Impression of Autodesk 2009 and the danger of CG Arch industry disappearing

[Richard McCarthy]

I just went to an Autodesk product launch event and saw Revit 2009, I gotta say I am extremely impressed, although I don't know how good the FBX import/export going to be, but the inclusion of Mental Ray renderer in Autodesk Revit with push-button render looks extremely promising. This looks like to be the most significant release since v7 or v8!

 

 

On the AutoCAD end, I am also equally impressed, I don't use AutoCAD and the last AutoCAD I have used was ACAD 2000, and holy cow ACAD 2009 looks completely nothing like the crusty OLD autoCAD I know of. The interface is significantly streamlined as is with workflow features, along with a pan-product unified interface on camera (the so called steering wheel and view cube). I guess Autodesk finally get the message from the users that their old clunky interfaces are long due for a revamp!

 

 

A new product called Autodesk Impression also looks quite impressive that seems to integrate with Autodesk product lines, which offers Piranesi/Sketch-like function for quick NPR renderings with highly automated product integration/ workflow (automatic block swapping/flexibilty in NPR styles and consistent styles across project)

 

 

The impression I got after walking out of the event is that it seems specialist CG rendering jobs are now in danger, since many architects can get professional quality rendering at the push of ONE button (Autodesk Revit now comes with Mental Ray). Ofcourse, the CG arch specialists still have the niche of animation on their side, but I think this industry is slowly and rapidly shrinking as software product now doing more, and automating more tasks. Let's not forget as more software become more easily interoperatable (Revit FBX -> 3DS MAX DESIGN), I think it is only a question of how long CG arch industry will completely disappear in a few years time.

[Jim Mann]

professional quality rendering at the push of ONE button

 

The mythical "make art" button finally arrives!

 

However, as the make-art button doesn't yet include composition, compositing, issues of lighting and the quality of materials then I reckon we should be okay as an industry for a little longer yet. Sounds like we will need to work a bit harder to persuade clients of the value of what we do compared to in-house though.

 

Richard, did they say when all these 2009 versions would be available?

 

Jim

[lyca]

I try to stay optimiste,

we must find arguments to convince the client

- to not use the "art button"

- not giving the to cheapper overseas service

- that our quality is worth the money

- etc. etc.

 

business is becoming harder everyday, some client do not understand why pay more to get very high quality, they prefer to pay less and get a average quality. I say that cause some of my client say that my work is sometimes to much overdone for them, that they don't need so much details.

 

Something else i don't understand is why Autodesk is working so hard against us, i've got the feeling that they are putting all our tools in the architecture software, little by little.

So my next move will be to learn Revit than i have to find a new direction to drive my career.

[Craig Ramsay]

I have a webinrar on Revit in an hour so it will be interesting to see how things have progressed.

[Nic H]

lols

 

Our industry will not dissapear, it might mean more of teh shitty / design development jobs get done in house which in turn will widen the gap between higher end stuff and low end stuff forcing a redefining of exactly what visualizers do and slightly changing teh market.

 

I really would not worry about it, if anything i think these kind of tools will strengthen demand (within economic reasoning) for visualisation. As more people get exposed to it they will want better and better images and i dont think architects and designers will be able to meet or better the job of full time artists/visualizers at any stage without significant effort and training.

 

also no matter how well 'one button' solutions are marketed they are generally inferior to existing methods. I cant think of any one button solutions that are actually that.

[AJLynn]

Stuff gets better, expectations go up and the need for pros remains. Yesterday one of the partners in my office came to me with some renders one of the intern architects had done, that were quick and not billed separately to the client. The client had rejected them and wanted pro quality. As examples of what they were looking for they showed him some graphics... which were actually professional interior photos of another of our buildings.

