GarageFarm.NET Academy collaborative archviz project.

[Andrew _GF]

Hey guys!

Andrew here from GarageFarm.NET Academy.

The recent year was surprising and tough for everybody. But it also triggered many changes like moving from working at the office to remote work. It also affected the CG industry. 

In our team, we wondered if it is possible to put together a team of artists from different parts of the world and work on a common project only via the internet. Wondering is not enough, so we decided to do it. 

As a subject, we have chosen exterior visualization. Exactly a holiday cabin, to not make the whole thing too complicated. We will try to simulate a real-world scenario where a client is giving us his design and project brief and we need to deliver great visualization. 

Here is our team:

Jarosław ‘DJ’ – Blender| modelling the landscape, art direction | Poland
Marco – Blender | modelling, animation, project management | Philippines
Tomas – 3ds Max + Corona | putting together the scene, rendering | Poland
Amiel – Substance | texturing | Philippines
Michał ‘Andrew’ – 3ds Max + V-Ray | designing the cabin, ‘the customer’ role, modelling | Poland

We started with assigning Andrew the role of an architect giving us the job since he has experience in this matter.
 
Since Marco lead the team of modellers for our 3dBee.it assets store project, his role will be to keep everything in check and make sure we don’t miss the deadline or get lost in an overabundance of ideas. He will also create additional assets like fire or birds. 

DJ has experience in interior design and visualization and very good communication skills so he will have the last word when it comes to the final effect. He will also choose the location for the cabin and prepare the terrain.

Amiel is an expert in Substance (you can check his tutorials at our GarageFarm.NET Academy YT channel) so he takes on himself creating the most difficult materials and overlooking the project from that angle. 

Finally, Tomas will put together a visualization in 3ds Max and Corona. 

Based on this project we will release a series of videotutorials. We want to also put together a video from our video meetings. I’m not sure if the material will be interesting enough to publish, but we will try. 

Different members of the team work in different software. Since recently Blender exploded with lots of improvements and features there is a discussion going on whether it can be a legit archvis tool. We will have an opportunity to check this out. There will be problems with moving the data between different software so it’s even better ? We also live in different time zones, (Philippines and Poland) so we will be able to check if you can put together an international team online and create such a project. 

Here is the design we got from the ‘architect.’ I know that it has some design and construction flaws (like the corner), but it is good enough as an input material. 

Also, we got a list of materials used

And a ‘brief’ or rather a description of the design idea and a list of important design features which need to be emphasized and sold in the visualization.

General purpose:
Holiday cabin for a couple with 2 kids
Buyers are 30+ years old

No fixed location. Possible to assembly on a location chosen by the buyer

Function for kids:
Safe terrace. 
Sandbox function as a part of the terrace
2-level bed for kids

Other functions:
Fireplace\barbeque grill

Selling points:
Glass corner with a big view from beds. 
Safe terrace (for kids)
A place for installing a sandbox, or a little swimming pool
Grill\fireplace
Part of the terrace is under a roof ( you can grill regardless of weather)

Additional info:
I need all the functions to be visible in the main shot. Other shots can just add more information about the cabin design.
The cabin is going to be installed in a location chosen by the buyer, so the exact location used in the visualization is the choice of the artists’ team. 

Used materials:
Black zinc, black wood, black steel (optionally brighter wood). 
Double glass sheet window panes. 
Concrete feet foundation.  

Small architecture (surrounding): gravel car park place 

For now, DJ found a location (I will add more info on the next post) and put together mood boards as a source of inspiration. 

 

 

 

 

I will post here the progress of the project. I hope for your critique and comments! ? 

Edited July 1, 2021 by Andrew _GF

[Francisco Penaloza]

This look like a fun exercise in deed. I would be very curious how Blender will work for you guys, mostly in the combination with 3DsMax Corona/VRay.

Now if you ask me, (which you should never do because I am a trouble maker I would spiced up a little this charret and made the original "architect' model in some a CAD app, such REVIT, ArchiCAD or Rhino, Even Sketchup. 

A model with many iterations and double geometry. and of course not finished.   LOL it sounds funny, but that's what really you get from clients, lots of the viz person time is used debuging, repairing or rebuilding the original model because it is not compatible with your render workflow. or it is just plain bad.

