Help needed for Walkthrough - Project management, workflow & pipeline

[karthiksrinivasan]

Hello guys i want to create a walkthrough for my portfolio something similar to this

it's going to be a group project.. I haven't created an exterior walkthrough but i have made one interior walkthrough so far, here it is

it's my first interior walkthrough, browse through my channel and take a look at some of my 3d works:) i am trying to improve my skills.. My questions are:

 

1: How do you manage such a big plan with materials, models and vegetation

 

2: Should i create everything in a one single file including vegetation's and models, light and render everything in the same file, Or first model everything in a single file, Place camera's animate them and split the file according to the camera's by saving them as separate files and then place lights for every file and render them individually? How not to get caught when there is a reflective object like window, carpaint etc, in front of the camera when using this method..

 

3: Here in India i have heard some of my friends working in archviz field say that only few companies come up with the elevation plans for their projects, Many people only give a floor plan and an master plan as an PDF or an high res image, Is it true? They have managed to create some good exteriors with just the floor plan alone, Can you make 3d elevations just with the floor plan and use our own imagination to decorate & stylize the exterior of the buildings?

 

I love doing archviz but these kind of technical things confuse me a lot.. Looking for help.. Thanks

My pc configs are: i7 4770k with 16gb RAM and an basic AMD 4600 series graphic card..

[Chris MacDonald]

1: How do you manage such a big plan with materials, models and vegetation

 

Usually when creating something large scale I would use an Ordnance Survey map in cad format and import it into the drawing, and begin modelling from there; obviously things further away require less detail and attention than the things that are to be close up. I have once done a site that was very large - so I split it into two sections, a "low res" version for all of the far away parts, and a "high res" part that fits in where our site was, which brings us on to the next question...

 

2: Should i create everything in a one single file including vegetation's and models, light and render everything in the same file, Or first model everything in a single file, Place camera's animate them and split the file according to the camera's by saving them as separate files and then place lights for every file and render them individually? How not to get caught when there is a reflective object like window, carpaint etc, in front of the camera when using this method..

 

On large projects it is a pretty bad idea to model everything in one file. It will simply become too large and unwieldy to work in, and it will massively hamper your group projects efforts - how will you all have one file open?

 

References are the key.

 

Split things logically - A file for the site + vegetation, a file for the/each building, a file for furniture, a file for cars, a file for animated objects, etc. How you do this is up to you; weigh up the pro's and cons of each situation. For example: you could have a separate model for trees/plants to the site model, which will speed up your viewport - but how will your scatter plugins work if the site geometry isn't in the file?

 

I have even taken to having a "render" file that contains only lighting and cameras, with everything else referenced in to that. This gives me quick, responsive viewports as I can turn off unnecessary files allowing me to animate in the viewport in almost realtime - and autosaves are rapid too!

 

3: Here in India i have heard some of my friends working in archviz field say that only few companies come up with the elevation plans for their projects, Many people only give a floor plan and an master plan as an PDF or an high res image, Is it true? They have managed to create some good exteriors with just the floor plan alone, Can you make 3d elevations just with the floor plan and use our own imagination to decorate & stylize the exterior of the buildings?

 

I have never worked like this unless you REALLY have to. I would stipulate that CAD plans are a must - otherwise you're going to run into all kinds of scaling issues. It's fine to work like that for basic things like quick Sketchup models, but for what you're trying to embark on; forget it.

 

If they are creating elevations themselves, then they are essentially designing the building. Are you being paid to design the building? If not, then tell the client that you require elevations, or negotiate payment for the design of the façades; it's time out of your day that could have been spent doing far more productive things.

[karthiksrinivasan]

Thanks for the brief explanation Chris MacDonald I heard about Xref's but haven't used them, I saw this video now

which really showed the power of xref..

 

So basically you are saying to model buildings, furniture's and vegetation in separate file, for example if the site has 6 block of apartment with each block containing 6 floors. Model each block in a separate file and use xref's to link individual file to the master plan which has roads and vegetation alone, Am i correct?

 

Should i use the same method for the exterior furniture's and props too, even if they have only few of them? And for the vegetation which one should i go for vrayproxies or xref's, I've been using vrayproxies for quite a long time to populate scenes with vegetation's, can i continue using proxies or i should go for xref, i use forest pack lite for scattering..

 

My biggest confusion is almost solved now thanks again for pointing me about Xref's :)

Edited June 24, 2015 by karthiksrinivasan

[Chris MacDonald]

What you decide to xref is entirely up to you, just think about breaking the work up into logical chunks. At its most basic level I split the building and the site into separate files and that's it.

 

I use forest pro too, so I do all of my vegetation within the site file.

 

It's a method that works really well, but don't over-complicate it and start creating hundreds of xrefs because that will give you a whole other level of headache.