The future of Architectural Visualization

[Richard McCarthy]

I had the same opinion of my self when I graduated, I thought there was nothing I couldn’t do, or job that was too difficult for me to complete. It took several years of working in the field before I understood the depth of exactly what I didn't know. Recent grads have a lot of potential; I don't think that is up for debate, but to say that a graduate is going to have the same technical skills and abilities as someone who has been in the field for years is just crazy. I agree with hockley91, someone coming out of school might be able to create nice renderings, but how long will it take them to do it compared to a person who has 3 or 5 or more years experience.

 

 

 

I guess experience does count for something, but there is no reason someone can't get upto speed just like that.... especially with software advancing. I understand what you are saying, it's in the management side of things.. like really large project. Understanding how to proceed with such intricate project, how to divide the task, and model towards the rendering completion require experience that can only learn from past mistakes.

[Richard McCarthy]

http://www.aecbytes.com/review/ArchiCAD9-images/fig2.jpg

 

This is a screenshot of ArchiCAD v9.0's built in renderer (Lightworks) and I must say I am VERY impressed with the top image. I am certain MOST clients will be satisfied with this level of rendering, and I am sure it doesn't take the architects a lot to do besides pressing the render button (after material specified).

[Devin Johnston]

Our office uses ArchiCAD exclusively, and recently I've been swamped and had to enlist the help of our lead ArchiCAD guy. Currently we are in release 8.1 but he had a copy of 9 and he use the new Lightworks engine to do a rendering. I was equally impressed with the output of the image, however the time he spend doing his one image, I was able to do two. The quality of his one image was less than what I was able to produce, but it was still impressive. It is still not as simple as pressing a "render" button in the program, and just like Max it has it's own set of parameters that need to be tweaked, but for a one day rendering it's not bad. The only problem with saying that these types of programs will replace the rendering process is the amount of time it takes to do the rendering. Is it worth the designer’s time to spend a day or two to do a rendering when he as other projects waiting on him? Wouldn’t it be easier to hand off the model to someone whose only job it is to do renderings? I think that until it becomes a completely automatic process, companies are still going to need illustrators.

[bully712]

I’m just reading this post for the first time. I’ve read a couple of pages; it’s been really interesting to hear what others are thinking.

 

I work for a descent size firm. We have around 70 employees, and I’m the main (the only) 3D Designer. I say designer, because I’m largely part of the designing team. I do final Illustration, but mostly I’m part of the designing phase. It really depends on the studio I’m working for at the time. With 70 employees, we are split into roughly 6 studios, including a principal, associates, Architects, and drafters. Some will want wire frames so the Architect can sketch over them. Other’s want renderings, and animations.

 

We do outsource to one guy hear and there. It just depends on my availability. If we do go to this guy, I usually build a wire frame, and he does the rest in Photoshop, and hand sketching.

 

I don’t know if I’m making any sense or not, but I feel the best way to go is to get in with an Architectural Firm. I would stay away from the smaller firms 10 and under. My first job was in a firm with around 10 employees. 3D was pretty much non existent, being that the jobs were not large enough to afford the time in 3D, so the last 2 months I was there, I was binding marketing book. Blah!! Wasn’t fun, and they were wasting my talent. This month, I will have been at my current company for 4 years, and I feel it’s been my best decision so far.

 

Being in a company of my size has a lot of potential for us 3D Designer/ Illustrators. It’s like a chain reaction. Architects come and go. When they do go to that new company, they take your name with them, and your name gets around. I feel very fortunate to have a full time job at which I loving doing what I do, and an added + is that I have Clients of my own, and I’m respected by other firms. It’s also nice getting paid more for work done on the side.

 

To conclude this paragraph, I really don’t know what the future holds for rendering firms. I do know that it’s very convenient for the Architects to have someone like me in house. They love that I’m onboard. Oh and another thing is that in my firm, 99.9% of the Architects avoid creating the 3D part. They are all about sketching. This is an example of a day in my office. I build the 3D model from the floor plans, sections, and elevations. I then print it out. The Architect sketches over the print, and I make the changes to the model. This is repeated over and over. At the end, I usually do Post work in Photoshop by adding trees, people, highlight, etc.. Which then becomes a final rendering..

 

There will always be the need for us in the future.. In what way, I don’t know…

 

Just my thoughts……

[stefkeB]

I haven't read all the thread in detail, but I think that there is place for freelance artists in the future.

 

But there will be a lot in-house rendering. There are several reasons:

- young graduates know the tools

- the software is maturing and getting powerfull

- the hardware is following along

 

The way I see it (being an architect, having worked in architects offices and now working in education, including CAD & 3D-courses), is this:

 

The architect office has to do all the "realworld" stuff: building permits, construction documentation, all administration and then (still) the design

There will be good (probably rather young and cheap) co-workers who can make nice renderings in-house. Some will be architects, others might be CG/web/VR-specialists.

 

For the majority of the visualisation work they will be satisfied with what they can do in-house with their current Architectural CAD-software only(being it ADT+VIZ Render, Revit + Accurender, ArchiCAD + LightWorks, or whatever combination of CAD-software, with built-in rendering tools). For the software that requires a dedicated rendering tool, you have also the 'simple' combinations (where you have a simple but effective conversion): VectorWorks or ArchiCAD with Art*lantis or Cinema4D or similar.

Then you can also combine any CAD-software with any dedicated 3D-software, it the office can commercially justify buying these expensive programs (next to their allready expensive CAD-software) and can justify the extra cost to reach the extra quality: AutoCAD or Microstation or ArchiCAD or whatever combined with 3ds max, VIZ, Lightwave or whatever.

 

Still, this can all be done in-house, ranging from mediocre (the "one-click-rendering") to really-good depending on time and quality put in. This is fine by me.