 

Speaking of which, I think the client is going to pay and I don't have the time for it so if anybody wants a small (4 university classrooms with a bunch of repeated elements) job in the next couple weeks PM me and link some samples

[mahorela]

it seems like the autodesk marketing machine did their job..........obviously they make out their products to look incredible, push one button and look what you get. I have serious doubts about any mental ray system being push button........they are paid to make it look that way to excite architects.....the reality is always quite different.

[jhiler]

You will get more and more of the Jr people in design studios outputting the average work that in the case of design studies is usually ok. You will not get a lot of the super photo-realistic stuff that is needed for sales and marketing tools. When a designer makes a change to a design and needs a rendering from Revit in 15 minutes and doesn't get it because it takes an hour, that is where the issues will come up.

 

Granted I haven't tested Revit 2009 so I don't know what times for rendering are like. I did watch one of the new videos about interoperability with Max/Revit and in the video they said a rendering from Revit took 1 hour while it only took 5 minutes with Max. Also the person in the video did not share their settings in Revit or Max, so there is still some information that can make a difference.

 

The need for pros will still be out there and there will never be the magic 'make rendering' button that gives an artist everything they want at once.

[Brian Smith]

i dont think we have much to be worried about. not everyone is as passionate about 3D as those of us on these forums, and for many architects/engineers, 3D use (regardless of who makes it) is just a tool, and to many a tool that isn't worth the trouble. the majority of the time (in my experience), it's not even the architect that is spending the money...it's the owner. architects tend to be more concerned about the design and not having their building collapse.

 

just like website designers loose some business to 3D viz companies that can produce their own websites, the same will always happen with us. but if a 3D viz company wants a really good site with all the bells and whistles, then it will probably have to go with a dedicated web design firm.

[Neil Woodhouse]

I'm glad that someone has brought this up, as it's a trend that is worrying me.

 

I'd like some opinions - especially from the guys here in the UK, on how they see the architectural viz industry going with the collapse of the mortgage market and it's effect on new build etc. Several companies that i deal with are laying staff off and cutting costs in the 'service' areas, this obviousley has an impact on my business.

 

Additionally has anyone come across the Google Sketchup phenomenon yet? This is similar to the the problem that Web Designers had around 10 years ago when Microsoft ( god bless em - not ) included Front Page Express as part of the office package, suddenley there were literally billions of little web companies springing up from home offices producing awful websites which did a lot of damage to the pros. I come across instances of this with the 'free' version of sketchup.

 

My opinions of course.

[shaneis]

It strikes me that photographers have just been through a similar upheaval - with pro-level software, digital hardware and "fix my photo" magic buttons all potentially eating away at their art and livelihoods. Though, they have adapted and survived. In fact, they are demanding higher prices and hanging (their works) in galleries where they never would have been allowed before.

 

Sure, the population figured that with a (insert latest number) megapixel camera, a fancy colour printer, some glossy paper and photoshop elements, they could be filling their walls with home-brewed masterpieces.

 

"I'll do it myself", they thought, "it'll be easy and save me a fortune on film and laboratory printing - freedom at last!".

 

As we speak, millions of people are spending hours, no, days standing behind their Auto focus/ exposure/ iso cameras, then sitting in front of their auto brightness/ contrast/ colour photo editing program and churning out crappy photos with their auto crop/print-quality/rgb-to-cmyk printers that seem to drink expensive ink by the gallon and using lossy file formats from start to finish, all in the hope to get back the hundreds or thousands of dollars they spent when they traded-in they're 35mm handy-snap that was never broken in the first place and had always produced good photos when they had the local photo lab develop the film for them.

 

Nowadays, with the wisdom of hindsight people are realising that producing a great photograph is bloody hard work. Even with technology covering all the, well, technical elements, the average Joe still has the uncanny ability to make an amazingly flat and boring photograph. What's left is the understanding that it's still a matter of having the gift of knowing what/ where/ when to shoot and what/ where/ when not to shoot and on top of that, what to do/ not do with the image in the lab? There is no automatic high-tech button to press that can do that for you or even show you how. You've either got it or you don't and so the photographer lives on to fight (or shoot) another day...

