100% Real

[Devin Johnston]

I have been working on this particular project for about 2 years now; it's in the early stages of construction at this point. We have literally done hundreds of renderings of this building for this client showing everything from different materials to how it would look with different landscaping surrounding it. This project is a 40 story medical tower that will be in the medical center and it will be the tallest building in that area. I have a rather unique problem that I've never faced before and it's come about I think because of the flexibility we've shown concerning all the different ways we can render a single building. This client wants us to render a 100% real image of a part of the building, which they will be using to determine what type of glazing system they want to put on it. I've been doing this for about 5 years and I've never been asked to do something like this. The only program I know of that is able to do something even remotely close to what I've been asked to do is Lightscape, but I have my doubts that it would be able to handle this task. I've told my client that a rendering just a representation of what the building would be, and no one should take these images a literal. However the board on which my client sits is adamant that they want to see exactly what it's going to look like at night. I guess my questions are is this possible and what techniques or software would be best to accomplish this? My first thought was that the new Maxwell rendered would be a good program for this task but I have doubts about the speed and over all capabilities of a brand new piece of software like that. Can anyone give me some guidance?

[Ernest Burden III]

You were right to advise them that 'its just art'. We are all used to seeing photos of buildings at night--just art, not real, not like it will appear to the human eye.

 

However, since you are going to do the rendering anyway...yes, Lightscape or Maxwell. Maxwell would probably be more accurate because of their 'sky' lighting object. In ANY program it will be a well-guessed fake. The better the artist, the more convincing the fake.

 

Which look do you go for--film or vision? My advice would be somewhere inbetween, but pushing towards film. Remember that film responds differently to incandescent, flourescent and natural skylight. But your eyes don't allow as much visible difference between them, both for color or value.

 

Study night architectural photographs in arch. magazines, also go out and observe and take notes.

 

So choose your weapon, choose your target.

[Trick]

I'm doing this work for 15 years and there is no such thing as a 100% accurate rendering. Maybe afterwards you are lucky to have a rendering that looks exactly like the finished project. But letting your customers believe that you can make 100% accurate renderings is a dangerous thing, which can have big legal consequences. A renderer can have accurate lighting or accurate materials or whatever, but 100% ??? Even Maxwell has still issues with glass and emitters and still needs finite parameters to "speed" up calculations. The best way is to show your clients good reference materials and tell them you will give them prints where these materials are applied to the building, but there are too many hard- and software restrictions to come to a 100% physically accurate simulation.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

i am going to go against using maxwell or lightscape.

 

i am saying this with the assumption that you are using some type of global illumination software as it is. chance are you know that fairly well. you are about to do a tricky rendering, and you need to know the how the rendering software is going to respond when you do certain things. i don't think it is in your best interest to through a new piece of software into the mixture. even if you are just using scanline, you can ppobably do a pretty good fakosity that will satisfy the board.

 

take ernests suggetions, and look at PROFFESIONAL night photography of architecture, and look at how light responds in film. i say proffosenial photography because they are controlling exposure that brings out the color saturation, framing of the shot, and details that should be in all 'photoreal' renderings.

 

get an idea of what the board expects to see, then find a good photo that has those qualities, and work on reproducing those effects in the image, rather than trying to create a real world enviroment, and have the software produce the effects for you.

[wondertonio]

I will agree 100% with Trick.

 

100% "real" rendering is nonsense because computer generated images are "unreal".

No actual software is able to take into account the zillion parameters that would make your image real, no matter how good you are.

 

Beware of accepting such a task. You might get yourself sued in no time if there is the slightest (and there will be) difference between your rendering and reality.

[Juan Altieri]

there is no exactly reality in pictures, try to take 2 photos with different cameras and you get different resoluts, the reality is relative to each human eye....!

[kid]

Radiance might be the best to go for in this case. you can input data from glass manufacturers such as transmittance, reflectance, etc so you can be sure that calculations made are based on available glazing products.

 

but even then i really see this as a potential legal disaster. if this board on which your client sits truly believes that what you are giving them is a 100% real representation and the building, when complete, does not look exactly like that they might take action against you or the construction contractor, or the construction contractor may come after you if they come after it.