 

There is still an amount of "other" work that cannot be done in-house. There you can enter as a visualisation artists independently.

 

And what about BIM? BIM might have an influence on Visualisation too: the one building model approach is working for 3D, 2D, quantity take-offs etc... The visualisation is a logical byproduct from it. Sure, it's a full 3D-model, not optimised at all for rendering purposes: all geometry is there, even if it's not visible for the camera. Some of that geometry can be safely 'hidden', other is influencing raytracing & radiosity calculations so should be included.

 

But frankly, let the hardware and software deal with the polygons and let the architect deal with what needs to be in the model. Sure, an artists with some technical feeling can optimise a lot out of the model, for the single purpose of rendering, but that's precisely what BIM is not meant to be. And I am very glad that most BIM-software (ADT, Revit, ArchiCAD, Triforma) is (finally) receiving a decent rendering-engine.

 

An architect does not need to know about subsurface scattering and color bleeding and mesh-division strategies: let the designer choose the building elements. The 'realworld materials' can come from a library (that can be made by CG-professionals, if needed), but the designer couldn't care less how it works. The same for lighting: let the designer choose place, time & date and let the software calculate sun, sky, ambience etc... Let the designer choose physical light sources with their reallife properties and let the software work out the shadow, colour, falloff etc...

 

This is how it should work, IMHO.

Will it be easy? I hope it will.

Will it make good renderings? I hope it will.

Will it put visualisation artists out of work? I don't think so. It might take a part of their current work away, but it leaves plenty of room for that extra-quality an artist can obtain, using whatever tool they want.

[garethace]

I go along totally with the Economics argument, of which technologies like CAD, VIZ-ualisation, Email, Wireless connectivity, mobility, storage of digital communication transactions and Issuing of instructions by means of digital format, are all just sub-sets of the one argument. And I also stand by the point, that all of this stuff, is on an S-shaped curve that will allow any adopter to do more things, cheaper, faster and with more control as time goes on. All that matters is who will adopt it, who will adopt it with sucess and who will not do either of those two!

 

 

why not use BIM for arch viz? ...streamline the process. create everything once. yes, you still need to play dress up for final renderings, but the core is already there. and this core can be used for CAD drawings, renderings, animations, ect... ect...

 

there seems to be a concern that quality will drop if renderings are done in a BIM process. why do they have to? i currently use formz and 3dmax for building, rendering, and animating. my formz models are typically more accurate then the plans i get from autocad. i won't even snap to autocad plans because they are so bad, but my formz model is insanely accurate.

 

it is only a matter of time before a software company invests enough time to get this right.

 

...and as for the art side of renderings. that is the side i love. .....but be reasonable, if good sun, texture, sky presets were available at the push of a button, they would suffice for 90% of the images an architect needs.

 

there will be a place for high quality renderings that can not be fullfilled in house. that everyone is in agreement on. ....but, streamlining the process will be the game over the next 10 years.

 

 

I go with this.

 

But what you aren't thinking about, is the amount of individuals and small companies besides architects... who are involved and embedded in what we currently know, as the building construction industry or process. A lot of non-architects who build a lot of stuff, and know how to build a lot of stuff, have been the earliest adopters of technologies like outsourced visualisation services, outsourced CAD services and god only knows what else. In fact, architects never really did jump onto this bandwagon at all. Because there was this risk of associating themselves much too closely with individuals who build very similar schemes, and sometimes, even better stuff, but just don't fall under that small umbrella of a very noble and respectable profession.

 

Think about it, combined with a very keen understanding of what it takes to put up four walls and a roof, the services of CAD technology, visualisation technology, communication technology like broadband and wireless internet access, allow a whole raft of individuals who are nowhere near to being actual architects, to construct stuff in timeframes that is unprecedented. Most Architects don't even know how to keep up to this trend, if the truth may be known. The building game as a whole has an awful lot less to do with 'design' and an awful lot more to do with 'instinctive understanding' of what is involved in 'building' things, assembling things and forming things from actual materials, real life contracting teams, site conditions, clients, time frames and budgets, rather than pixels and vectors. But in the right hands, the pixels/vector combination can very often produce the result of making real stuff such as concrete pour much faster, bugets extend further and even steel bolt/weld connections support more lateral wind loads! :-)

 

 

I totally agree with "Crazy Homeless Guy".

 

I think in the next 5 years all of these issues will be a little clearer in the direction it's going. Maybe 5 years after that, we'll know for sure what's happening in this field.

 

There is definitely room for some organization here that'll be ironed out as the two fields (architecture & visualization) become more common with each other.

 

I know, with my architecture day job, that the 3D models I've been producing have helped the contractors out tremendously in their visualization of the overall projects. Some of them have even gone to the extent of having the images taped to the wall in the job trailer.

 

I think the "in-house" field will happen and is happening. Maybe the 3D illustrators will just be hanging out with the developers? We'll know for sure in the next 5-10 years...

 

Simple, and it sounds convincing to me.

 

 

same here. renderings help the contractor see what the architect is trying to do. i did some renderings for st. vincent indianapolis, and the contractor had several copies in the job trailer. the foreman/superintendant on the job would carry them around the job site, when he was explaining how something needed to built to his workers, he would whip out the renderings and show what the final reult would be.

 

I said all of this a while ago, in a thread which got very animated between myself and some regular illustrator posters here. I would argue, that a visualisation which isn't much use to the contractor, isn't much use period... and that is why I called at that time, or strongly suggested, there being a second level of moderation to what is known here as 'the finished work critique' area of this message board. I was subsequently blown out, and haven't been back here since then, but most of my experience since that time, has bourne out my original statements. I mean, I haven't thrown any of my believes out since then, and don't intend to.