 

I'm thinking that visualizers (aka professional-rendering-artist-type-people) will survive too. Sure, the world will be littered with dodgy renderings that also happen to have "physically-accurate" lighting and photometry...but who gives a toss?

[Chad Warner]

I've seen some of the "push button" Mental ray renders out of Revit, and it literally is that easy to do, and they are not bad looking renders to boot. What I think it really boils down to (and the same goes for earlier versions of Revit that had a renderer built in (I don't remember which) as well as sketchup) is that it may be a nice rendering, but I wouldn't want to claim it as my own, and I doubt 90% of the people on this forum would want to claim it as their own.

 

Revit with mental Ray will work great for those people who use it. Will I see a loss in business because of it? I'm sure I will. But the VAST majority of the achitects I work with don't even use Revit, so at least at this point, I'm not terribly concerned.

[Craig Ramsay]

OK just finished my webinrar on Revit and it's a very impressive bit of software. He didn't actually go into the rendering side of things but did show some of the modelling work-flow.

 

I think for companies like residential builders that are pretty much using standard components for each building then it's a really good program for them to be working with. On the other hand, for companies producing bespoke buildings or anything slightly organic (most of my clients), I doubt this program would work for them at all.

 

I am quite often involved in a building project very early on in it's life, working from 'concept' or 'sketch' drawings and often find that I usually have to fudge elevations or plans to even get the building to work in 3D, this is part of the service I offer and one of the reasons that I get repeat business. Later on in the marketing stage, even if the client did have a full on Revit model of the building I really doubt they would be able to output images anywhere near the quality of an experienced visualisation artist. I'm not worried at all

[AJLynn]

Those Revit "webinars" always make it look like you can do a complete DD set and a bunch of renders from scratch in 2 hours, but when you really get into it things get more complicated. It's really no more a "make building" button than it is a "make art" button.

[ihabkal]

Architects spend 50% of their time going through meetings and making sure their designs follow he codes and don't have that much time to worry about doing renderings themselves. You will always need specialised people, one person can't do everything on his own, so arch firms will need illustrators no matter how easy it gets. A talented architect makes many times more than a renderer per hour so it is cheaper for him to hire one to do a rendering for him so that he can have a life of his own. If I were you I would worry more about jobs going out to sweatshops who ask for less than $5 an hour and pay their poor employees 30 cents an hour, but in my opinion if a client wants a $300 rendering, then he is not worth my time.

Autodesk always makes things look so easy in their shows, I remember the one I attended 8-9 years ago with max 2 or 3, in 5 minutes he had a flying butterfly with growing plants. But it took him hours to set it up before the show. Same thing with Mental Ray materials and lighting.

Revit builds standard things from libraries. 3Dsmax gives you the freedom to model anything you imagine. Guess what? there are always going to be limitations on Revit, even if you have 300 doors, the client is going to want one that you don't have and that you need to model. It is a great tool, but will never replace the designer/artist, it is not as flexible as your brain and 3dsmax are.

 

For anyoen who is worried about his job disappearing, have more faith in your abilities, or no one will. If you think you are expendable, then you probably will be.

[Richard McCarthy]

The mythical "make art" button finally arrives!

 

However, as the make-art button doesn't yet include composition, compositing, issues of lighting and the quality of materials then I reckon we should be okay as an industry for a little longer yet. Sounds like we will need to work a bit harder to persuade clients of the value of what we do compared to in-house though.

 

Richard, did they say when all these 2009 versions would be available?

 

Jim

 

Jim, don't mind me saying but it seems you think all architects are clueless who don't know how to draw. Quite contrary really, architects gone through 5 years (in some countries 6-8 years) of intense competitions in school and most are more than competent artists. As a student you have to survive relentless critiques and countless presentations before you can even graduate.

