The house in the woods

[Chris MacDonald]

Now forgive me, I've just had a case of wine delivered and am getting myself familiar with it...

 

Is anyone else extremely bored, and/or jealous of the people that continuously get to churn out the "house in the woods" images? No context, do whatever looks best, "what's a budget?" kind of images?

 

It's not that they are bad images, in fact most are stunning. It's not that they lack talent, it's all clearly on display - who else has time to model screw heads and do depth of field shots of them?

 

It's that they are so deliberately devoid of context, and an unashamed use of ones time that I can't help but be both jealous and sick of them. I genuinely get excited these days when I see someone produce an office block, in realistic looking (often run down!) surroundings, and still make it look good. I get excited when I see that someone has had to cut corners somewhere because their deadline didn't allow them to do anything else, but still manage to churn out a really compelling image.

 

Surely I am not the only one? Surely someone else here has to work to deadlines, and move a camera behind a wall, or make it sunny, and overcast, and rainy, and cloudy all at the same time? And add millions of people, but create a sense of serenity?

 

Surely someone has a deadline tomorrow that was asked of yesterday, but due last week?

 

Surely, it's not just me.

[Francisco Penaloza]

ha ha ha ha, Yes man... you are not alone

there is tons of Arch Viz artist around that drools with those images, just like looking a Fender guitar in the store window..... "if I only could touch it"

I could even add some more, you live in UK, for us in USA it feel even tighter, here budget is everything... Stucco and curtain walls are our bread and butter

I live and work in California, if I put too many cloud in the sky they complain.... not even dream about a moody, foggy, raining rendering. Colors are pretty flat, our clients live in a world with not color bleed or any physical lighting expression. Their super eyes can tone down any light intensity, so everything is lit evenly. You look from inside to outside, everything is the same, you look from outside to the inside.... it look the same Yep pretty flat images.

But oh well we try our best, and always try to put a little here and a little there just for mental sanity. Hiding Chubacca, and Koalas also help :0

and yes I am also tired of the Scandinavian apartment or the house in the forest. I would love to travel to a Scandinavia country a census every single house and see it they really look clean white, top designer furniture fufu style. I am sure they don't.

 

OK what you waiting, share that wine already,

[Nic H]

i hate the house in the woods like i hate the white scandanavian room

both rubbish both assembled from presets

 

0/10

[CliveG]

Surely someone has a deadline tomorrow that was asked of yesterday, but due last week?

 

Surely, it's not just me.

 

We feel your pain Chris!

 

I think you tell who on the forum is grounded in reality, well "our" reality anyway and I don't think that we're in the minority!

 

I agree with Nic - the house in the woods, Nordic.... anything and not forgetting the ubiquitous sodding loft are nowadays an irrelevance and can offer little real-world inspiration or ideas to me. I think most of those images are not making money for anyone, so they are of little relevance.

 

As you say it's those that rise to a challenge, cut corners and get an admirable product out against the odds that I'm interested and inspired by, rather than those who get to scoff at a mere 5 week deadline for the same sort of work.

[Justin Hunt]

As someone who lives in the "woods" (OK semi-rural bush land), these images also give the shits, more from the point of view of "aint nobody got time to mow all that grass or clear the leaves out of the gutters, never mind the dead tree branches falling on the roof or even the bush fire hazards". I have smashed one too many windows from the ride on mower kicking up stones to ever want grass growing right up to the house.

[Corey Beaulieu]

Did you guys see Henry Goss and Peter Guthrie's SOA interview with Ronen Bekerman? Towards the end of it Henry says that they tend towards working on larger projects and thus they don't have hectic deadlines. They find themselves feeling a sense of freedom to build their knowledge base through experimentation.

 

I am utterly jealous of this. I work in a large studio and we do incredibly large projects, but the deadlines are relentless. I hope and dream of the day I get to put it all together the way one should to "do it right" but we are constantly forced to truncate our process. But the show goes on and we do our best to get it better, faster.

 

The Boundary has an incredible portfolio and realistically, I am not disenchanted by their work in knowing that they likely had twice the time I do to create it. Great work is not always about how much time is involved in it. It's all about the result in the end. The all white interiors and the house in the woods are getting boring because they are not hard to build and require very little effort to fill out. An FPP license and a few downloaded models will get you the image 60% of the way. The rest is composition and paint and even the most rushed of us still incorporate that into our images, so yeah, they are no longer interesting.

 

I am and will stay inspired by photographers of interesting architecture/interiors so I don't much care about these particular images, but all the same I understand your pain and side with your opinion. The problem, however, seems only to be getting worse.

[Derek Forreal]

as a hobbyist, if i came on here and said that all 'professional' arch vis is dull and boring, i'm sure there would be those of you that would say that not all arch vis is created the same and that it's all about the story and all that jazz.

 

true, the Scandinavian interior is totally overdone but i think this highlights a completely different issue; that these images do not visualise architecture but instead visualise interior design, which is a completely different field.