 

If a 3D visualizer that has been in the business for a while, still has trouble reading plans, then that puts a kink in the pipeline of production. That person has to phone up the designer, or architect, hopefully they are in the office, ask questions, get answers and implement what they have learned in the model. Why not shortcut all of that?

 

The kinds of people who use rendering services, are normally people with all day to stay talking on phones or talking about a visualisation.... generally these people will have moved out of their original domain, and prefer instead to dedicate themselves towards a bright new and possibly more lucrative career in master planning, feasability studies and developing property on an ambitious, dynamic and visionary level. They are seldom working architects at all... I dunno, at what point, people began to accept willfully that architects in any way have tied themselves to the visualisation service industry... because I cannot see how anyone would come to that conclusion.

 

Sure, in my experience visualisation artists will pound on a lot of doors of established architectural practices, the big names... and the big named architects will entertain their little 'sales pitches' in so far as it serves to keep their own in house visualist, sketch artist or even architect on his/her toes, worried about their security and continued usefulness to the firm. In that sense certainly, the visualisation profession has done a hell of a service to all big named architects out there! :-)

 

Hell, the big named architect may even throw the odd commission to the visualist, similar to how Dell Computer Corporation will periodically threaten Intel, with buying from their competitor in the semi industry, that is, AMD. If it serves to cut a better deal with Intel on the price of buying chips for the next year. Always keep the competition alive, just give it enough to stay alive, and it will serve you very well. Generally I am positive, as it was in the olden times, it is the developer, auctioneer or planner, but never the trained architect, who will spring the cash, and really comission that 'big model' be it in sawn timber or in moulded digital megabytes.

 

Most importantly, I would recommend two things. First look for a new job. Find an employer who has realistic expectations for the productivity for one person.

 

Certainly does get to the centre of the problem, doesn't it? :-)

 

Having worked for some large firms for years, you may need to look to a boutique or smaller firm specializing in design.

 

Hmmm, often people confuse small sized practices with smaller sized work loads... this can often be a real shock coming from a larger place with lots of support staff and all kinds of stuff. But the point was still well expressed and it is a good one.

 

I feel that somethings need to change from within a person, sometimes it means being more forceful, for instance I find back answering great at times... and have definitely managed to dress down quite a few characters along the way... at least everyone learns where they stand actually relative to the size and complexity of the task at hand. Lets just remember that task eh? Construction,... rather than visualisation.

 

 

Brian O' Hanlon.

[wda]

Brian,

 

Where you been? (yea you explained it)

 

Gareth.....

"The building game as a whole has an awful lot less to do with 'design' and an awful lot more to do with 'instinctive understanding' of what is involved in 'building' things, assembling things and forming things from actual materials, real life contracting teams, site conditions, clients, time frames and budgets, rather than pixels and vectors. But in the right hands, the pixels/vector combination can very often produce the result of making real stuff such as concrete pour much faster, bugets extend further and even steel bolt/weld connections support more lateral wind loads! :-)"

 

Absolutely true and still somewhat under used. A good example is the Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum Addition. The structural/asthetic concrete "butresses" had to be figured out on site, forms ect. CG Schmidt's form carpenters did some outstanding work, but this process of on site figuring out the forms added something like 3 months to the schedule.

Simply this all could have been done from a 3d solid in cad, using the basic tools to create the forms and detial the components in "shop" drawings.

 

Gareth.....

" I would argue, that a visualisation which isn't much use to the contractor, isn't much use period... "

 

I use them all the time on non commercial jobs. Do you realize how many people in the trades really think of the blueprints as "funny Papers" (comics) and TP. A decent nothing to artsy illustration has saved me many volumes of speak attempting to explain the prints. Lets say "once you go CGviz you never go back". But I'm bucking the conventions and that reaps it's own BS.

 

 

Brian good to see you back. Don't let that Irish "IRE" get the best of ya!

 

 

WDA

[garethace]

Title:

 

Oh, what a privelege it is to be allowed to build something, and what a rare privelege that is indeed, on this wind swept green little isle of ours.

 

I realise I must have sounded a bit sure of myself above, so I may as well go into some little background to the above. What the hell, its only words. :-) The main building blocks that Irish people have been 'allowed' to build with for generations now! :-( And if that is true, I probably have built skyscrapers by now. :-)

 

Yeah, most of what you had uttered in one way or another, quite a while back, and while I kind of understood it at the time.... I didn't fully comprehend the implications of 'building'. Of course America has been home to a lot of architecture and building for a long time now... on such a small island like this in the Atlantic, we haven't really as good an idea, or rather, so much fewer people really know, what it is 'to build'.

 

A lot of what you have said there, and back then, I have run into myself 'in the field' so to speak, only just recently,... so I kind of knew what Josep Lluís Mateo meant in his lecture here in Dublin last week, when a very large job consumed his practice in Spain for a couple of years, totally and absolutely in 'building mode'... the new convention centre in Barcelona.

 

He finally realised this, and rushed to get his office into doing some competition work at the very end... admitting that he himself 'loves to build', and probably imposed his own emphatuations, perhaps too much on his employees. He loves the process of it all... he described how his 100metre 'European skyscraper' in Barcelona, used the same cheap natural stone, with three different tool finishes to introduce variety into the building without huge cost. In any European culture, it is considered a great privelege, an honour, and something very old and significant to build at all.

 

I can tell you, six months ago, or moreso, 12 months ago, the only prople I worried about looking/reading my drawings and visualisations and sketches were other architects. Visualisation allows one to circumvent the necessity to build and thereby sometimes giving the privelege away to others. This is a terrible mode to get 'stuck into' I have now discovered, and worst of all you don't even realise it, while it is happening to you. While I do admire your ability to combine visualisation and building stuff, I can imagine how many people cannot manage to do likewise, and therein lies the trouble with visualisation in any architectural environment.