 

Now about Revit, Revit is basically a 3D modeler, you are modeling at the same time documenting the drawing, so it is not a "MAKE ART" button, Mental Ray inclusion is simply an extension of the current tool set to make rendering easier without having to purchase external program. Yes, Architect does understand "composition", "lighting" and and "materials" too, that's what every working architect has to deal with in their design. After all, the appreciation and the knowledge for architecture didn't begin with CG arch rendering... it existed long before that.. the things you think you know, it comes from architecture after all...

 

And honestly, CG arch rendering was born out of the fact that there was a significant generation gap between the old guard in arch office who don't use computer (who are also fading fast), and the computer generation.

Nowadays, every arch student knows how to drive a 3DS MAX/Lightwave/XSI with variety of renderers, it is a "must" to survive the arch school critique/presentation. To say only cg rendering specialist (with many who has no background in architecture) knows better than a real architect how to present THEIR OWN design is a little absurd.

 

 

 

The 2009 autodesk product lines will be avaliable this month.

[Devin Johnston]

My office uses ArchiCAD to do all of its projects; one of its features is a "one button" render engine. I was worried when we first started using it; I thought that I would be replaced because any designer could whip out a rendering when ever they felt like it. That was several years ago and if anything I have more work now than I did then. It turns out that even thought the tool is there and capable of creating some pretty descent imagery they only use it to do study renderings. Even then the quality isn't that great because even though it's a "one button" solution to get the really good stuff out of it you have to spend time working on it. I don't see this changing much since they would much rather have a specialist do the work and not have to worry about it.

[Richard McCarthy]

You will get more and more of the Jr people in design studios outputting the average work that in the case of design studies is usually ok. You will not get a lot of the super photo-realistic stuff that is needed for sales and marketing tools. When a designer makes a change to a design and needs a rendering from Revit in 15 minutes and doesn't get it because it takes an hour, that is where the issues will come up.

 

Granted I haven't tested Revit 2009 so I don't know what times for rendering are like. I did watch one of the new videos about interoperability with Max/Revit and in the video they said a rendering from Revit took 1 hour while it only took 5 minutes with Max. Also the person in the video did not share their settings in Revit or Max, so there is still some information that can make a difference.

 

The need for pros will still be out there and there will never be the magic 'make rendering' button that gives an artist everything they want at once.

 

 

Well, one of the most significant hindurance I found in architecture/cgarch viz business is the design cycle / viz cycle. Usually CG are done at the end of design cycle, when everything is finishing up and final design sent to CG viz specialist for the final quality renderings. But now the function and toolset that used to be exclusive to the CG artist is now made easier and integrated into architect's own toolset. You can bet that architects will use it substancially inhouse, to shorten the design cycle and increase the responsiveness of the whole cycle. (Not having to wait for rendering getting back, out of sight) It gives architects far greater control over the project, since it will be inhouse.

 

 

The current cgarch business reminds me of this movie "One Hour Photo" (2002 - starring Robin Williams) - It is akin to the digital revolution in photography. Photos used to be developed by specialist who manually corrects color, removes artifacts and sharpen focus of the photo before its been developed. But as as technology gets better, the manpower required to do these become less and less, until a fundamental shift removes these completely. Now the power and flexibility resides with the photographer. There is no longer "mini-lab photo tech" anywhere anymore. The professional phographers are now doing everything what used to be done by several different people. Now, photographer has total control over his shots with greater flexibilty and control all within the same workflow (color correction in Photoshop, and variety of photo touch ups). Now photographer takes photos, corrects the shots, and develops the film into photos and deliver them to client.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hour_Photo

[Hidden_Pixel]

You should never worry about one button renders. Strive to be best in your field and you will never be out of a job. Find your own style that differentiates you from the rest. It really is just pointless worrying about this. I have been hearing people say this for years. It's not going to happen.

