give you a share The solution is just a polite we are not a good fit and let go, otherwise you will regret it later. (Sources: my experience and Chris Do, The Futur) Feel free to add yours.

I think there are many exciting points in your question @CoreyMBeaulieu. Last week, I read something about retirement about not thinking as a 'must' goal but instead a reward whenever you want to use it. I am also an Oldtime here, and it is a good thing that you being in your mid 20's are wandering into this future; when I was your age, I just wanted to gig with my band all around the planet ( we didn't travel much anyway LOL). I got 'serious' about my life also late in life, securing a profession in my earliest 30's. Regarding professional growth, I think that's a given if you are good at what you do, and you are not afraid to showcase it. I did freelance for many years until life hit me hard; then I became the 3D guy at an Architectural firm; I have been lucky enough that the company treats me well (knoking wood). Yes, I suffer everything that any other in house artist suffers. Still, I think my experience has help me deal with it and make it comfortable. For example, I haven't work overnights in years. I keep my schedule very consistent. I guess I just became very efficient. But as you initially question, is there anything else in this profession, and I guess it depends. Because of my age, I could or should be working on a studio as a creative director or something?; maybe, should I open my own studio? or go back to freelancing? I don't know; perhaps too, it is risky for me now. I am the only income for our family. But I am one of those that would take the jump if I feel like. In your case, thinking this now is a good thing, yes, our profession is mutating rapidly. Yes, you can succeed in doing what we have been doing for a while, but learning new things and being a pioneer on new tech will also guarantee survival when time is tough. That's what helps me; they mostly hire me because I know how to do that new thing called VR I am more an artist than a business person; maybe that's why my reluctance to try going solo for a while. Perhaps you are more into the business side; in that case, moving between other studios and gaining new positions and experience may be the way to go. But in the end, doing all that will secure your job stability, then a decent income, and finally retirement can happen when you want, and not when some else tells you that it is time. My dad retired as a sales manager, and now he still works for the same company as a consultant.

small detail cropped from a full render of a lobby we're working on.

I recently had a conversation with someone offline that I found revealing. Some of you know me, some dont. I always try to be an advocate for our profession and community. You can check out my previous 4500 posts if you're unsure. No-one goes into something wanting to be a jerk, but there's a real discord between expectations with this client that has no understanding of what they are asking for, I think its lesson in the telling. I offered to explain why his post/message was offensive, he declined, so Im sharing for the benefit of the arch-viz community here. I wanted to post here with a basic premise for artists: "do not be exploited, recognize your worth" Here's the email I received which I've interspersed with the way I interpret each sentiment from the artist/studio point of view, my words are underlined, client in " ": "I don't recall any of our correspondence, but I am always polite and respectful and so if I didn't appoint you, it would have been because either your work was not good enough, or your fees were above what I could afford. It was nothing personal. Since posting the initial post searching for a freelance CGI artist, I have employed 5 CGI artists, to individually produce a test render for me to see if they could produce the quality that I am looking for, whilst helping them to provide a per render cost for the overall job. It has been a very helpful exercise for all involved and now I have a selection of different artists, with differing styles who I can work with to produce renders for a diverse range of projects. Nobody is being exploited and the prices given to me are prices suggested by the freelancers themselves, based on what I require and how long they think it will take." Ok, so that above says to me he got images made for free. The old 'test' scenario. Dont do this. You have a portfolio to show your work, a plumber doesnt fix a toilet to show he can, you dont need to perform a function either. "In case you hadn't noticed, economically, we are going through extremely challenging times at the moment. This economic disaster has occurred at the exact time that I started my own company. With a brand new company that is less than 6 months old, I am sorry if you feel that I should have huge budgets to spend on starting my company, but that is not the world we live in, especially in London. I am not out to exploit anyone, and it is up to each individual as to whether or not they want to work with someone and provide a service. That is called free market capitalism. Your opinion is your own and you are fully entitled to that." Free market capitalism? No, if you are starting a company in tough times thats your call. A product costs what it costs, an artist doesnt need to prop up a startup unless there are other incentives involved which compensate for the fact that the financial compensation is not comensurate with the task at hand. The artist doesnt get a break on their rent, the fee is the same. Do not let Covid19 lower your rates. The promise of future work is worth less than nothing, it is a red flag in most situations. "My range is between £250 - £400 per image depending on quality and turnaround time. Therefore, for 26 images straight off the bat, that is between £6,500 and £10,400 for the initial images that I need for my currently unbuilt website. For an independent freelance CGI artist, this is a decent job to take on, especially when I am looking to move forward with that artist for all future projects and as my fees increase, I can bake-in future render costs, and therefore pay even more in the long run. This initial work and future relationship should be very appealing to those in the industry, as it clearly has been to those who I have since appointed. Established studios such as those who produced the example images, charge a minimum of £1,600 upwards per image. To spell it out for you, that totals over £41,000 for the initial content that I require for my site. I'd be extremely lucky to earn that in my entire first year in business, let alone have that amount to spend on render costs! Studios charge this amount because they have large overheads for offices and staff, hence why I am looking to link up with an independent freelance artist instead." Let me just qualify this, the samples sent as reference were portfolio images by industry heavy hitters and with the stipulation that anyone who wouldnt hit this quality would be wasting their time. So the request is for world class work, the fee is 325 sterling, per. For 26 images. This is obsenely low when held against the standard required. There is a reason 'established' studios charge appropriate fees, it is to provide good working conditions, a living wage, stable employment and a sustainable business model. Freelancers have essentially the same overhead, per person, that a studio does. Maybe a few bucks down for rent. But they still need the hardware, software, living costs, heathcare, retirement, etc. Freelance should not be a byword for cheap. Freelance is a tough life, should be higher compensation than employment due to the unstable nature of its income. "Unfortunately, at least 50% of the CGI artists out there produce mediocre work that is not up to the quality that I am looking for. This is evident on other freelancer forums that I had posted on previously. I would receive hundreds of emails stating that they could produce high quality renders whilst sending low quality examples. It was pure delusion. By posting example images, I had hoped that those reviewing the post would only contact me if they could honestly produce renders of a similar quality. If they cannot, it is a total waste of both of our time, hence the caveat." this paragraph speaks volumes. the client had already been to fiver.com etc and then came here. Despite his own recognition that there are a lot of artists with varying degrees of standards, his demand for world class work at 325 persists. A blatant insult to not just the best in the business, but to all in the business. To degrade the samples posted to a few hours of work. Pure delusion? Yeah. ----------------- I'll give the guy the benefit of the doubt, he honestly doesnt see what he's saying is degrading. That means its your look out, people. So, I repeat: "do not be exploited, recognize your worth"