 

For the time being, I am in building mode myself, and I am sure you 'got that' from my post above.... This is really quite strange, have you ever heard the expression, coming full circle? ? ? :-) Because, for most of my higher education in architecture, started in 1992, I was focussed upon the process of building much more than the process of design - due to the architectural design course I was subjected to. I could definitely say, that I studied in a school of architecture, where all the architects teaching me, 'loved to build', like Mr. Mateo referred to above.

 

I went to a very technological/engineering/surveying based school of architecture,.... nothing like what Markus Byron and many others here, have experienced... i.e. rubbing with some real noted designing powerhouse talents, knocking things up in Form Z in the morning, chatting about them for the whole afternoon, and pondering the merit in 'the design'... For years, and years I felt impoverished by that whole engineering bent I had received in my architectural education. I actually felt quite ashamed of my 'technological approach' to doing architecture - everything, was the opposite of what education is meant to do for you - empowerment etc, etc. I found it difficult to project any kind of confidence about design, given that my 'mentors' at the University were so vocally dismissive of 'the design' aspect of architecture, and at best paid it some idle lip service. While sort of chuckling and mentioning names like 'Gehry, or Koolhaas' with a kind of low muffled expletive or two.

 

I am now thirty years of age, and have only recently discovered, that I probably hadn't given the 'building emphasis' of my college years, enough of a real chance. For a long time, it was like a grand old sailing ship without any wind in its sails. Having tested myself, in this field recently, it appears, that teaching in the science of construction of buildings, does allow you to communicate with all kinds of characters who form a part of the whole construction industry scene.... in short, that it does empower one after all. Technology standards such as AutoCAD file formats etc, email etc, seems to only extend this ability even futher, and build upon something that has been central to architecture for centuries.

 

In my architecture school I basically got to rub shoulders with guys who sold stone cladding for a living, or who installed bituminous felt roofing systems. Yeah, I know, try boasting about that, at some 'architectural society evening get-together', of all the most trendy dudes in the architectural scene, in a small place like Ireland... and the feeling of wearing two left shoes comes to mind.

 

Structures, costing, technology, practice, mathematics, chemistry, lab work, materials, specification, environmental science, climatic design,.... these kind of subjects largely filled my timetable for each week. I was so ashamed to admit that to anyone for years! Combine that with all of the site visits to construction sites, where we needed to do reports and sketches details etc... this was all very familiar to me from the architecture school days. Yeah, I would safely say, that growing up as a young architect under certain architectural college regimes, is like being the only kid in the school yard, who has to wear 'hand-me-downs' that are ten yeas old and don't exactly make you look hip.

 

Indeed a whole wealth of understanding... and even though I had thought of it as a burden, a burden of shame at that... not knowing much about the very latest whiz bang architectural concept, hot of the presses, the Aaron Betsky, of the Landscrapers book, or whatever, blah, blah, blah... ten years later, I can see obviously those glossy covered architectural concepts have gotten very tatty some of them, but way of building things is as new today as it was when Adam himself was around.

 

But for most of us, who started in that particular architectural course in the early nineties, it was so difficult to be any bit 'cool' at all, to be the kid with the new pair of trainers, or the latest CD single, haircut or whatever. That quite a number of us, very early on, flocked to things like MAX and AutoCAD and as much digital 'stuff' as we possibly could, simply to try and knock off at least some of that original 'sameness' or boring-ness, from the old University. Of course, it didn't work, but we just thought it did, for those few difficult years in the mid twenties in particular, it made us feel less out of sync with stuff that was new and fashionable and cool.

 

A lot of mentors, and employers, saw what we were at, and made us feel particularly cheap and actively punished us in our careers, for having tried to pull such a stunt. Like, where do you think you are going in those hand made Levis imations, or trainers with 'streaks' hand painted onto them... think you will start a new revolution do you? But we just thought we looked cool. That is really what Philip is having to endure at the moment, and for quite a while I suspect, I have worn that T-shirt.

 

 

Brian O' Hanlon.

[wda]

Full Circle is good, now you know all the points of the 'Architectural' compass;) .

 

Architecture= 2 percent design (senior partners) + 97.9 percent drafting/constrcution tech/legal+.1percent Viz.

 

Development= Making things look better than they really are to get more money at the cheapest costs.

 

Construction= Dealing with the arse end of the above + getting a two day job done in one, that should have started a week ago! Because the developer changed something, the architect improved it and the Cons. Super had to beat them both over the head until they understood it could'nt be build that way:rolleyes:. All of that after finding the second floor was 4" smaller on all sides than the first floor brick venneer walls and the footings were 2' off......

 

ArchViz= all the above rolled into a week, with only a day or two at the end to get it right.

 

Nothing new, just be glad you weren't an Architect on the Pyramids, screw up & its toten 8 ton blocks of stone or death! Actually the world has become much more gentile, well only if getting raped by lawers is gentile.

 

As far as CGviz and visualaztion in general there are a few forward thinking people who see it being the future for much of the "comminicated" world. There is a contest in Italy to graphically explain Einstiens theory of relativity by the CG means. Damn for that matter it might be much easier to understand the 'flavors and colors' of quantum mechanics for the non-physics minded person.

 

Architecture will come unto it's own defined use of the CG medias. Do you think FLW prefered, talking directly to someone on a telephone or having time to gracefully embellish in handwritten prose. But if he was pushing a deadline.....or really wanted to get his point across............

 

 

Cheers

WDA

[garethace]

Why practioners on small islands loath, any delay in construction so much... this includes visualisation of course.