 

...they could say you mislead them causing them to pay thousands of dollars on a glazing product that does not fulfill the expectations promised to them through your renderings.

 

it might be worthwhile discussing this request with the glazing manufacturer.

[rivoli]

i'm afraid you can't do that. plus i think, as others said, you shouldn't even try.

as juan altieri said if you were asked to take two pictures of the same very room, you could easily make these two pictures look completely different in terms of color, contrast, saturation... yet that will be the same room.

 

even if you could do render a 100% real picture it wouldn't be enough anyway. once you have the perfect photoreal render you should ask your client to match the render with a perfect reproduction of the ambient light condition in which you calculate your image in real life. same sky color, same lightmoon, same artificial illumination. the perfect image would be so perfect that it problably wouldn't find such perfect lighting in real life.

 

as ernest and chg said i wouldn't use maxwell (which is still alpha) for a production piece of work. as they said i would rather study night architectural photography and try to produce an image the same way professional photographers do.

 

above all, as everybody else suggested, try to convince your client they just can't have a 100% real rendering. neither from you nor anybody else.

[Ernest Burden III]

OK, I see the problem here.

 

What do they mean by 'real'? Ask them. Is the photo in Architectural Record by Peter Arons 'real'? WE all know that it is not, it is a work of art by a skilled photographer. But would that board see it as 'real' If so, you can explain how photos are an interpretation and your rendering will be no more than that.

 

If they don't go for that, run like hell.

[rivoli]

 

What do they mean by 'real'?

 

 

this is the question. ernest made a point here.

i bet they wouldn't give you any satisfactory answer. unless they say "real is real", which is a tautology and not an answer by any means.

what you could try to do is disputing them on a philosophical ground, prove that your definition of "100% real" is as valid as theirs, if you manage to do that your say 80% or 70% real render will be enough.

[William Alexander]

Toss in a disclaimer upon acceptance, that you made an "Artistic Representation" of the differences & make dam sure whom ever presents this has actual glass samples so everyone on the board can make a judgement based on the "Real Deal" comapred to your representations. You may even want to mock up shadow boxes, w/back lighting, with samples of the glass, turn off the lights and do a glass study as well as send them along for the presentation.

 

It's kind of like leaving brick samples on site for final approval , rather than using the rendering, imho. Samples (toys) are always interesting-people like to touch and feel the product, help sell the job & CYA at the same time!!!!!!

 

My 2 cents

 

WDA

[joseph alexander]

"_____ software offers a very realistic simulation of lit environments, consequently, your end result may look very much like the actual built structure. However, ____ software has it's limitations, and we would like to remind you that regardless of how photo realistic the final output may look there is no real way to attain a 100% real image, but I do believe that our impression of the building will satisfy both your and the clients expectations. That in mind, we would be happy to take on the the glazing project"

 

I would be hesitant to learn a new software package if there's a deadline soon. Most offer photometric lighting and glass refraction and reflection options... I think your worst case scenario would be offering lower quality work because you still haven't figured out a new rendering package that you thought was going to solve all your problems. I'm just thinking that you may have huge render times and grain issues with maxwell, if you have a quick turn around and you're not completely familiar with the software..

 

-good luck,

 

-joe

[Devin Johnston]

Thanks everyone for your input and suggestions, it a big help! I've talked to the client and we have come to the understanding that 100% real doesn’t exist even in reality. As some of you have pointed out a photograph can look different depending on a variety of factors, shutter speed, light levels, even the type of film used. The same thing is true in the 3D world, even if you could reproduce the exact conditions of the site at a specific time of day, the best you could do would be mimic what a real camera would see. I agree it's very dangerous to play this game, but I think a lot of clients see these images as what their buildings are really going to look like. I think it's just natural for people who don't know anything about how renderings work to think that it's possible to do anything given enough time.

[upshot]

I'll say what we all want to say... Your dealing with nutcases. Don't open yourself up for litigation! Always insist that your work is a representation no matter how much 'reality' they read into it.