in house Arch Viz Artist support group

[Francisco Penaloza]

Hello everyone, the other day I was talking to my boss and wondering how many in-house archviz artist are still alive here in USA. Through our conversation we imagine that not many. When I say in-house artist, I don't mean an Architect that also does renderings, I mean a person that his sole responsibility inside the architectural company is to do renderings, and animations, in 30 minutes, and popping rabbits from hats, amuse the manager from time to time with a new gadget, while being friendly with IT so they let him use more computers for the ever scarce render farm, that type of guy. I think we are a dying spices.

let me know if you are out there, maybe it can be fun to share stories ;).

Fco.

[Tom Bussey]

That sounds like me. Not sure about dying breed though, in the UK, not US at least. Over here, Zaha, Fosters, AHMM, Arup and many more all have dedicated visulisation departments these days. If anything I think it's something that's a growing trend, albeit maybe it took a bit of a hit during the pandemic.

Edited May 17, 2021 by Tom Bussey

[Chris MacDonald]

I'm an in house visualiser. I'm in the UK though. It's currently ludicrously busy and we've just interviewed another person to join my team today.

Seems to be growing here. I know the other local practices (of a size that is large enough to warrant it) all have in house visualisers.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Hey Guys!, Thanks for answering, I thought this forum was dying too, I am not a paying customer here so not sure if it is more active in the 'other side' and BTW you both are from U.K, so nobody from USA yet, so maybe  I am the last one LOL.

I am pretty sure there are a few here, but every time that I go to any conference or similar regarding  Arch Viz or something I only find 1 or 2 Arch Viz person.  Most of the others are Architect that also do rendering or are solo artist or from companies.  And not to sound respectful and not generalizing of course, but there are many thing that we don't agree with. For instance the word 'quality' for an arch viz person here in USA is a very flexible word, of course we thrive for the best, but considering the circumstances sometimes is not what we wish, but what we can get. I was wondering if this was a USA only trend. Every time I read something from any European country, the answer is always something like " we care about quality no matter what". Here in USA I also heard lost of people who was layoff because of COVID and some of them the company saying we have people who can do similar work and, sadly it is not true, there are people who can click render but that doesn't meant they are any good.

Any way glad to heard that you guys are doing well on the other side of the pond ( that how you say it? :P) I would be curious about how you guys are dealing with stuff I mentioned or the crescent grown of instant renderings such, Enscape, Lumion and such.

Cheers.

 

 

 

[Jose Negrete]

Hi Francisco, I'm doing dedicated in-house arch viz. I've worked with a handful of Architect teams over the last couple years that have dedicated in-house arch viz as well. I also remember this forum being more active when I first started to frequent it but it seems facebook groups or maybe discord servers may be more popular these days.

[Scott Schroeder]

In house viz guy here as well, and in the US. I wouldn't say we are a dying breed, but we are undergoing a paradigm shift for sure.

[Eliot Blenkarne]

In house, based in NZ. As Scott ^ has alluded to, a serious shift underway for us over the last 18+ months. Incidentally, I was going to start a thread that touches on this topic, in a sense, and I'd be interested to hear how others are dealing with this issue.

With the rise of software like Enscape (which I enjoy using and supporting design teams with), I feel we have a new battle, one of quality apathy. I'm interested to hear how other teams around the world grapple with the "this image the design team has pumped out of Enscape and Revit for a competition/RFP/concept/DD /etc document is good enough to use and we won't bother with the viz team" attitude. I have moved to Enscape almost fulltime, supporting design teams. It has been really successful for the most part, with almost high-end quality produced in a fraction of the time, but we are finding some studios/individuals still resist. It constantly surprises me how low the standards of designers are when it comes to visuals - clients I can somewhat understand, but it does feel sometimes like visuals become this bartering tool where teams cut any budget from their projects just to keep clients on side. This isn't a chicken little "I'm going to become irrelevant" situation - I'm busier than ever, but certainly I'm seeing more people just accepting quick and dirty enscape renders.