 

Your posts all do speak in volumes about the inherent culture around building/architecture in the United States... I have been listening to yours and other peoples opinions for quite some time now, and slowly but surely starting to arrive at an understanding of what it all means. All I really want to emphasise here, is that on a tiny island on the Atlantic coast of Europe, the problems of introducing any new technology period is very much exascerbated compared to a broad landmass such as Asia, Russia, mainland Europe, South America, Canada, Africa, India, Australia, North America etc.

 

Simply because the opportunity to build on such a small islands such as my own, is such a rare and distinguished privelege, that any and all things which threaten 'to dilute' or water down the experience of building, in any way, are automatically pounced upon by the architectural professionals with suspicion and instant disapproval. What both myself and Philip both experience here, is probably the a much more severe and positively extreme version, of what you yourself, have described so well in numerous posts now. I feel that people, literally almost abandon the drawing document or visualisation with this island mentality,... because they may fear, that if they 'wait' for the drawing, the prospect of building at all, may just vanish into thin air. I think Ireland at the moment, would be the ideal laboratory conditions to study the difficulties, that software companies have, in introducing their products... anyone from AutoDesk listening can feel free to enlist my very professional services in this regard. :-)

 

You have to put this alongside, the more careful and confident use of building resources in other cultures... things like Sydney Opera house spring to mind, the expression of a very cocky young nation. Or the Museum in Bilbao by Gehry, several in Helsinki, New York itself of course, and so on and so on. Here in Dublin some of the listed 'early modern' buildings are a torn in the side now of several University masterplans. Because things like Science Labs, which 'went up' in the 50s and 60s, meant back then to be only temporary stop gab measures... never got replaced in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s... and because they have persisted until the 2000s, have now suddenly been made 'listed buildings' because they are liked by people who want to preserve the architecture of the mid 20C! :-)

 

I am almost sure, the phenomenon of extreme levels of anxiety, in regards to building/not building is regional to poor remote places, where getting anything done, even at rare intervals, becomes a huge politcal hot potato. I am sure you probably know, or have experienced some kinds of places like I am talking about. Whenever we bump into a bit of ancient stone walling, or a Viking hut, or any reason 'to stop building', even if the project is a government funded motorway project... it still gets held up for months. There is a thriving business now, doing feasability studies for possible archaeological remnants on most sites. There is indeed money to be made out of the past! Compare that, to someplace such as Silicon Valley 'archaeology' and the change junky culture there:

 

http://www.edge.org/q2003/q03_finn.html

 

Indeed different ways of approaching building, have found much favour here in Ireland now, and while the 'Architect bottleneck' has been removed quite a while ago, by imposition of a separate layer of project management on all jobs... the bottleneck, has now moved towards structural engineers and those kinds of services. I regularly hear complaints, about things not moving fast enough at that stage in the pipeline, whereas back in the mid-nineties, it was mostly just Architects who were taking the rap for it all. ! :-)

 

 

Construction= Dealing with the arse end of the above + getting a two day job done in one, that should have started a week ago! Because the developer changed something, the architect improved it and the Cons. Super had to beat them both over the head until they understood it could'nt be build that way. All of that after finding the second floor was 4" smaller on all sides than the first floor brick venneer walls and the footings were 2' off......

 

Well anyone who uses computers should never underestimate their ability to destroy information, which is much more powerful than their ability to either create or store it. I am constantly aware now, of not what people producing drawings manage to create between the hours of 9 and 5, but what indeed they manage to move, or shift, rotate or misalign in the same timeframe. At times, only for some old paper record drawings, produced way back for a project, an awful lot of information would be just lost in all the general confusion.

 

Take the example of the presidential election in the United States. A huge amount of campaigning, effort, speeches, preparation, speculation, media coverage, expense.... just to do what? A simple binary result is produced at the end of it all... like, that bit is either on or it's off. And the results of this one simple binary, yeh, or neh... has far, far, far reaching consequences into the future.

 

In the same way, computers really want to selectively 'destroy' information in an intelligent and useful fashion... computers are really only at their best, when given that kind of task. Take for instance a huge mass of numbers and data relating to the design of a jet engine. Some problem, where the usual Newtonian mathematics of order, cause and effect, action and reaction really don't cope too well. In this instance, artificially intelligent bots are allowed to run through all of that data and grab onto any pattern or whatever they find.

 

Stock markets can operate like this, google searches operate like that, even a computer rendering... why it is good, is that it discards so many possible solutions to where the light could bounce and spits out an approximation, based on the strength of the algorithm of course, where light might tend to fall/reflect/absorb etc. Real time sound rendering of environments by cpus in games is another example... because a game is so interactive, that computer has to approximate things very fast and spit out a solution that 'sounds right'.

 

A lot of the strengths in computing would actually seem to run contradictory to the goals of actually building a drawing, and building a building from that drawing. Because computers inherently want to discard information selectively, rather than retain. I think that commands such as 'purge' and 'audit' and 'impose layer conventions' is really what computers are good at. But so many people really do tend to use them, thinking they are very good at certain things, when in fact, computers may really be very poor in that dimension.

 

'Storage' is one area that springs to mind - digital storage of design processes, is a joke, and many practioners of architecture hate computers for just that reason... not like 'that scrap of paper' which is somewhere in this pile of rubbish... people try to use computers like that sometimes, and once something is 'gone' on a computer, sometimes, it is well and trully 'gone'. You know as well as I do, how crucial, going 'back to that scrap of papers'... often seems to become where architectural designers are concerned.. dunno exactly why, but it always is,... funny. How many lectures have you been to in your whole lifetime, where the architect showed up a slide of a tiny beer matt or something, with a quick concept sketch, and said, there, is where the genisus for this whole project really began. This will be very hard to replicate in the digital age, a file 'modified' on such and such a date will never have the same mystique, as a scrap of knapkin scribbled on, while drinking coffee across the road from the site in a bar! :-)

 

I notice Steve Jobs crowing about this in a recent web cast, saying that this problem is solved now, in the iPod, where you can carry 25,000 photographs in your back pocket... what anyone would want 25,000 photographs in their back pocket for, is anyones guess, if you ask me.

