Getting an internship

[jensvervaeren]

Hi all,

 

I am a student who would like to get into the world of Architectural Visualisation. Currently I am in my second year Multimedia and Communications and we were asked to start searching for an internship so I was thinking about getting an internship in the ArchViz world. While I was looking around in the job section I saw a lot of job posts had a long list of programs you needed to have knowledge of.

Currently I have a (to me) decent knowledge of 3dsMax (I can make basic renders with Mental Ray and have Game modelling background so modelling shouldn't be a problem) and Photoshop.

I basically wanted to know what software you essentially need to know to start working in the ArchViz industry because all of the lists vary.

I figured out for the rendering I need to learn VRay but apart from that I am really pulling my hair here.

I would appreciate it if you could help me.

[philippelamoureux]

I'm trying to learn 3ds max and vray for archviz too. I've heard it's important to be able to read and interpret architectural plans. I guess learning autocad is important too so you can manipulate plans, import them in 3ds max...etc. That is the base imo.

[Eliot Blenkarne]

I'll answer what I can, as someone who is in a similar situation and has been researching the situation etc for a couple months. I've met with a couple of firms to talk through their processes and they seem similar.

 

3DS is really the industry "standard", though there are definitely other modelling programs used widely, from sketchup (often used to model, then exported to 3ds), to Rhino, Maya etc.

 

Vray is the render standard, purely due to the time it has been around for, and the wise marketing techniques they employed a few years back with licensing etc. It's also the standard because it's damn good in capable hands, of which there are numerous. You can get student licenses relatively cheaply. I would look carefully at Corona renderer too - it's still free, and the guys using it well are producing some extremely convincing work. Of course there are other rendering options, and this will vary according to your modelling program of choice.

 

In terms of revit etc, probably not that important IMO. If you're gonna be working strictly in the arch viz world, you'll either be getting plans to "build" a model off of in your program of choice, or a model exported from the likes of revit/archicad etc.

 

Reading plans, again IMO, is more important. That's not too hard to learn though, and ultimately is a case of taking your time until you learn general drawing standards etc. Get some draughting books out from a library and learn conventions, download some generic plans of a larger commercial type of building and try rebuilding it could be a place to start?