As a side, I have a full series of tutorial videos on our intranet, have studio contacts and travel to these studios regularly (bar our Australian studios for obvious reasons). I'd just appreciate any ideas on how to encourage a focus on quality and consistency and actually giving a damn rather than the "this'll do" mentality. Open to critique of course.

[Francisco Penaloza]

@Eliot Blenkarne man, you read my mind.  I started this thread with exactly the same questions, but since I've seen this forum so dead for a while I was wondering if anybody would answer. Also as mentioned earlier, in this forum there are all type of visualization persons. And I didn't want to create a push and pull with people that are solo or in studios that don't see the same issues.

I would love to have that conversation with any in house artist, in here or Discord  or whatever, if everyone else in similar situation is interested. We can create a new thread or keep writing on this one.

As quick answer for what you mentioned, I am in exactly the same situation, I also embraced the  instant gratification rendering time ago before some Architect walked to my desk telling me, ' Have you seen this render engine?" 

I introduced the company I work for, Enscape, I created training material and I have been preparing basic materials so everyone have their basics covered, My main goal by then was to centralize most renderings workflow.  We had many young people coming with Rhino-VRay experience, or using REVIT cloud or some random render, also Old timers were loving Lumion, but it was a pain when they did something for earlier test and then send me the Lumion file "to make it look better'.

My goal was for design team to take the first stab to their design and then I could take it from there.  It worked in some way but that's when this story started :p.

 

 

[Devin Johnston]

In house renderer in the US since 2003, worked for one firm from 2003-2020 as the only in-house 3d guy and was laid off last year due to COVID.  I spent about 3.5 months looking for another in-house position, found one in January and I'm back at it with a slight increase in pay and position.  As far as whether the in-house position is becoming more rare I can't really say but I agree that programs like Enscape and Lumion are causing firms to re-think the way they produce visualizations.  In the past before these programs surfaced the in-house guy was a vital part of the design/marketing/presentation process.  Programs like 3d Studio & Vray were difficult to learn and use and as a result the in-house guy had a very secure position, that security is gone now especially if you work for a company that doesn't care about image quality.  If you work for one of these companies I suggest you start looking for a place that does appreciate what a seasoned 3d artist can bring to the table.   

For all the new people who are just getting into visualization I encourage you to broaden your skill set to include things like VR & AR, video production, Drone operation and anything else you can think of to make yourself more valuable.  

[Francisco Penaloza]

@Devin Johnston Glad to see you back, hard time indeed for all of us last year, but sure I am glad you are in a better situation now.

A question for you all.

if your company adopted Enscape/Lumion for Designers rendering, so you do yours and they do many more during design.

a: Will you jump in to their CAD software, REVIT, Rhino, Sketchup and do your renderings there? and limiting yourself because the limitations of the CAD software or render engine. But you have fast iterations with their design and they can still update the model till last minute.

b: You tell them that you need 'more time' because you have to export to 3DsMax so you can use V-Ray, Corona or anything similar.

[Devin Johnston]

I'd say B but I don't think that means it's going to take more time to setup and get going when compared to Lumion \Enscape.  3d Studio's Revit file linking is pretty good, you can directly import Revit files into a scene you've already setup essentially taking away any advantage Lumion\Enscape had in the quick setup department.  If your using Vray now you have a built in material and model library's which speeds things up even more and if you use Progressive rendering your render times are drastically cut.  

 

[Eliot Blenkarne]

2 hours ago, Devin Johnston said:

I'd say B but I don't think that means it's going to take more time to setup and get going when compared to Lumion \Enscape.  3d Studio's Revit file linking is pretty good, you can directly import Revit files into a scene you've already setup essentially taking away any advantage Lumion\Enscape had in the quick setup department.  If your using Vray now you have a built in material and model library's which speeds things up even more and if you use Progressive rendering your render times are drastically cut.  

 

We never give them an ultimatum, unless it NEEDs to be of the ultimate high quality (marketing, usually). 