OK, as if business is not difficult enough in 2020, I need to come on here to police childish behaviour from what looks to be more like a Kindergarten class than a forum of arch viz professionals. Grow the F up. I have more important things to deal with than telling people to act like adults. If you are not willing to at least act professionally either stop visiting CGarchitect or I'll ban your account. First and last warning.

We provide customers with a rendering of this office building, hoping to get feedback https://www.behance.net/a16956513711915

This is built in Max, rendered in Corona (at 4k), post in AE and some grading in Resolve. People are mostly Anima, but you'll notice some of the main (foreground) people were shot greenscreen. This is an edit of our component of the job, which was all the CGI footage. The client (core12) shot alot of context film and produced the full piece, you can see that at therivere.com Currently being brought into Unreal Engine 4 piece by piece for realtime. Any question, feedback etc is very welcome!! Thanks, Tom.

You could compromise and do 2K draft sizes but with 50% lower render settings. I tend to do my drafts at full HD (1920x1080) but with fairly fast rendering render settings and a heavy use of Vray denoiser to clean up the leftover noise. Most of my draft renderings are straight from Vray. I use the VFB controls and denoiser quite a bit so I can be very fast at getting images out. My AA is usually 1/4 with a noise threshold of .04 all the way to .1. I use semi decent light cache and medium IR maps for GI. I know in this day in age some people reading this may faint or clutch their pearls in horror at those settings, but I can get drafts out in under 8 minutes an image on my local laptop. Denoiser picks up the brunt of the work. These are drafts after all, I want them to look good but not good enough they accidently get slipped into marketing material and released to the world before we are ready.

That usually means you have already keyframes on the timeline of the selected object that are not snapped to frames to quickly fix this be sure to have "snap to frames" checked in the timeline configuration menu, select all keyframes, move them a frame to the right ( this causes all keyframes to snap on the next frame ) and then move them back a frame. after that procedure, all keyframes should exactly sit on a frame and the time configuration should allow to be set to frames display. Its likely that there's a menu or button somewhere which would do a similar thing, but i always use above steps for this

About this article We’re excited to launch the 2024-25 CGarchitect Architectural Visualization Rendering Survey—an annual opportunity to contribute your insights on the latest trends, tools, and challenges in the world of architectural rendering. https://www.cgarchitect.com/features/articles/a5d09c34-announcing-the-2024-25-cgarchitect-architectural-visualization-rendering-survey-your-voice-matters

Photo-real fabrics are certainly one of the most difficult things to achieve in 3D, especially the large fold in the duvet towards the pillows (which looks deflated in this render). My advice is: Provide your artist a high quality close up swatch of the fabric/type. To match this swatch Poliigon have some great fabric materials/textures. https://www.poliigon.com/textures/fabric From my perspective I would say the wrinkles/folds need softening by about 50% in the geometry. Use a subtle displacement for the smaller wrinkles that appear throughout (between the larger folds). Again that last 10% of quality adjustment is super hard so expect it to take time or additional budget since its top-tier kind of work.