That's one of the thing I wonder about Blender, I do like the software, but I haven't seen anybody showcasing how compatible is with ArchiCAD, REIVT or Rhino, how the triangulation works, group and layers.

Also the house in the mountains is the ideal project,( I dream with one of those)  what about a school/Hospital or Bank in a downtown area?, or a mutihouse project in the subs. Coordination was a main issue while working from home for many of us.  Coordinating the client vision and changes, with the artist and designers iterations, that's what we all were talking about when transitioning to work from home.  Maybe not now but you guys should look in to that for the next one

Thanks for the post and I'll wait for your progress.

Fco.

 

[Andrew _GF]

Hey Francisco  Andrew here.

Thank you for detailed feedback. 

Quote

Now if you ask me, (which you should never do because I am a trouble maker I would spiced up a little this charret and made the original "architect' model in some a CAD app, such REVIT, ArchiCAD or Rhino, Even Sketchup. 

Yes, the images are based on AutoCAD drawings I did. And one of the tutorials will be devoted to preparing 3ds Max settings for archvis workflow and importing the references from CAD files. Unfortunately I'm not able to create models in Archicad, Revit, SKP and Rhino but I will just try to import their demo scenes or other free ones from the internet and try to make them work. I have only worked with models from SKP, AutoCAD and Archiced so far. SKP models were pretty clean and ready to use, but in case of Archicad i just modelled everything from scratch, basing on the imported model. So I will try to adress also that, though I suspect that just one demo model, especially taken from the official soft developer's repository will now show all possible issues with importing to 3ds Max. 

Quote

A model with many iterations and double geometry. and of course not finished.   LOL it sounds funny, but that's what really you get from clients, lots of the viz person time is used debuging, repairing or rebuilding the original model because it is not compatible with your render workflow. or it is just plain bad.

 

That's true

Quote

That's one of the thing I wonder about Blender, I do like the software, but I haven't seen anybody showcasing how compatible is with ArchiCAD, REIVT or Rhino, how the triangulation works, group and layers.

At this point we import AutoCAD to 3ds Max. I will pass it to DJ I think he could make such a tutorial, since he worked in archviz in Blender. You can check our GarageFarm.NET Academy channel, DJ recorded a series of tutorials about creating a modern interior. 

Quote

Also the house in the mountains is the ideal project,( I dream with one of those)  what about a school/Hospital or Bank in a downtown area?, or a mutihouse project in the subs. 

For now we will focus on the cabin. Believe me, on our Teams meetings we have a lot of ideas for more stuff, and it has to be brutally cut down by Marco who is the project manager and our whole team supervisor. But the idea is good I will keep that in mind.

Quote

Coordinating the client vision and changes, with the artist and designers iterations, that's what we all were talking about when transitioning to work from home.  Maybe not now but you guys should look in to that for the next one 

Yes, I think our scenario and the fact that we know each other, and have other stuff to do, so that we can cut on the features or move a deadline makes it slighty easier than in real life. But we have found some obstacles already.

On the other hand, we have been working only remotely in a team for quite some time, so I think we figured out some of the quarantine workstyle before starting this project. Like keeping our project files, assets and stuff in cloud, etc. 

I will post an update soon!

Edited May 14, 2021 by Andrew _GF

[Andrew _GF]

Hey guys. 

Andrew here from GarageFarm.NET Academy

We have the next update of our collaborative archviz project! As I said in the previous post, we are trying to complete a full architectural visualisation project with the whole team working remotely from different parts of the world and with different software. 

The first thing we needed to do was pick the location for the cabin. It had to have a cool view,  some visible features of a good place for leisure time, and in general, be a good basis for creating a compelling environment. 

DJ took care of that and he has chosen not only the general vibe of the place but actually a real location for the cabin. He did it thanks to the BlenderGIS addon for Blender. It allows the creation of a general model of terrain based on its GIS location from Google Maps or other GIS vendors. 

Here is the place he picked.

 

 

Location: Dj checked for different mountain lake locations in different parts of the world, as the idea was to show the cabin design in a spectacular environment immediately communicating vacation mood. 

Finally, he picked English Lake District as a perfect balance between mountain height and family accessible leisure. A place suitable for hiking and canoeing without too many extremes, beautiful sights guaranteed nonetheless.

