Changing with technology

[Devin Johnston]

In the last 24 months I've seen some dramatic changes regarding how we as an office produce Viz content. Tools like Enscape now allow Designers to navigate their models in VR and produce renderings and animations very quickly. This imagery is not as nice as that produced from an engine like Vray but in many cases it's good enough. Consequently demand for this content has dropped and I've seen the demand for CG enhanced drone video spike. In fact most of the animation I'm doing today falls into this category because its simply more impressive. I'm wondering if others are experiencing a shift in their deliverables like this. If so do you see opportunities to produce newer better content that goes beyond what we think of as traditional visualization?

Edited June 13, 2018 by Maxer

[Scott Schroeder]

I too have seen demands shift in the world of Enscape in our office. While we don't feel as busy as in the past, we're creating better images. Enscape has relieved us from the 10,000 images of "What's that window look like 1 inch to the left." We would like to more drone video/image CG integration but our timelines prevent that still.

 

Ultimately, we tend to get to the point where Enscape is no longer viable in the process. This is usually when you need to show images to non architect people who have a hard time understanding the gray model and the nuances of a Revit model.

 

It should be noted that in our office, the Revit teams are lean so they do not do any light fixtures or materials so Enscape is mostly limited to the gray model modes.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Times are changing indeed, funny enough, I have been a big promoter of tools like Enscape or Lumion in my company, at the beginning I also ask my self, why in the earth I will show them something that will cut my load of work. "they can become self sufficient and I will be kicked out'

 

Well there is a natural fear for sure, after surviving the whole overseas can do cheaper and faster thing... but what is even funnier, I am more busy now than ever and the cool thing is now they understand when I push for quality and that extra mile. They do want an image to wow and not something that will get scratch and scratch like shopping list right after is printed.

As Scott mentioned tools like Enscape or Lumion are exactly what many designers need, and this is not patronaging here but they don't need anything more complex than that, why because but the time they figure out how to resolve GI they already forgot what part of the design they where working on, too many distractions instead of just focusing on design. Honestly, I always said that VRay was too much for a designer that 'just need an image' of course if you will prepare the money shot that will be printed and promote your project, you will put more hours and love to it. You'll spend hours learning and perfecting that image, but when time crunch and you just need to explain an idea, why you will export from REVIT, change materials, collapse, optimize, re-build cover wholes and many many more thing just to output a white or gray image to scratch on??

 

I think that thanks to these tools, dedicated professionals like us have more time to do the thing that we really care about, and time to research and do fun things like VR or AR or creating interactivity, or as you mentioned Devin up the bar with 3d mix with aerial footage, or time-lapse or many other techniques.

 

I am telling you before enscape, my company will never pay, unless in a very specific case, they won't pay any aerial photography for a project, it was always google map and such. Most of the time it was me spending long hours building cities or large terrains just to do the sticky bird eye shot.

Now, they already did many passes with the client, different test and try, and when they are close to finishing, that's when I walk in and they are eager to get just excellence.

 

If you where the guy that did lots of renderings for cheap, well Enscape or Lumionreally will kill your business, and I can understand that, but if you can prove that you can give so much more than a simple image, then things are becoming easy.

 

Needless to say, since they are rendering with Enscape, the Sketchup or REVIT model that I receive to work, they look a lot better, I am receiving REVIT with materials!!!! and fewer holes or missing elements.