 

that said though, at the end of the day it comes down to the image. sure, if an image is full of objects you've seen a million times before then of course it's not going to be interesting. but i can't agree that a 'professional' image should somehow be celebrated just because the deadline was tight. if an image is uninteresting then it's uninteresting. honestly, most of these 'developer' images aren't just uninteresting, they're just plain bad.

 

someone mentioned architectural photography and i think this is an ideal parallel here; anyone can pick up a camera and take a photo of a building, but how many of those photos will be interesting to look at? the compelling image will, ultimately, be of striking architecture first and foremost with composition and lighting and mood doing the rest. if you open up a browser and look at photos of the latest and greatest houses for sale, would you look at any of the photos and/or CG images twice?

 

and if someone wants to do a personal project, do you really think they're going to choose a 'developer' style look to practise on? honestly, if i was doing that day in day out, to tight deadlines, it's not a job i'd be doing for long.

 

going back to the Scandinavian interior, sure they're a bit long in the tooth now, but i would definitely prefer to look at a set of those images rather than the typical 'professional' evenly and badly lit shop front, with poorly composited entourage and the like, or the kitchen shot with the happy couple playing with a dead fish...

 

ultimately though, i'd much rather see images of architectural visualisation and those unfortunately, but for a handful of exceptions, seem to be long gone.

[philippelamoureux]

100% agree with Derek!

 

I mush prefer to visualise architecture than interior design. I'm doing a ''house in the wood'' for a friend and for my ''portfolio'' and What I truly enjoy is making the lighting and the environment. But jeez that the interior decorating gets old fast. Especially with free assets we see everywhere!

 

When I do personal projects I'll try to replicate famous buildings. I've done a ue4 version of the Salk institute, Chai Ballande and I'm now doing the Neue nationalgalerie. Muchhh more interesting to me than showcasing messy beds and carpets.

 

Since my friend and I are building our own viz studio (slowly but surely) and kinda struggling to find which exact direction we want it to go, there are good chances we'll focus on ue4 movies/real-time/vr in the end . We don't want to do product viz and we'd like to avoid the property developer's kind-of-render-type. The dream would be to help the architecture design process via real-time vr and also being able to play a role in the marketing phase with directed movies, etc.

 

Ultimately, I want to be able to put a rift on my head and explore an almost photo-real Salk Institute, for example, get a sense of the scale, etc. That will be fun and I can't be alone wanting to experience that. Annnnd slowly move away from the most boring rendering jobs.

[christosviskadourakis]

I have to disagree.. I think you look at the tree and you miss the forest (huh ). You are getting too harsh on the people who create images like these. You are saying that you are jealous of them. But what for? In most cases, these images are just projects without a client/owner and they don't earn money for their creators. The people who create these images are most likely without a real project on their hands to work for and as a consequence they desperately try to draw some attention on the market for their skills. So you must really envy not having a job.

[Scott Schroeder]

I think in a MIR interview they said that the images you see from them online are a small fraction of the work they do. Even with the Boundary. I'm willing to be the farm that while they tend to do the bigger projects, they still have their bread and butter arch viz work to help pay the bills. Or Peter and Henry get the freedom projects and their other employees get the bread and butter ones. That's not a bad business model in anyway. That's the ideal situation. Get the junior level making you money and free up your senior level guys to make you art.

 

You also have to factor in the sheer time that places like the Boundary have put in just to get themselves to that level where they can command certain project requirements. You don't see them battling over the "Yeah, but can you render this for $25?" clients. The client doesn't want to work within the set limits of those places? The client gets told to take a walk. Not a lot of places can do that. Since the Boundary in particular is a newer firm, they can choose to start off with those types of client limitations. Places like where most of us probably work, we've been around for some time and making those types of client demands would cause huge rifts in the time-space continuum.

 

I'm not all too worried about these renders. Yes, I do get annoyed by them. But for a side project they are fine. They are outside the box of what we usually do and those types of projects make it easier to get motivated to work on after putting in a full days worth of work. Plus you can knock these out in a few days and move on to another project. You won't end up like me and have a boneyard on your hard drive of half started complex side projects.

[Chris MacDonald]

You won't end up like me and have a boneyard on your hard drive of half started complex side projects.

 

Hah! I have exactly this too!

[Jason Matthews]

I for one enjoy these types of images, but only for a minute. What I am really tired of is the same old real estate/developer images, as stated previously. Nearly every client I have wants a daylight exterior showing this, that, and the other - equally lit, little contrast, little interest, some entourage, but not enough to make believable, bright blue skies with few clouds, etc. This to me is getting old...very old. I look to some of these images, not necessarily the stark white interiors and context-less exteriors, but more the surreal images, with a mood and passion. These are my mental masturbation before I return to reality. I just do not have time to create these stunning images. On another note, I have one client whom I know personally that asks me to basically design their proposed project with ABC program. Those jobs are awesome because it allows for a good fee and I get to break the emotional chains that bind me...for I am free...