 

 

It has all the features we needed, and we could use Google Maps to find pictures of the location. We used them as a reference for creating the surroundings, like the trees, ground, local technology for roads, small architecture and other features of the landscape and vegetation. 

DJ created a basic model with as much detail as possible with the BlenderGIS addon. 

Then he needed to export it so Thomas could build the scene based on that in 3dsMax. He exported it as fbx from Blender. 

The basic exterior layout included some initial scattering of trees and stones blockouts which was also exported as meshes to give Thomas an idea about DJ’s concept which he could then recreate and/or modify using 3dsMax’s tools like Forrest Pack for the final scene setup 

BlenderGIS addon website: https://blender-addons.org/blendergis-addon/

 

General BlenderGIS addon GUI

Example location in BlenderGIS addon

The BlenderGIS addon is free and pretty impressive - it allows for Google Maps (and other like OSM) integration inside Blender and directly importing map textures and 3d height data into Blender. 

 

After some minor mesh corrections, we had a ready base for setting up the cabin’s environment

 

 

 

In the meantime, Amiel created materials for the cabin in Substance. 

 

Working on the darkwood planks of the cabin external walls. 

Adding detail to back zinc sheets on the facades.

Andrew has finished the model of the cabin. It wasn’t difficult since it’s a perpendicular shape with not very complicated detail. It was modelled in 3ds Max, so it was easy to pass it to Thomas who is a 3ds Max user as well.

Cabin model

Marco helped with the additional elements of the landscape to give more life and countryside vibe to the scene. He created a pier model in Blender and textured it in Substance Painter.

 

We also wanted to add dome sheep or birds to underline the countryside mood, but we cut that feature to make it before the deadline. But don’t worry - we will create all kinds of variants of the visualisation later. 

 

Since the location has a lake we created a canoe (in Blender) with Substance textures. 

 

Tomas job is to prepare the final render. Here are the first interior shots versions (3ds Max + Corona), There is a lot to improve but we have a general setup. 

 

This is what we have at this stage. We will continue to work on the project and create video tutorials on how the elements were created on the way

Renders straight from Corona.

Guys, if you have any feedback, advice or questions feel free to comment. I hope you will help us to achieve the best result.

In the meantime, we are working on the videotutorials.

 

Edited June 20, 2021 by Andrew _GF

[Andrew _GF]

Hey guys. 
Here are the renders we came up with. They are “finished” but I hope for your critique and comments so we can make them better. 
Any comments and critique is very, very welcome. 

What do you think?
 

[Francisco Penaloza]

So in my opinion. The overall is nice, good quality output, I think most clients would be happy with this images. The only image that I don't like is the very first one, I think the composition is not working there. Not sure what to look there.

Now if you ask me as an artist, I think the lighting is not very interesting, there is lack of depth even thought there is lots of landscaping to play with it.
The overall colors is not my coup of tea, but I live in West coast of USA so that's my bias eyes I guess.  I am just coming back from a family vacation to Sequoias national park here in California, so I have that fresh eye of nature and all the layers of things that create the landscaping.

Modeling is great, lots of details to look around, but I feel there is not a real focus point on it. The two last images are my favorites, the bird eye sot is great.  The before image, is the right composition compared to the first one. I wonder why in the 'Dusk' view you guys didn't turn on the lights inside the cabin. it would create a welcome feel on the image, it could be even more accentuate making everything bluish and the interior warm and orange.

 

I would be very interested to know how the blender modeling workflow turn out, and how easy or complicated what the exchange between Blender and 3D Max.  Did you guys and back and forth or only one direction?

Also just to brag, how large did you render these images and how fast they cook?, come one you are a render farm company

Cheers.

 

 

[Andrew _GF]

Hey Francisco, Andrew here. 

Thank you for detailed feedback! 

You are right when it comes to lack of light inside the cabin, I don't know why Tomas who was rendering it made such a decision. But we are going to work more on the renders so will add this part too.

For now it was all streamed in one direction - From various apps like Blender, other 3ds Max version, Substance to Tomas' 3ds Max 2018. At first we wanted to make also renders in Blender with the same assets but the whole thing was complicated enough without putting it all together also in Blender. But DJ will make his render in Blender as well, after the first batch of videotutorials we release. I asked him to write here more about Blender\3ds MAx pipeline, I was working in MAx so it was easy peasy. 

