Visualising the future scope for freelance artists

[Jonathan]

As someone about to leave the architectural profession for a future within the architectural visualisation field I am interested in your thoughts as to the direction for sole practitioners/freelancers within this ever evolving field.

Perhaps the days of still images are numbered or at least limited as digital media will not only trasform how images are created but also how they are presented, for example why stop at still images when presentation formats become more commonly digitised allowing for animated scenes etc. etc.

How can the freelance artist keep up with these greater workloads and render abilities of the larger office? Or perhaps it is the case that we dont need to?

I'd be interested in your thoughts.

[wasteland giant]

revit is going to kill the arch viz business a lot. I work in house at the moment and a lot of my peers (architects) can now do models + render out in the built in mental ray. Unless you're work is top of the line, its going to get a lot harder.

[carlotristan3d]

revit is going to kill the arch viz business a lot. I work in house at the moment and a lot of my peers (architects) can now do models + render out in the built in mental ray. Unless you're work is top of the line, its going to get a lot harder.

 

not to mention sketchup+vray. unless you've got some prospective clients lined up or your work really stands out, think twice about leaving architecture to concentrate on visuaization.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Not to mention the huge amount of competition by artist worldwide, for the limited number of jobs.

[eagle_ear]

revit shmevit

[Devin Johnston]

I think you guy's are overreacting, have you actually seen the renderings that these architects are creating using Sketchup and Vray? In most cases I'd bet that they don't compare to a descent rendering done by an in house guy or freelancer. I do agree that there is a place for this kind of work but the nice stuff is still way beyond their ability to create without spending significant energy doing so. There's also the issue of time, most architects and designers I know are too busy to spend days working on a rendering not to mention an animation and most of them don't want to. I think the biggest reason visualizers will be around for sometime to come is because of animations, they are simply too difficult for most architects and designers to deal with and with the increasing levels of complexity they really are more trouble to them than they are worth. In the future as 3D Tv's, augmented reality, and virtual reality become more common these things will almost certainty be adopted by architectural illustrators. Designers and Architects aren't going to invest the time to become masters of these things just like most of them aren't masters of rendering now, we still have a place just as we will in the future we'll just have to change a little bit as newer things come along.

[archytextural]

I think of it as the difference between your casual picture taker and a photographer. anyone can take a picture with the current technology but it takes a deeper knowledge to take that same view and turn it into art. the Revit render is the photograph, and if that's all you want then fine, you've got it. But if you want to tell a story and evoke people to want to be there then a skilled visualization artist is who you hire.

[BrianKitts]

I'm ignoring the Revit conversation, there's enough threads already on the forums covering that topic.

 

So to the initial question....

 

I do see a current trend pushing away from just still imagery moving towards an increase in animated content delivery. The downswing in the economy hit our company just like everyone else, and when we had to let good employees go, the number of highend workstations on the floor started to drop and I realized I wasn't pumping out as many frames in one night as I used to. That's when it struck me how the large majority of work that I've been completing lately isn't stills, it's in the animation and having a full farm at my resource is quite vital.

 

Ten or even five years back a freelance architectural illustrator could survive on stills alone. But now most clients are seeking out animations, not only in addition to the stills work but sometime without any still work at all. So this means to survive you will have to have that expanded skillset and the ability and resources to compete with the larger rendering outfits.

 

In regards to resources the usage of online rendering farms and the emergence of services such as Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud will help to level the playing field between freelance and large firm, but where the pinch will come is in the distribution of skills that a large firm can utilize in the production of quality animations. Rendering firms can dedicate people for modeling, lighting, texturing, animating, compositing, post production, overall direction etc. and in a short turn around put out amazing work. These all become tasks that have to be done by a single freelancer in a reasonable amount of time to keep up with the quality of the large outfits in order to retain clients and bring in new work.

Edited August 30, 2010 by BrianKitts

[Jonathan]

Thanks for all of the interesting comments so far.

It seems there is divide of opinion to this subject, one of positivity and one not so. I tend to feel generally optimistic about the future and agree with Archytexturals comment that anyone can take a photograph but very few can make a great picture. I think this is where our greatest hope lies. Anyone can build a model in Cad or Revit but to express it with life, character and meaning, to create appeal and essentially selling power is, I believe, out of the architects remit. Rather than worry about technology such as Revit (which I feel is over inflated anyway) we can embrace new mediums to create original, dynamic work which pushes the boundaries and at the same time keeps architects interested in what we are doing.

[Devin Johnston]

The downswing in the economy hit our company just like everyone else, and when we had to let good employees go, the number of highend workstations on the floor started to drop and I realized I wasn't pumping out as many frames in one night as I used to. That's when it struck me how the large majority of work that I've been completing lately isn't stills, it's in the animation and having a full farm at my resource is quite vital.

This happened to me too except the number of stills has remained constant while the number of animations keeps increasing.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

I agree with Devin and Chris. I've personally been trying to focus on quality. I find alot of potential clients are ignorant on this though, many call me looking for me to get a job done for them for next to nothing... I try explaining to them that I focus on quality high end custom work that takes time, (although most of the time they dont care). Anyways, my advice to you is to have your work stand out. It's what will most help you make it in the freelance world.

[Justin Hunt]

not even to mention those clients that are not architects or architects who dont have in-house viz people.

 

In the down turn there was more demand for images as marketing became more agressive. In many ways the base level of quality has been raised dramatically. The images produced 2 years ago just wouldn't cut it today. Even the Revit / Sketch-up images.

 

jhv

[Sketchrender]

Unfortunately you can not ignore Revit, it's kicking in and making a mark.

It is very funny to watch a team work in 2D ( in revit) and not even look at the 3D model they are producing.

 

Phil

[Justin Hunt]

if anything Revit has helped me off load a lot of "donkey work" of the modeling to the drafters. It has also help spread the workload, now I dont need to try pull off elevations as well as views from the max model. The revit team do the elevations and I can concentrate on pretty pictures. As time is passing they are learning to model efficiently with enough detail for the 1:100 or 1:200 DA drawings and leave the 1:50 for 2D details.

 

I have to say though some of the models are so complex that I am amaised at how they are pulled together alot quicker than what we could do in Max. Although we do spend a significant amount of time pulling those models into Max to render.

 

Revit hasn't taken my job away, if anything its made it more fun and probably a bit more secure than it was a couple of years ago.

 

jhv

[Devin Johnston]

We've been using ArchiCAD for 15 years and I haven't had to model a building in at least 8, it really is faster than doing it in may or AutoCAD and Revit is the same way. I'm happy not to model any longer, I always saw it as a means to an end, the rendering process is what I really enjoy doing.

[Bruce Hart]

Revit hasn't taken my job away, if anything its made it more fun and probably a bit more secure than it was a couple of years ago.

 

jhv

 

Hmm,

I sit less tham 10m away from Justin in the same office. I don't think Revit has made my job more "fun" - just slightly helpful. I seem to spend amazing amounts of time trying to import revit models, cleaning them up and reducing the polygon count.

[Justin Hunt]

I meant fun in that, I hate modeling and there are quite a few jobs where the Revit model is handed over and we can concentrate on making pretty pictures, which is sadly my idea of fun. I have a warped sense of humor

 

I agree that we do spend an crazy and hair pulling painful amount of time getting the more complex models into Max, which is no fun at all

 

jhv

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

+1 on the hair pulling. Still not a smooth process.