Thanks James, Thats what I usually do. I was hoping there was a click and align option but doesn't seem there is one that is native, but I did find plugin that does everything I need for this. https://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/sergos-script-pack Thanks

For geometry cleanup I usually take the model into zbrush, do an automatic retopology and then re project. The retopology lets you select polygon count which is nice, so you can select 15,000 polygons and let it do its work takes a few seconds and its all quads. The model gets a bit rounded in detail areas so the re project then allows you to sharpen those corners, again automatically. The whole thing takes maybe 30 seconds and you have a really clean model to export back to obj. For the texture you can also do an automatic flat unwrap in zbrush, although I prefer to use rizom. This way you can just quickly create a few edge loops and flat unwrap, remove distortion get the texel density consistent and auto pack the unwrap nicely into the 0-1 space. This takes maybe 10-15 minutes for a moderately complex model. Once you have the new uv layout on your obj file you can import this into your photogrammetry software and then re project the texture from the old uv to the new uv. Once you have done this it should look the same as before but with clean quads, clean uv and from there you can just do any cleanup on the textures in substance painter. The main thing is having a good lighting setup, this artist (LuckyFox) has a great result using a light tent and some polarizing filters to capture the albedo as clean as possible for creating the pbr textures. I advise checking it out hes also kind enough to chat about specifics if you get stuck. https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=14629.msg93330#msg93330

Im attempting a more full environment here, more lived-in, than in the original marketing material scene showing these homes. The client renders had no front yard trees (but most homes do so on this street) so i added them here for this personal work. I also think i need advice on how to blend the curb to street intersection from looking CG. Can anyone offer that or other suggestions on how to add more realism. Maybe i need to be more subtle with the water puddles.? Or random object scatter? Or edge of street displace map? Its difficult to show new buildings yet at the same time capture nature and dirt. Thanks for looking. Paul

Hey, I'm adding another video, it's more general but I think very interesting. DJ vs Tom Archviz Battle - get the most out of 2 artist's workflows. Prepare for some raw live emotion in 3D! Two seasoned archviz artists are going for a CG battle with their recent photorealistic interior creations! They will show you the forbidden secrets of their craft including speedups/hacks using external assets and plugins to boost your artworks. Our two challengers are: DJ – an adept at the renegade Blender 3D school, challenging the industry-standard ways to reach the Holy Grail of CG. He will showcase his fresh Scandinavian kitchen project using Corona renderer and 3dsMax with Blender as a secret modeling backbone of the project. and Tom - a pro render wrangler with some serious art superpowers, rendering photoreal still shots and crafty animations using 3dsMax and Corona as his main combo. He will share his latest living room project's behind the scenes to knock out DJ and blow your minds. Struggling to push your archviz martial arts to the next level? Learn from our in-house champions and may the best render win!

5045mm

Hey, I'm a first year architecture student. Is there something cool that I can/should learn right now so that it helps me later on in my career?

I get the point of Heni but, if we say it is open to everyone, then it means everyone. Now related to what Velvet mentioned I think here is an issue also of the type of work people does. For instance I work in house, doing School, Hospitals and similar, it is hard to say but most of those project won't be in the same scale of design that some of the projects showcased here. There is a space to arguing this opinion for sure, but the quality of the project design is a big bias for how the rendering will be. I receive many request from designers such , 'can you do a rendering like this or like that' and they show me lots of very nice high quality skyscrapers or house in the forest type of renderings, when in reality their project is a small strip center in the subs or a humble CMU school expansion. I can talk about here in USA only, but when you get a nice design project, some of those Architectural companies will go with a know Arch viz company instead a single freelancer to produce the renderings, so one thing take to the other. I know this is not a black and white explanation why we may see more companies on the top showcase area, but I think small things here and there may create that perception.

This topic does indeed seem to cycle over and over every few years. I still recall when SketchUp was all the fuss and how it was surely to become the end of our industry. The good'ol days. The key for survival is to hone in on our particular set of skills, to master that which is most valuable that we offer as artists, and then adapt by using the ever increasing tools at our disposal to continue in the process of mastering our craft. All these programs mentioned above are simply tools. Nothing more. Sure, some "tools" have become simple enough so that any architect can now produce standard subpar visuals via the likes of Twinmotion or Lumion. But to create something worthy of being called art, visuals that beautifully work at selling a concept or design, still requires (and IMO it always will) a specialized individual dedicated to perfecting his craft. Be that individual and you'll survive just fine. Call it Industrial Darwinism.

This is an arcvhiz project that i recently made in UE4, let me know what you guys think:

you can check this video cheers!