When it comes to lighting what kind of vibe you were talking about?

 

By the way, we have just released a teaser of our videotutorials series:

We will publish the first video this Friday, so stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Francisco Penaloza]

On 8/4/2021 at 8:48 AM, Andrew _GF said:

When it comes to lighting what kind of vibe you were talking about?

Pretty cool stuff in the youtube channel, I subscribed so I'll see how you guys work there

 

Regarding lighting, in my opinion it was about depth, you can archive depth in different ways, such with color composition or lighting.

In your case, ( and this is my eye only) I can see the bluish tint of the HDRI all around but not a ambient, or lighting depth.

For example on the last image (not the aerial) if the sun was behind the cabin, you can have a hot bright light area right behind your house, and that will direct the viewer to it. or the light could come from the right and the shadows could wash across the frame making everything closer to the camera darker, and leave the cabin more bright. THis also could make the far mountains orange, so you get a gradient of blue to orange. 

The shot that is close the the grass and there is a big boulder on the right, there is almost not shadows there too. Again if the sun is lower to get larger shadows, maybe that rock will separate it self from the grass and the grass also will look more dimensional, rather than all one flat plane.

The foggy version of the same shot, has more depth, you can read the shape of that boulder(rock) on the right, you can read the shape of grass and plants, the area closer to the camera is darker and it gets lighting when it gets closer to the cabin. but since the cabin is dark, then your eye just keep wondering in to the forest in the back, that with the fog it is brighter than the cabin it self, so makes me wonder what should I look. an abandoned cabin?? a cold place? I have drink to much coffee and writing too much??

 You get the idea ?

Looking now at your references images, or inspiration images, you have a good set over there. for example that shot with the small stone cabin. First layer, closer to the camera is the tall green grass, lots of articulation on that grass, then you have a stone cabin, gray with a light bluish lake on the same plane, then on the back you have a purple deep bluish sky. Three well defined depth layer by colors.  The photo of the deer, First layer green grass, second layer brown grass and deer. third layer, green bluish trees, out of focus to accentuate the focus areas.

 

[Francisco Penaloza]

So with all your guys respect, I have edited a little one of the images to showcase what I talked about. Of course this is not optimum because I only have a low-res images, but the basics are, creating different layers or areas to focus the viewer. I don't want to be like on those of those " let me fix your image" type of person, I thought an image can express better my ideas.

there is a foreground, a mid ground Cabin area and a background that can be even separated on two, by the fog, behind and in front of the fog, that is affected by the distant sun in the back.

If it is too horrible I can delete it from here. let me know.

Cheers.

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by Francisco Penaloza

[Andrew _GF]

Hey, Francisco, Andrew here. 

Thank you a lot for such a detailed critique. Please don't delete your version, I will show it to my collegues. 

Yes, our night cabin version basically looks like "cabin in the woods" :D. I will take your feedback into consideration, it will take me a while to digest it though. I will post new versions here when we have them. 

 

 

 

[Jarosław Dzedzej]

Hi there Francisco. DJ here.

Thanks a lot for the feedback - it is super welcome. I agree that a quick post-pro fix you did is a perfect way to communicate an idea (I did exactly the same when giving feedback to Tom who was the rendering artist). We set ourselves a deadline and this is how far the images got at the time (I guess that is the reality in most projects - finished not perfect :)). Luckily we are in a position that allows us to further develop this idea - as it was an experiment, and we will share bits of it in the video series we are releasing on YT.  

My role here was to guide the concept and art direction of the scene and I agree with your opinion on the night shot (which is my favourite, but we haven't pulled off it's potential yet) - it needs the welcoming light inside, unless we go for a somewhat horror mood  . I was thinking of going for an even more dusky sky and more suble, dimmed light in the cabin or on the porch (like fireplace or lanterns) plus some fireflies hovering over the foreground grass to give even more magical/misterious mood to the foggy setting.

As for rendering on the farm and bragging.. I'll ask Tom to share some info.

He was doing the renders, and he is also a wrangler on the farm so I'm sure he's deep into every technical detail of the process.

[Andrew _GF]

Hey

Here is a video made by DJ about his art directing experience with Holiday cabin project. I hope you will find it interesting.