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[Pekish]

It's intresting to see how an architect and a CG artist work differently...

Some of the very beautifull image i see on here tell me very little about the architecture in itself
the image is the goal and mimicking reality the way.

For me the image is a mere instrument to make the client see in 3d what i can see in a plan ^_^ and it doesn't need to be that realistic but more educational if you know what i mean

For instance the position of the sun is always the real one and light fixture are what they are and i don't add any "fake" light to make it more pleasent/smooth i don't weight light differently if they are the same model of spot light i move them apart or orient them differently..

Obviously the result is not as good as the one of a real CG artist but if you look at these image i am sure you understand a lot about the architecture and organization of the space behind it especially when u look at the 2d-plan view at same time (that's why i attached the autocad view)... and not some beautifull image where all you see is a pretty picture or some nice chairs.

But i admit i had to rush it off in the exterior image i totally left the interior empty and in the interior image i cheaped out on the exterior, I am guilty!
I am planning to do an exterior at night just for fun if i have time.



Now about the technical part:

- Render toke around 45-50 minuts each

- My computer is i7-3770K (OC @4.6ghz) with 16gb memory and graphic card is Nvidia Titan

- Vray setup: Resolution as you see in the file 1200x900 (damn trees take forever!) ext and 1600x900 int

- IndirectIllu.:
---Primary bounce Brute force (standard setting) - I really dont like Irradiance Map it crash my pc and piss me off most of the time
---Secondary Bounce LightCache (2000subdv.)

- DMC
---Adaptive DMC: Min1-Max24 (small image need this bumped up i guess)
---Adaptive amount: 0.8
---Noise Threshold: 0.006
---Min sample: 12 (for interior only)

Color Mapping : Exponential (int) Reinhard (ext)

The model is made in Autocad for the architectural part and most of the forniture directly on 3Dmax

I did use photoshop obviously.

[rjohnson33]

This would be an interesting topic for discussion but there is unfortunately no aspect to the images you have posted that would suggest to me an innate architectural understanding and superior mode of conveyance beyond that of your average CG artist (let alone the amazing work of many of the best CG professionals that post on forums such as this one and CGArchitect).

I also wouldn't labour under the assumption that all CG artists exist to serve architects. The 'fake' lights (which photographers would obviously never employ), 'pretty pictures' and 'nice chairs' are often vehicles used to convey aspects such as mood and style. Something that clients throughout all manner of professions seek to achieve and also something that the general public en masse are typically quite fond of.

[Pekish]

I also wouldn't labour under the assumption that all CG artists exist to serve architects.

I never said that as much as i dont think photographer are there to serve architect or designer...

if you Take a picture of a bird the one you will use in an ornithology book is different then the picture you will see in a exposition at the moma they serve different purpose.

i could show you using this pictures and the interior picture in 50west why you can't read architecutre from them but you read art with architecture as sobject and not architecture with CG as medium
but with the attitude you just showed putting words in my mounth and presuming i feel superior for some reason i doubt we will have an healthy discussion.

I guess i posted in the wrong forum.

[Neilg]

the interior picture in 50west

those shots are selling a view and the space, not the architecture. use peter guthrie as an example instead - he's an artist, but you never come away from his images wondering what the building looks like. he sells architecture.

This is a site i always go back to almost once a week for references - http://www.archdaily.com/category/houses/
The photography there is usually amazing, they have great composition and usually manage to explain the intent behind the building clearly at the same time.

fwiw i'm not a fan on the camera angle either. I think there are better angles that exist around the building which could have a more pleasing composition and explain the structure better. Its far too close and crops the building off -there's no real need for this, you could move back & go wider to see even more without harming the view.
Technically the images are decent renderings, it's just that you tried to cut off any criticism before it could happen by distancing yourself from cg artists - claiming as an architect you have a different intent to anyone else (which I don't believe is true). A lot of people doing arch viz on this forum are architects too, and they also always use the real sun position and never use fake lights.

[rjohnson33]

I guess i posted in the wrong forum.

Please don't let my criticism discourage you from using this forum. It's a very valuable resource.

[tricky]

To truthfully represent the architecture alone, all clutter should be removed - books on shelves, ladles on hooks etc. Clutter helps in trying to portray a 'lifestyle' - we try and place clutter so that we can imagine being there, actually using that space.

If you have a great piece of architecture to begin with (a highly subjective term of course), you don't need much in the way of clutter. Most architecture though is drab, so we clutter-the-'f' out of it to try and improve it.

I'm not sure where I am heading with this - just a train of thought really - but I believe your point would be clearer or stronger if you had no clutter in your images.

*'clutter' is different to key items of furniture, like a chair or a sofa - these can help convey scale and proportion and are important to any composition.

[alexyork]

One of the key skills of a good, experienced visualiser is their ability to properly understand the brief. In particular, who is the target audience? If you're being commissioned by the architect to help to explain a space to their client in terms of how you get from A to B, how A will look, how B will look and it's more about the explaining the space, then this is a very different commission that is there to "sell" a space or concept to the client and/or the public (such as potential purchasers). Fairly often your job is to do all of the above - make people understand the building, the space, the concept, how you get from A to B, but also to make them feel like they understand the "vibe" of the place, and lastly to make them want to live/work there.

There's no right or wrong in general - but there certainly is right or wrong in terms of the brief.

It's interesting that you (OP) have claimed that your approach to these 2 renders was purely to show the architecture and not necessarily to create beautiful artistic/photographic images, but if I am totally honest I don't think they succeed particularly well at either, I'm afraid. The composition/framing and time of day are quite unclear and leave some unanswered questions about key areas of the building. And actually I find that your kitchen interior contains too much clutter, if anything. Not a huge amount, but there's a lot going on in the background that's quite distracting from the actual forms.

The wonky camera target has introduced unwanted perspective and is rather off-putting as well. There are multiple good reasons why good photographers and artists keep their targets straight but the main one is that the viewer will struggle to understand the true form of an object or structure if you're introducing artificial perspective to it. Imagine a Gehry building shot with a raised/lowered target in 3-point.... you'd never grasp the actual direction any linear forms are going. The exception to this is when you want to very deliberately introduce extreme perspective to exaggerate the forms in this way - but again this is done deliberately and knowingly.

In my experience and opinion, architecture is not just about structure, objects and manipulation of light - particularly in resi projects, it's about how you live there, not just where you live. To that effect it is usually desirable, often important and occasionally crucial to communicate the atmosphere and "life" of a space and how you would actually use it in real life. Not just a show-room set for a glossy magazine. Lack of real life objects and animation results, often, in very static and stagnant images. This is all feeding back into "architecture", in my opinion. They're not tools exclusive to those who want to create beautiful artistic images in their own right.

Also, as an aside, an architect should be extremely careful about presenting images that are quite realistic but lacking in life or artistic quality, to their clients. Their clients will most certainly latch on to that, and you could do more harm than good showing something in a rather drab, awkward light with unrealistic camera angles and uncomfortable levels of distracting detail that actually take your eye away from focal points rather than toward.

Just my opinions based on what you raised.

[Macker]

Technically the images are decent renderings, it's just that you tried to cut off any criticism before it could happen by distancing yourself from cg artists - claiming as an architect you have a different intent to anyone else (which I don't believe is true). A lot of people doing arch viz on this forum are architects too, and they also always use the real sun position and never use fake lights.

Exactly this.