I'd have to disagree in terms of time/setup - though only when using SketchUp. I can get a concept model at midday, and by the end of the day have it neatly organised, proper materials from our library applied, populated and detailed to practically the same level that can be achieved in max... which may be possible in max too, but what is almost certainly not possible is the ability to iterate on cameras and lighting. We can pump out dozens of images in no time, with totally different compositions and light setups. It really is very fun and makes one think about the future. Other artists in the team reckon they can do it in max... but it just never happens. Usually there is some import issue, layers missing, max crashes 37 times, some random issue in a plugin pops up... all of a sudden, two days are gone and our designers are getting frustrated. We have very experienced artists (20+ years), and this stuff happens to everyone. Revit is next cab off the rank, and some technicians in our company are already pushing into our world pretty swiftly.

Sometimes I feel traditional archviz tools seem overkill compared to the actual process of creating a good image - and it seems the architectural industry is reacting to this finally.

You point around upskilling is likely the most valuable take-away from this chat I think - we're lucky inasmuch that all these things are fun to learn and play with, so it's not really a chore!

[piotrus3333]

interesting read. especially as I will be in near future totally open to consider in-house job (london) solo and studio experience here, around 12 years. different perspective, different needs - just refreshing I guess.

lumion/enscape/tm/d5/whatever?

As if a painter should be concerned about new type of brush putting him out of business? ridiculous. if you are a decent illustrator you will get decent work out of ipad. tool is just a tool. if it seems to be doing the job better than others in certain circumstances - embrace it. do not be the one-trick-pony that is best in setting up precalculated irradience map for animations.. (btw: if those max people with 20y exp and crashing plugins are not able to design a tool/setup within max  to give you those sketchup lighting permutations - something is not right)

regarding quality - as more and more content is being produced do not expect all of it to be top notch. its not needed. world is speeding up and “good enough” is the new “good”.

I agree that the forum is quite lacking in content like this one. thank you for the topic and discussion.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Thank you guys for your input.

Honestly I just created this thread to heard about you guys, I am not really looking for specific answers. As the title said I think is just good to heard other people experiences, without trying to tell and definitive answer, because I believe we all have different type of work to do and for sure there is not one solution fit them all.  Also I guess after a year of working from home I need more human contact LOL.

For example I totally agree with @Eliot Blenkarne I am one of those 20+ years of experience and yes 3DsMax crash when you need it the most, but it it not because of lack of experience or know how, it is just the nature of the beast. I work with very heavy REVIT models,  everything in the cloud so we are very prom to crashes. Hospitals over 200 beds, that's a lot of info.

As he mentioned Enscape is like a magic tool you can get done so much in such little time that 'Traditional 3DsMax/V-Ray workflow' seems ting from the past.  But there are limitations, is not a perfect tool for sure, IMHO for example the very nature of the tool is its limitation, You are working inside the CAD tool and this can create big disadvantages.  Like "adjusting" or modifying the geometry, in my case it is REVIT, so if I move a wall or something, this happens for everyone on the team, and things that for me as visualizer are important, can be meaningless for someone doing constructions drawings.  In that case, taking the model out to a specific Visualization software has its advantages.

I also agree with @piotrus3333  The tolls doesn't make the craftsman, that's for sure, I use many and all of them, and I do embrace new and easy things, the less time I spend seating fighting with something the better for me.  But there is a difference when you work outside of an architecture firm.  You receive a detached model, many decisions has been made already and any future changes you can actually stop them,  just putting an extra cost to them :p.  I am not saying it is easy or harder, it just just different. 

One of my point was as mentioned by others, when you are in house you see a lot of good enough compared to about 10 years ago or less. Old timers here can say, about 10 or 15 years ago anything we did it was like magic for most designers or architects.  But with today's technologies, I have people coming to me saying they are OK with the images they can provide.

For example, showing designers a white rendering with just lights and the geometry was a thing remember?? in many cases it was the first time they saw their project put together, and we are not even talking about materials or plants, just the building, white with a sun light!  how funny that sounds now?

Thanks to technology one designer, while work on their project can output unlimited amount of views, then she/he comes to your desk with 30 samples and views, and ask you to do the same. You know that to make take them to the next level you will need more time, better lighting, texture, plants, people, fixing geometries, post work, etc but with very limited time you can only deliver 3. 