[Jim Mann]

Jim, don't mind me saying but it seems you think all architects are clueless who don't know how to draw. Quite contrary really, architects gone through intense competitions in school and most are more than competent artists. ...Yes, Architect does understand "composition", "lighting" and and "material" too, that's what every working architect has to deal with in their design...

 

Err, want to explain to me how my reply to your original post earned that response? I was merely pointing out that a piece of software that promises to take care of everything and provide "professional quality rendering at the push of ONE button" is pretty much all hype - its never going to happen. Without a sense of composition etc its about as much use as giving a camera to a monkey and expecting great shots to come out of it i.e. skill and artistic ability are crucial.

 

Jim

[Devin Johnston]

The current cgarch business reminds me of this movie "One Hour Photo" (2002 - starring Robin Williams) - It is akin to the digital revolution in photography. Photos used to be developed by specialist who manually corrects color, removes artifacts and sharpen focus of the photo before its been developed. But as as technology gets better, the manpower required to do these become less and less, until a fundamental shift removes these completely. Now the power and flexibility resides with the photographer. There is no longer "mini-lab photo tech" anywhere anymore. The professional phographers are now doing everything what used to be done by these people, with much greater flexibilty and control all within the same workflow (color correction in Photoshop, and variety of photo touch ups). Now photographers take photos, corrects the shots, and develops the film into photos and deliver them to client.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hour_Photo

 

The difference is that those things can be automated, how do you automate art? Sure you can probably get a computer to approximate what art is but it's never going to know that the light looks better 3 feet to the left behind that frosted glass, or that there's just not enough transparence in that window wall. Programming is only going to get you’re so far, at some point it will fail because it has no idea what art is or what makes something look good.

[Richard McCarthy]

You should never worry about one button renders. Strive to be best in your field and you will never be out of a job. Find your own style that differentiates you from the rest. It really is just pointless worrying about this. I have been hearing people say this for years. It's not going to happen.

 

Watch that movie "One Hour Photo" and tell me if you still believe in it.

[Richard McCarthy]

Err, want to explain to me how my reply to your original post earned that response? I was merely pointing out that a piece of software that promises to take care of everything and provide "professional quality rendering at the push of ONE button" is pretty much all hype - its never going to happen. Without a sense of composition etc its about as much use as giving a camera to a monkey and expecting great shots to come out of it i.e. skill and artistic ability are crucial.

 

Jim

 

 

So, you believe ONLY Cg visualizer understand composition and has the skill and artistic abilities??

 

Jim, software will never take care of it. The inclusion of Mental Ray into autodesk softwares (maybe AutoCAD in the future) simply means the architect are now directly in control of the camera angle, while he himself has the absolutely freedom (ofcourse with respect to client) over the project, which means he can choose to change design at any point he so wishes if he wants to accomplish for certain artistic goal. This is not something afforded to CG artist, oh and I certainly don't believe architects are monkey with cameras

[Richard McCarthy]

The difference is that those things can be automated, how do you automate art? Sure you can probably get a computer to approximate what art is but it's never going to know that the light looks better 3 feet to the left behind that frosted glass, or that there's just not enough transparence in that window wall. Programming is only going to get you’re so far, at some point it will fail because it has no idea what art is or what makes something look good.

 

 

 

I am not saying the programs are now so smart it can "make art" by itself. I am saying the toolset are now on the architect's pipeline, with far greater control and shorter design cycle. And the person driving it (architect) is not a someone who is clueless about art, like I mention in previous post, most architects are more than capable artist themselves, having to gone through rigorous selection process and atleast 5 years of intense competition in school (WITH significant portion devoted to presentation).

[Devin Johnston]

But your talking about a "one button" render engine which we're arguing will never exist because there is so much more to be done than just hitting a button. Placing a camera, applying materials, lighting and animating are all things that require time to do, even if you don't have to tweak GI settings like in Maxwell you still have to spend time setting everything up. My argument is that Architects and designers are already so busy they simply don't have time to mess with all of this.