O'Hare Airport expansion design animations

[Ernest Burden III]

This article features designs submitted for an airport expansion. Yay, big, important infrastructure stuff! Clearly, among the required elements was to have a one-minute animation.

 

https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/1/17/18185431/ohare-design-competition-global-terminal

 

I understand that doing work on a major competition like this is tough--I've done a few--and that can result in lower quality of rendering. Sometimes you win by just having gotten anything done to submit. Still...these animations leave me wanting, mostly.

 

This first one is the worst. You went to the trouble of building an entire environment and phoned-in a spin-around-it shot? Extra points for the shots starting at a stand-still. I like the roadway wet areas, they work well and save the shot from epic-fail.

 

The Foster one is much better, the stock footage establishing opener works though it cuts into the time to show the actual proposal. I just wish the animated portions had the same look as the panned still renderings. The shot with the plane wing framing (I just landed!) is a total winner.

 

Stop this one at 0:06 if you don't want to throw things at your screen. The opening panned still is pretty, the first shot starts well but... the other 0:54

 

You can count on SOM to submit something worth looking at. They managed to do 3D animated-feeling panned stills. I guess that says 'tranquil' (first thing you think of at the airport). It's a nice effect. The sun moves but people don't. The trouble with the 'tree before you fly' is the outdoor air at airports--jet fuel exhaust. Ick. The last shot could have been better with more thought to composition, meaning all the elements are there for a killer ending, but it uses the stock angle for a terminal. I've rendered terminals with that shot (and for SOM). It's almost cliche. Again, you made a great model and environment, spent the time to render a shot...so make it awesome. Of the five, this one is the most pleasing animation to me.

 

Or this one. You had me at Calatrava. There are some great shots in here. The white-or-nothing roof doesn't render with much subtlety. How to build a zebra. Maybe that's a design intent. The pace is great. The camera moves slowly, the cars/trains move slowly, you can see what's being shown, not hanging onto your desk for dear life. It's calm. The last two shots do the pull-back well, the evening-to-night effect is usually pleasing, the last shot giving full context.

 

The quality of the five animations suggests they were all done in-house. I don't know how long their schedule was, but an airport is a LOT of work. So props to all involved.

[Scott Schroeder]

Do you think they all look the same? It is like they all had access to the same general Grasshopper script. If there wasn't a design directive to make sure to use that general shape of roof, this just means the end of design for me. SOM was the only one to get away from the bicycle helmet look, but they used it in a more subtle way. Maybe I'm just old and grumpy.

 

I should go across the street and yell at Fentress for that twirl-and-hurl animation...... Fentress Architects, Twirling Towards Victory for the O'Hare Expansion.

 

The Foster animation, for me, was the most impressive in how it mixed animations, tracking footage, and real wold footage of the design process. Though that Fosters video looked like they had at least 3 different render studios do work, there is quite a difference between the renderings being shown.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Man, these look like a very tight deadline. No other explanation why several of them used still images to fill up the video time.

 

I can Picture in my head, while you are finishing your 10th rendering (6 itineration each) and the Architect stand behind your shoulder and said, yes that looks good, now we also need a 3 minutes fly-by ... and since it is Friday today, just copy the same style for the animation, and I'll see you on Monday to review, you are still cool for Wednesday delivery right?"

 

Interesting to me that none of them posted the video with music??? and the only video with music is they took it from interstellar movie. That's some copyright issues there right?

 

Calatrava's design called my attention, it looks less Grasshopper as Scott mentioned. Pretty sure is one of the most expensive designs too, so who knows.

I am guessing they used some a Real-time Engine for that video tool, Maybe Twinmotion?? or Unreal, it would make a total stance if deadlines where tight for this.

 

Thanks for Sharing Ernest, good post.

 

P.S.

BTW showing the architects designing the Airport LOL I bet that wasn't a visualization artist call ha ha ha...

Edited January 22, 2019 by fco3d

[SgWRX]

the two things that really stood out to me were "ORD" Orchard, i don't think a lot of people realize that. and the other thing was "theater of aviation" what a great theme!

 

as for quality, yeah some were really good, lots of stills mixed in, noticed a neat trick that not ALL the people have to be moving... the mind goes to movement. but i've never really done much beyond a few spin-arounds although they were mostly 4 sides blended together not one continuous. anyway, i liked but i suddenly feel depressed because there must have been time limitations!

[M V]

I can Picture in my head, while you are finishing your 10th rendering (6 itineration each) and the Architect stand behind your shoulder and said, yes that looks good, now we also need a 3 minutes fly-by ... and since it is Friday today, just copy the same style for the animation, and I'll see you on Monday to review, you are still cool for Wednesday delivery right?"

 

I bet they gave even less time than that!

 

The first 2 are Lumion. The people are a dead give away because walking people in Lumion are limited to their library and I know the cast of characters by now. Calatrava must be Vray and Anima people it seems.