 

Finally, just a general point on the future of computers... at some stage fat pipe networking, via mobile and speciality devices, is going to just displace the advantage of adding more and more digital transistors, made of Silicon on a chip... at that stage the time of the general computing box will be over I think, and technologies that go way beyond Java (platform independent computer languages) will eventually realise the full and absolute weight of what computers can do. Rather than being subject to the current law, as regards running MS gear on more and more sophisticated Silicon chips.

 

In terms of computers, we are probably at the cash registers and typewriters were at in the 1900s, with the same monopolies etc. A number of the big authorities on computing have said this kind of thing.

 

 

Brian O' Hanlon.

[garethace]

Posted something you might be interested in there WDA, on exposed Steel.

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=7747

[jtiscareno]

I have read the whole post and it is extremely interesting, I think that the last several post have gone away from the main TOPIC of the subject "Future of Arch Viz". (Brian, not a critique just an observation but your comments are going to help my in a point later on).

 

I think Jeff M. is about 99% right (he after all did the first true and massive survey and analysis of the "profession" (sorry Trhoads, I agree with you on this but it is easier or common to call it a profession).

 

 

I am from a small town in the boarder of the USA and Mexico, but it seams that in my case it is very similar to what Bully712 wrote and it seams that he is from Pittsburgh. In this town there are about 20-25 arch firms TOTAL, and of those 10-12 are of real concern or weight, the biggest has 20-25 persons, so you all can see that it is a very small market. But in all the "big" firms here they all have at least one person (the majority architects) as a "digital illustrator" doing from of course 3d modeling and medium to high end viz, a lot of photoshop for post production, brochures, advertising, local competitions, etc, and a few (maybe 2-3) doing animation.

 

 

With this I am trying to talk from the side of an architect-3d guy, I truly highly respect what a lot of you guys can do and achieve but I think that Jeff is right and in 5-10 years the majority of arch firms will have an in-house viz department be it one guy or a team. And it is true that as an "architect" be it recent grad or experienced you can sort of specialize in one or two things, be it viz, cd's, spec's, cost, marketing, details, etc. Remember that not all arch grads turn into "Licensed Architects", but we all are still extremely adapt at something and a firm runs with all of "us", creative and technical, artistic and technological.

 

 

Now let's remember that this PROFESSION is different than the others in the sense that the more specialized you are as a doctor, lawyer the better you are, as an ARCHITECT the more well rounded and knowledgeable you are the better you are, architects are the true masters of all trades, or at least have to strive to be one (just read up on Vitruvius), and I am saying this for all does students and recent grads of architecture that are reading this, become good at several things, specially, cd's, code, presentation, design, current trends (in art, arch, social, tech), 3d modeling, MAx-Viz and Photoshop.

 

 

I think that the cg firms will have to evolve into more than just arch viz, something like K+D LAB has done (or even dbox, neoscape, screampoint, etc), they all started as arch viz firms but they have now evolved into much more than that, branched to real estate, developers, commercials, web, etc.

 

 

I think that there will always be a place for specialized arch viz artist and I truly emphasis the word ARTIST, because there are, and we as arch-viz can be good but the traditional or cg artist will always be better, and well they have to, be it freelancer or a big cg firm. Remember the "traditional artist" watercolor, pencil or airbrush, the cg viz killed a lot of the average ones but the true great ones are still there, like the one that does all the stuff for Stern; and recently there have been this "mixed" media rendering stuff (ie, non-photorealistic archvision), where old techniques are merging into new ones, and it is being driven by the old arch artists. Just like in life, EVOLVE OR DIE.

 

 

Oh, another thing is the EGO of the principal of any size firm, let’s not forget this (Bully712 please confirm). Personal experience has thought me that the ego of the architect is a strange and fickle thing, case and point, used to work for a firm(B) that had never done 3d stuff (modeling, rendering, animation) did my “stuff”, quit because of design issues (you know the problem…) ended up in old firm(A) that wanted 3d capabilities back with higher pay and even in a better level position than before, why because of the capabilities of digital presentations and design, and then principal in firm(B) did not wanted to look outdated or old and went thru hell (think they still are working on it) to gain the digital edge again. Point, if in this small town of small firms this is going on I can only imagine what is going on in the big firms in the big cities, why because the ego of the architect is the same be it in a small town or a big one, ego is still ego.

 

 

So to end, just wanted to say that I did not intend to put down anything or anybody of any side of the issue, just telling my POV from my place.

 

 

Thanks to all.

[garethace]

I think that the cg firms will have to evolve into more than just arch viz, something like K+D LAB has done (or even dbox, neoscape, screampoint, etc), they all started as arch viz firms but they have now evolved into much more than that, branched to real estate, developers, commercials, web, etc.

 

Well aren't all those products you are talking about, aren't they ideas or products, that need to be realised? I mean, they are nice just as ideas and beautiful in their own right, but doesn't someone need to build a commercial in a sense, out of different components. You mention this idea of architects getting out of buildings for real, and getting into other areas, that is hardly even new. Does anyone even realise, that the system which allows to conduct this discussion at all, the Internet, was just a concept, that had absolutely no precedent, needed to be put together from the technology that could be gleaned together in the 1950s and made to work. The tenders were issued to various companies by ARPA in the United States, and a little known Boston group of architects, who specialised in the design of acoustics for large auditoriums won the contract... to design the Internet, the same infrastructure that you are now using. Yeah, its official, architects built the Internet... and they had to assemble all the people who could do it, and all the parts that had never been used in the sense of 'networking' before... all Honeywell systems, to which they had to network enable themselves.

