Accuracy

[Frankie]

Hello, I come from a background of game CG. I was wondering how accurate you try to make your 3d models. For example with interiors do you just worry about the room size then eye ball the rest such as skirting's or window depth. Then with exteriors would you worry about about the dimensions of girders or would you be fine with anything as long as it looks ok in the end. Sorry if this is a funny question

[STRAT]

yup, you can tell you're from a gaming background.

 

as a professional cg artist you dont try. you do. accuracy is most important. ok, you might eye a few things up, but in general you get into working routine of standards and accuracy. it really is important.

 

if you draw for fun or just enjoyment then accuracy doesn't really matter.

[JamesTaylor]

i guess this is somewhat of an open ended question.

 

Ultimately if it looks right, it is right as our work is being used as a communication medium this is the be all and end all. As a regular occurance we get achitects looking at an image and asking for elements to be amended as they dont appear correctly, when you point out that they are modelled to the correct scale they still want it changing even tho it is no longer correct / accurate. I would say that an architects favorite saying is " we can cheat a little"!

 

However, there are instances such as verified images (haven't actually had any experience of these myself) where i would expect that accuracy is paramount as the image is going to be used as legal record rarther than an artists impression.

 

A final point i would add is that as there are many standard sizes that are commonly specified for features such as door openings, skirting boards etc. in the architectural industry that people simply get used to modelling elements to sizes that are accurate by default. When these basic elements aren't scaled appropriately the image just doesn't sit correctly with the eye (problems of scale can simply be caused by a choosen camera angle rather than modelling inaccuracy) ... this then takes us back round the route of "we can cheat a little"!!

 

so in summary, we try to be as accurate as possible but we can cheat when required!!

[Frankie]

Thanks for the replies! Do you know where I could see examples of the kind of plans you would work from? (sorry if they are somewhere else on CG architect, I am still looking though all the sections)

 

Sorry Steve I have to disagree that as a CG artist accuracy is most important, for example when working on organic models there are no blueprints to follow or rules that can be applied to everything. However I do see what you mean about cg in this field!

 

The reason I was asking was I felt like expanding my skill set but I didn't want to start off modeling and rendering like this with bad habits. If it's of any interest I setup a webpage with some models on at http://www.frankiehobbins.com

[STRAT]

i meant cg archi artist.

[upshot]

Having an architectural background and actually understanding how buildings go together is quite important IMHO... If your going beyond simple sketch ideas and trying to give a somewhat accurate impression of what a place will be like it's paramount. Personally I'm a +/- 1" tolerance type and don't sweat it much beyond that but if you don't know (for example) how deep a stud backed brick cavity wall is within an inch or two the believability of your rendering is going to be quickly picked up by clients... they won't know what's wrong but they will recognize it!

[Brian Cassil]

Here's my take. If it's convinient and easy and if the information is readily available I'll do my part to make things accurate. But much of the time I'm doing renderings of projects that are in schematic or even conceptual design phases. In those cases nothing has really been figured out and very little is documented, I'm just given some loose sketches and told to make it look good so I do the best I can and make things up as I go and accuracy is thrown out the window.