 

Are we critiquing the design or the animation work? Not sure I hate them. They are what they are. Renderings for a competition produced with no fee in a way too short period of time I bet. As Lumion grabs the market and architects do this work in-house we'll see more and more of this kind of stuff. At least it's not

[Ernest Burden III]

...Are we critiquing the design or the animation work?...

.

 

In my case, the rendering work was what I was critiquing. Thank you for the observation on Lumion people--I haven't used it so wouldn't be able to catch that. Regardless of rendering tools, there is not much extra cost to doing good shots. It's one of my greatest frustrations as a renderer that often the shot work get squeezed to the very end of the project. It didn't used to be like that.

 

When doing perspective layouts by hand, you have to do some pre-viz in your head, because you can put an hour into drawing up a view before discovering it isn't so great. Pull everything up, start again. You aren't going to be drawing cars and such into a view until you know it is a keeper. So you start with the shots. You then only add the detail that actually shows. The downside to that approach is that you are less likely to try shots that were not in the brief, because they are probably not going to paid for as finals. You are less likely to experiment with shots, which is what I enjoy the most about rendering.

 

Don't waste a great scene on bad, cliche, play-it-safe or nausea-inducing shots.

Edited January 30, 2019 by Ernest Burden

[neil poppleton]

Nice work by Fosters as you would expect

[M V]

I think as we see more and more Lumion we will see more and more intern architects, untrained in visual art creating animation and rendering work. It's cheaper for architects and clients and I know for a fact that they rather keep this stuff in-house so they can shoulder-sit and drive the design through rendering work. Some clientele care, but most don't.

[Scott Schroeder]

The SOM one to me shows that they understand the value of a good rendering, as well as not doing something for the sake of doing something. For example, doing a literal point A-B animation just to have moving images for your delivery. If you spend weeks developing high quality still images, why not leverage that work for the animation? Is the moving stills, aka Ken Burns effect, a cliche? I don't know, but I'm a huge fan of it. It works when you have just enough time that you can either develop a so-so set of stills and a so-so animation, or do beautiful stills but not necessarily have enough time to do a full traditional animation. You can leverage your still and save your time to do only a small handful of equally beautiful animation shots.

 

Lumion hurts in the other way that it gives you access to everything, so people feel the need to use all of the tools in one shot. Oh I can add people, and cars, and bloom, and motion blur, and lens flares for everyone! You get a lens flare! You get a lens flare! Weeeeeeeeeee! Chromatic aberration is the bomb!

 

Lumion is actually a great tool to get those mid to decent range looking renderings, but often isn't understood by it's user base.

[M V]

Wet pavement and chromatic aberration really does take a Lumion image to the next level I have to say.

[Ernest Burden III]

Wet pavement and chromatic aberration really does take a Lumion image to the next level I have to say.

 

I liked the wet pavement. Is that a Lumion button-effect?

[M V]

I liked the wet pavement. Is that a Lumion button-effect?

 

Oh yes. Wet pavement was introduced in Lumion 7 I believe and the latest version (9) just added precipitation effects. All very easy to create.

 

https://lumion.com/blog.html?post=180072040690

[Francisco Penaloza]

Wet pavement and chromatic aberration really does take a Lumion image to the next level I have to say.

 

Wet pavement, for me that lives and works in Southern California, that is such foreign concept LOL.

Chromatic aberration, when used responsibly it helps. but I think a good camera, lens choices and good story, make a better video rather than Chromatic aberration.

Here in the USA the 'good enough' concept is very strong on the AEC industry for presentations, there is only a few ranges of clients and developments that ask for Hig quality presentation, but for most, Schools, Hospitals, Stadiums and such, Good enough and cheap is ok.

I know many architects too that ask me what software I use to do renderings and say that they will take a weekend to learn so 'they can do the same.'

For many of them Lumion, Twinmotion, Enscape is perfect and in reality, when quick meetings are planed most of the renderings are outdated as fast as they are created, but most companies do not update those or make a 'final nice one' to keep until photography is done.

Like everything in life, IMO this is a trend, just like the video that Matthew Valero showed, time ago that's what Architects ask for, a single camera going everywhere. Lumions, Twinmotion and such will come, pick and then pass. until something new comes.

 

Last week, we got a good project a VA Hospital and one comment from the client as they were impressed with the animation we created, they said ' it really capture our concept and view of the care we provide to our people' to me that's the comment that I would like to hear, instead of that bed looks so realistic, time will pass technology will advance so much that creating something that looks real will be just a click of a button, and then what, how and what you will show, knowing how to tell a history is very important.

[Scott Schroeder]

 

Stop this one at 0:06 if you don't want to throw things at your screen. The opening panned still is pretty, the first shot starts well but... the other 0:54

 

 

Who wants to guess which one won the bid for the O'Hare expansion?

https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/3/27/18284048/ohare-expansion-studio-gang-wins-design-competition

 

It goes to show that visuals are not everything. Though, I still feel that the visuals produced really hurt what is probably the best design, and design that reflected elements of Chicago, of all of the finalists. Had they taken a few extra steps to add people, it would have been a total victory.