 

So the examples that you have stated above, just pale by comparison with the creation of something as ground breaking and revolutionary in its concept as a coast to coast linking of computer systems, in the 1950s!!!! Yeah, I really have to take my hat off to some architecture firm in 2004, who comes up with a bright idea, to sell something online,... wow, where did they get that idea? :-) But my point is that BBN, in Boston, started a small company with a track record as architects, later acoustics consultants, later all kinds of scientific gizmo consultants, and eventually beat IBM and the rest to land the single largest responsibility ever in the whole history of computing! :-) Anyhow, just to drive home my points even further... I am taking an online introductory course in Java Programming Language at the moment, it is just a fascination or a novelty for me, which I probably will not do very well or even finish, but the really strange thing about it, is that almost all of the problems that software developers encountered building software.... are precisely, verbatim the exact same problems, or rather challenges that I encounter every day of my life as a practicising building designer. (Never finished enough coursework in University to call myself an architect... but there you go)

 

So I wouldn't say that architects are learning more about other fields, so much as, that down through history all sorts of people at the very cutting edge of technology and come to Architects to help them solve the most pressing problems of the age... yeah, simple architects whose only real experience was in the building of everyday objects and things we use, experience and live with. My reply to Crazy Homeless Guy here:

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=7906

 

goes into a little more detail, in relation to web services, the things that object oriented Java and .NET programming language manages to build today,... right on the bleeding edge of web technology.... Don't try to consume it in one sitting. :-) The fundamental task of virtual software creation and intelligent use, even at the cutting edge... is not a million miles away from the task of building in the physical world today... and somewhere in all of this, I believe is the future of architectural visualisation. But if I have 'gotten off the point' or gone too far into the weeds, then my sincerest apologises all round! :-)

 

 

Brian O' Hanlon.

[BillyGrey]

Hi all,

 

I'm just a little guy, who runs a one man architectural studio...

The reason I signed onto this forum is to learn and learn.

I just read pretty much this whole thread.

I have a headache now

 

I own one seat of Revit, and a new color plotter.

I model in 3d from sd to construction, everything.

I can, do and will continue to take those models into whatever rendering package I see fit to use. I have been playing with many, and will get serious with one tool set soon.

 

I will never, ever, ever go back to 2d, unless forced by economics.

 

Perhaps I do not matter so much in the greater grander scheme of things,

but I do to my clientel, even though I am just a boutique.

 

As a counterpoint to some of the musings regarding CD's and TP, utilizing accurate 3d modelling, I am making my contractors/subcontractors very pleased by providing CD design details in 3d. Intent is communicated visually, and interpretation is negligable. Perhaps this too is an area a forward looking design visualization specialist could branch into in order to bring that particualar economic justification into the realty of today's construction industry.

 

Likewise, everything I need in terms of data extraction is there. If I wish to generate an interior view, I simply do it. This goes for any portion of the building model. Conversely, if at some point I do begin to utilize outsourcing, I will already have a model ready to hand off.

 

In that context, I see BIM as a tool to be used much like PDF, EPS is used in the printing industry today. Near press ready material sent over the wire to your workstaion, ready for tweeeking . As visualization specialist, your job may even become more focused on your area of speciality as CAD techinicians and Architects begin to adopt BIM.

 

But what I am striving to become, is what I have seen discussed in detail here. I am forced, by economics (the flip side) to learn to do it all.

 

I am, in one small aspect, a part and example of the future of architectural visualization as well.

[garethace]

Lets just compare, all of this with a totally different field,... that of Biology, which recently also, has employed sophisticated forms of visualisation technology, and developed its own fancy name for it... Bioinformatics! :-)

 

I think, in architecture,... you have a couple of really big perennial problems, that you need to deal with,... but they are interesting problems,... like 'building' something, is a perennial, but nonetheless interesting problem. It is always a challenge as building technology, economics, materials and standards adjust to meet with the times. In a similar way, to how medicine has to advance accordingly to meet the challenges of dealing with new illnesses etc.

 

The field [bioinformatics] has meetings, journals, and books. The problem, according to Stein, is that it is a tool and not a scientific discipline. Tools get absorbed into the greater disciplines. There are examples of disciplines defined by a problem domain contrasted with services defined by tools.

 

Robust scientific disciplines are often defined by a problem domain. For example, a development biologist studies the development of multicellular organisms using what ever tools are at hand. They aren't defined by the tools they use. A pharmacologist studies the interactions of chemicals with physiological properties. Similarly, physicists aren't defined by their tools; they study the nature of matter and energy.

 

On the other hand, services are defined by tools and they are often time-limited. For example, a microscopist knows how to use microscopes. Now that a microscope is a ubiquitous tool you won't find many specialists in this area. While a pharmacologist has a problem domain, a pharmacist knows how to compound medicines and fill out regulatory paperwork. There are fields that cross over. Stein offered molecular biology as an example of a scientific discipline that has transitioned to a service.

 

Later an audience member asked Stein, "Is it strange when biologists never touch goosh: body parts, liquids.... Steins answer was, "No, they're studying life. Biologists like Ernest Mayer can sit in his office and look at other people's data and develop theories of selection. When people ask me, I say I'm a biologist."

 

I think, some of you who build real buildings, and visualise also, will find the language used by Mr. Stein above interesting.

 

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/biocon2003/stein.html

 

Brian O' Hanlon.

[jtiscareno]

Brian when I was talking about K+D Lab, Neoscape, Screampoint, etc. I was talking about visualization companies that have evolved to something greater than just arch. viz. and if you check there websites you will see what I am talking about.

