Where do you see the industry heading in the next 5 years?

[DanGrover]

Hi All,

 

Whilst doing the 2014 CGArchitect Survey (which you should all do if you haven't already because it's great) there's a question about where the industry is heading, and it's a text-input option - ie, not multiple choice. This makes it fairly difficult to quantify, and whilst I'm sure Jeff will diligently find a way via an arduous slog through our inane ramblings, I thought it might be good for us to have a place to discuss and possibly show-and-tell what we done wrote.

 

Where do you see the industry heading in the next 5 years?

 

I think staying on full CPU (as opposed to GPU) rendering but with it all hooked up nicely to the cloud. As broadband speeds and provisions increase, the "troubles" with cloud rendering with become less and less of an issue. When competition really begins in the space, I think people will stop looking at GPU rendering as being a cheaper (insomuch as time = money) alternative to CPU but rather they'll concentrate on quality, which at the moment tends to be higher on CPU thanks to fewer constraints.

 

I also think that in-house viz at architectural practices will start to eat the low and even mid tier viz companies' breakfasts - in house teams might be fairly expensive but they're a) cheaper than high end companies and b) far quicker for prototyping than the lower end, cheaper (typically internationally outsourced) companies. The quality and speed of desktop machines and rendering software (for ex VRay and it's entirely decent sun and sky model are available for more and more software platforms inc architectural ones) that I think the low end part of the industry that's typically used for competition/bidding projects or design-and-development projects will find little to offer practices. Furthermore, the gradual increase in the use of cloud rendering will reduce the need for expensive, up-front local render farms, further increasing the potency of small, in house teams. I think that what will ultimately remain are the more high end studio's whose dedication to the process (that is, the ones able to properly study the whole pipeline for potential improvements, develop in house tools and art styles, and who's typically marketing-focus allows for more visually interesting films and images) will be the only one's who will hold out longest in the battle to be replaced by small internal teams.

 

What recent advancements do you see as being most significant to the advancement of the architectural visualization industry.

 

Cloud rendering, without a doubt. I think it's a real game changer - it's one of the few "hurdles" of a CG film process that we can really throw money at. If we want a render quicker, we can spend more. There aren't many parts of the process where this is the case, as even hiring more people doesn't necessarily result in a faster outcome (too many cooks etc - which isn't an accusation anyone ever used against a render farm!) It allows us to work for longer before hitting render which improves quality. It allows us to respond more quickly to feedback from clients, and it allows us to be more transparent with our clients when it comes to charges for re-renders that result from requested changes that fall outside the original scope (we can say with certainty, honesty and - if necessary - proof that a certain shot cost us, say, £200 to render, so that can be added onto the bill for any changes required). This isn't limited to the ArchViz industry, but it gives us a larger degree of flexibility compared with before, and its uptake will go up and its price down in the future, I think.

 

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That's what I wrote, anyway. What do you guys think? I think this is a pretty broad discussion and not the first time we've done it, but I thought it was a timely reboot. If Jeff has a problem with this discussion - insomuch as we're spilling some of the beans from the survey - then of course close it up, but hopefully it's fine since it's basically the least useful part of the survey as it's just our (admittedly somewhat educated) predictions as opposed to quantifiable data.

[Justin Hunt]

Whilst I largely agree with what you are saying in that "Cloud" this and "Cloud" that will be the only way to go in the next 5 years, I am still not entirely convinced its the right way to go.

 

One of the hurdles it the on-going costs of "cloud", in the short to mid term it makes a lot of sense, but in the long term it ends up being way more expensive. It also has an impact on cash flow. Many animation jobs require multiple re-renders, for many reasons. Using an on-line renderfarm requires that you pay for each and every re-render, which can quickly eat into your cash flow. Sure you can offset that cost onto the client, but not always, but that money only comes in after the job is complete, and as long as the client doesn't dispute the extra costs.

 

Cloud is great for scaling up and down quickly and relatively cost effectively.

 

I do see GPU gaining more ground, the tech is very quickly overcoming many of its current hurdles. There is also a lot of new competition entering this market. I see it as mainstream sooner rather than later.

[DanGrover]

That's true Justin, and it certainly goes without saying that there's a given point at which in-house hardware will be cheaper -if, of course, you can guarantee you'll use it X amount before the hardware becomes obsolete (and of course that's only part of it - the hardware on, for ex, Amazon is updated on a semi-regular basis with the costs not necessarily going up either).

 

We have little in the way of dedicated local render capacity - but we have about 14 workstations that get added to the farm at night, most of which are dual Xeon monsters. Of course, if we can render using these we always will. The times we use Amazon, though, are if we need a particularly quick turnaround (if you have a 400 frame sequence at an hour a frame, our little-farm-that-could would take approximately 22 solid hours, assuming no one was using their workstations - Amazon can do it in just over an hour) and it's in these situations that we find that flexibility being the most useful. If we had this sort of throughput constantly then it's certainly true that it's cheaper to buy the hardware. That said, as a fairly small, agile company, there's something to be said for our entire network infrastructure being able to fit into a small, 20U rack!

[M V]

I think you make a decent point about more viz people coming on board in arch firms. 3D and rendering is one of the most critical design tools that every firm must (and wants to) have to stay competitive. Do I think a small 3-5 person firm would have someone full time? Maybe not, but certainly firms that are medium to large firms definitely need to have someone on board that can produce high quality images. Will this hurt the industry? Not any more than Revit, SketchUp, or Lumion did. The firms that need the super quality, fast turnaround, mad horsepower renders and animation work will also farm out this stuff to the pros.

[Tommy L]

Over the next 5 yrs I don't see it changing that much. Often the appearance of change around you is yourself evolving.

[Scott Schroeder]

I think cloud rendering is up and coming, however the physical internet infrastructure to support it is not. Depending on where you live, you might have low end internet lines or a ISP that would prefer to throttle down your internet for doing so.

 

http://thenextdigit.com/10534/virginia-records-fastest-average-internet-speed-united-states/

 

Then you have this whole net neutrality thing that could seriously affect cloud computing. How? Well, if it passes, then it frees up a major ISP like communistcast to make a deal with Amazon that only their services are available for communistcast customers. Sure it is far fetched, but it is looming on the horizon and I wouldn't put it past big companies to pull something like that.

 

I fully agree with what Tom said. 5 years is pretty minimal for industry sweeping changes, I don't even expect to see Vray 4 by then. The bigger change will individual in nature.

[lucavidotto]

By looking at new products and services in the rendering industry I think that the trend is pretty clear and it's in the cloud. Vray has a cloud service available and also most of the modeling and visualization software are moving to the cloud. With this panorama I believe it's pretty clear where everything is going and where the industry will be in 5 years, or more. The advantages of the cloud are clear and lots of works is being done to improve cloud services in terms of speed, security and performances.

 

I also think that we will see more real time rendering since WebGL and HTML5 are already a standard for all Internet Browsers. We will see more and more interactive WebGL real time 3D scenes substituting videos. The offering of 3D Visualization studios will increase, adding new products to the traditional 2D renderings or videos. Again in the cloud.

 

My 2 cents