That's a very interesting point, what you guys think. That's what this conversation is about

BTW I am very into the new Unreal 5 so much fun.

 

[piotrus3333]

2 hours ago, Francisco Penaloza said:

 But there is a difference when you work outside of an architecture firm.  You receive a detached model, many decisions has been made already and any future changes you can actually stop them,  just putting an extra cost to them :p.  I am not saying it is easy or harder, it just just different. 

not always the case. projects in the planning stage are constant model updates from my experience. name of the game is basically take new .fbx/.rvt and completely  replace the old one. as swiftly and efficiently as possible. I would imagine being in-house in this case an advantage as you can have some amount of control during this process and fix all the little snags.

anyone tried D5 render with live link to 3ds max?

[Francisco Penaloza]

On 6/1/2021 at 12:05 PM, piotrus3333 said:

 I would imagine being in-house in this case an advantage as you can have some amount of control during this process and fix all the little snags.

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.  In my company I can't touch any REVIT model without asking permitting to many people, we also work with partners and consultants to linked models on the cloud most of the time are impossible to change, The only way to make it work if breaking the link and pray that no major changes happens.

 

[Francisco Penaloza]

On 6/1/2021 at 12:05 PM, piotrus3333 said:

Anyone tried D5 render with live link to 3ds max?

I did tried when it just came up, it look very hacky in my opinion, I did tried a few times after when some updates came, but always my GPU sounds like was about to take off.

I have tried the latest release.

Do you have any good experience using it?

 

[Tom Bussey]

No one using Revit Links in max then? Feel like it works pretty well if slow. VG and filters in Revit to remove all the crap before import. 

[Tom Bussey]

Also anyone get the distinct impression that when an architect looks over your shoulder they expect you to be looking at a finished image at all times? ?

[piotrus3333]

11 hours ago, Francisco Penaloza said:

I have tried the latest release.

Do you have any good experience using it?

 

version 1.9 finally looks like something usable. friend of mine abandoned vray completely. does a lot of animations now. seems to be working well for him. lack of adjustable quality settings is the main drawback, especially if you run out of reflection bounces in interiors.

but considering stills-only version is free and there is live-link to 3ds max (do not know how good) it has a lot to offer.

[piotrus3333]

4 hours ago, Tom Bussey said:

No one using Revit Links in max then? Feel like it works pretty well if slow. VG and filters in Revit to remove all the crap before import. 

tried many times but in my case the revit model updates were just too drastic. from early concept right until planning application usually.  

Edited June 29, 2021 by piotrus3333

[Tom Bussey]

10 minutes ago, piotrus3333 said:

tried many times but in my case the revit model updates were just too drastic. from early concept right until planning application usually.  

Same here, I wonder what we're doing differently, or more likely what our colleagues are doing differently. I usually attach by material and then any updates assume the material swaps as long as the architects have applied some relevant proxy material sensibly. 

Edited June 29, 2021 by Tom Bussey

[piotrus3333]

most often one big mesh per building with multi sub-obj mtl.

[Tom Bussey]

35 minutes ago, piotrus3333 said:

most often one big mesh per building with multi sub-obj mtl.

Ah yeah, that's a bit of a nightmare. Combine by Revit material, and as long as your architects have been half sensible about applying materials then it's a one time job to swap them out for your material of choice. When it comes to update time tick the 'keep material changes' or whatever it is box and it should retain your proper materials on the new model. There's always going to be multiple types of incoming materials like 5 types of glass, but at least that way it's a one time job (excluding addition geo that gets added with new materials).

 

I've tried to get my BIM manager to implement stricter rules around material assignment, but it's a bit of a losing battle. Still a lot less painful than importing an FBX or SKP!

[Tom Bussey]

Also learn Revit filters to strip your Revit view down to the bare minimum. I usually strip out all internal doors and even walls if it's an external scene by filtering them with name type. Again relies on a decent approach to naming families in Revit.