 

And that is what I was saying, that Jeff was right in saying by his experience and the results of the past survey, that in 5-10 years the majority of the arch viz will be done in-house of the arch firms. Like I said, in my small town this is the norm as of now, not even 5 or even 2 years from now, it is a reality. And like all things, There are some companies that have good 3d guys but some just have mediocre to bad also. But we can say the same of current freelancers and arch viz firms, they come in goob, o.k. and bad.

 

And I think that the bad to mediocre are the ones that are going to start to disaper like it happend to the traditional rendering artists, the good ones are still here and the other ones are gone.

 

But also the future 3d viz artist in arch or now like you said in bio-medical and who nows what else in the future is really good news to all of us, 3d visualization is here to stay and it will only evolve and branch out into almost every profesional branch. I bet you that in the future it will become a full blown profession in itself, besides the usual cg big movie efects departments. There is even now a Ph.D. offered now in Architectural Visualization in Texas A&M.

 

So I see the future in whatever shape or form only bright and better to all of us that like WDA says, "From calm seas, into the cg fires".

[Iain Denby]

If freelancers are to worry because all architectural viusualisation is going to be done in house in the near future, then perhaps the 'in house' guys should now start to worry because there is going to be alot of freelancers (who, as specialists, generally produce better work) seeking employment and taking their jobs!

[IC]

I agree. There are a lot of exceptions but most of the in-house stuff is done by people who have a basic knowledge of 3ds Max and no more.

 

A bit of artistic talent and some all round experience goes a long way to separating the sublime from the ridiculous.

[jtiscareno]

Come on guys, this is not a pissing match; it is just a discussion on the future of the biz. And like in all discussion, if we start to generalize about that the majority of in-house are bad and that the majority of freelancers are good is just not right at all.

 

First of all, I know than not ALL architectural students or architects are good ate design or with artistic talent but I would say that around 25 to 50% have good to great artistic talent. And I am saying this not because I think it is but because I now it is. I saw it in school and in my career life. And the majority of the people that sort of gravitate to the presentation (i.e. renderings) are the ones that are good designers and artists.

 

 

My experience in my town has been that the best cg artists are the in-house, of course I have seen some bad cg images from other firms, but it is not a big town so.

 

 

And in the other hand, the only experience of the level and talent of freelancers or cg firms is stuff that I have seen on the web and honestly like in all, I have seen from sublime work to really bad stuff. And it will be hard to beat a mediocre architect that not only does basic cg but also all the other stuff we architects need to do. And please don’t take these as insult or taunt, I am just trying to shed some light in the inner workings of an architectural firm. We not only do cg images but we also design those buildings, do code research, make the constructions documents and the specifications, deal with clients, city, engineers, do construction administration. Maybe that is also why the freelancers and cg firms are better at cg images, they are dedicated to do this, but also some cg architects in-house get to specialize in cg stuff and those are the ones that get to be good to great.

 

 

Plus, to being we were not talking who is going to take whose job, but what is the future of Architectural Visualization. I would love to read about your experience as freelancers or cg firms since I only have the point of view of a cg architect of a arch firm.

[Iain Denby]

Come on guys, this is not a pissing match;

 

No, I wasn't intending it to be a 'them and us' thing. Really I suppose my point is, whether the future is in house, or freelance, the cream will rise to the top, and I think probably style too...we soon get bored of sameness, even if it Wowed is at first.

[Continuumx]

I haven't read all the thread in detail, but I think that there is place for freelance artists in the future.

...snipped...

An architect does not need to know about subsurface scattering and color bleeding and mesh-division strategies: let the designer choose the building elements. The 'realworld materials' can come from a library (that can be made by CG-professionals, if needed), but the designer couldn't care less how it works. The same for lighting: let the designer choose place, time & date and let the software calculate sun, sky, ambience etc... Let the designer choose physical light sources with their reallife properties and let the software work out the shadow, colour, falloff etc...

 

snipped...

 

This is precisely what Architects do need to know about. However far scattered topics like color bleeding, subsurface scattering, box modeling, patching, topology modeling, or polygon or point modeling, GI and the like, it is a indication of where Architecture is going.

 

These are the very basic building blocks of the not yet seen nor built, digital Architectural renaissance that is currently slowly developing over time. The digital point, edge and polygon is the new point, line and plane. At some point, the virtual and the real worlds might merge and become one metamorld. In that new metaworld, there will be Architecture. If you do not have the understanding of how certain digital virtual properties constitute new kinds of user spaces and digital technological requirements, you may lack certain access to design the new kinds of spatial experiences in this new merger.

 

It is almost the same of kind of understanding in the singular real world where you have the properties of light interaction, physical space, materials, and time.

 

But in a co-merger of the virtual and real worlds there enters a fifth element- the fifth dimension, "information," literally the digital space.

 

Just my thoughts....

[kicks]

I felt a very real future "now" looking from my POV almost 3 years ago.I got "chicken skin" reminiscing my thoughts. I was still in square one in cg biz when I came across this masterfully done print of an interior in cg carried out by a known ID company here. It was done using scanline render, (arguably)the mostly available renderer that time. I know as well as everybody does, that it takes considerable amount of effort & talent to master scanline rendering. That work looks impressive as it was before as it is now. But the thing is, it required special skill & not many could have made it then; where as now a lot could do it thanks to technology of the last 2 years.I saw recent works of the same firm, and they still employ the same method until now. Their work is not as impressive compared to some of the works submitted here in cgarch.

I guess things boil down to "Keep up or break up."

[IC]

Wasn't the Fifth Element Milla Jovovich?

 

 

 

Lift your feet-tumbleweed coming through!

[kicks]

Wasn't the Fifth Element Milla Jovovich?

 

definitely! lol

love that movie....

[Elliot]

Another survey:

 

http://www.geopraxis.com/content/newsbrief.asp?id=35