whos next Pixar? 
Excellent stuff. Wowā¦ Not to mention the material they had to work with is something spectacular too. I think what really sets this apart is the music.
Best regards,
A.
Its amazing what you can do to show off a single building with a proper budget 
Yeahā¦that was pretty cool!
Yeah very cool. Itās very nice and a beautiful piece but the article POād me a little bit, especially this comment:
"When I first became involved in the project I looked at examples of a typical architectural visualization and realized immediately that I had a lot to offer. The first thing that struck me was the fact that architectural visualizations had no narrative and were driven by unmotivated camera moves, says Duggal. She set out to create an art piece that reflected the artistic nature of the Spire.
Thereās large portions of the video that focus on pieces no normal developer would ever consider devoting time to: the water at the base, the underside of the ground floor, the inside of a water drop, a floating seed, etc. So saying that āarchitectural visualizations had no narrative and were driven by unmotivated camera movesā is BS - itās motivated by what the developer is willing to pay for and how much we can get done within that budget-as Iām sure you all know but the team at imageworks apparently does not. I can only image the budget for this thing: 2 months, approx. 2-man years to complete, total of 75 different people working on itā¦must be nice.
BTW, I thought the exterior of the tower looked amazing, stunning even - the interiors though were rather ho-hum. Overall though, very inspiring ;).
Exactly my second thoughts. We have to fight very hard for every shot, every still where the main focus is not on the actual investment. For example recently I dragged the camera close to the floor of an interior we were working on, have put in a toy train on the rug, and put the whole room out of dof, the response from the marketing staff was like ānice, we really like your sentimental touch, but could you keep the room in focus insteadā needless to say that would have made the whole composition irritating, so we skipped that shot.
Here, the building remains in the background almost all the time. The camera always has an actor in front of it which explains the camera path, and you donāt feel like just floating around for nothing. And you actually crave to see the building in the end. And the catharses gives you just that. Very well executed, I think I will show this time and time to our clients to support my arguments on making archviz in a similar approach like this one has. 
Best regards,
A.
personally i think the stuff at Uniform and Neoscape tends to be more intriguing when it comes to arch viz than this movie. especially when you look at the number of people they say worked on the project. it is nice, but i feel i have seen better. ā¦and as someone on another forum pointed out, the glass and metal of the building were fairly average when it comes to arch viz. with that many people, i would expect a lot more.
now, ā¦anyone know where i can get a cloud shader like that? that was sweet.
agreed agreed
I agree with most of what has been said too. Imageworks is absolutely not the first to break from the old ArchViz standards.
Technically some of the visuals were so so, the glass for instance is gray and flat on some of the shots. The water splash is a bit off too, those ridges radiating outā¦
The clouds, the specular reflections spiraling up the facade, the bird stand out as being very well executed. The full orchestra soundtrack is impressive too.
Overall it has a great feel and flow. I think we are at an almost renaissance moment in ArchViz . Instead of just showing a space we have the opportunity to give that space emotion. The āArchitectural Movieā as coined by the talented guys at Neoscape is a great opportunity for our field.
hopefully this rare sort of arch vis animation will give clients the idea that the old stale stuff aint cutting it anymore.
yes agreed; this can only be a good thingā¦
I must say it didnāt impress me at all, I mean, it is good, but nowhere near what I would expect given who was involved in the project. and the amount of work and people and all.
and I find totally laughable the comment quoted by dlparisi about narrative and unmotivated camera moves, as if moves in this film were full of any particular meaning. panning and dollying around, in and out glass and a drop of water? they must be joking.
I watched it with not sound, so I canāt say anything about the soundtrack, but it looked quite tamed and boring as an āart piece reflecting the artistic nature of the spireā.
the music was good. worth watching again with it.
For those of you who donāt frequent the site, Nils Norgren of Neoscape started this thread over on the CGarchitect forum. Much of the same stuff has been said.
Personally I think itās a good piece and I enjoy watching it, but for the budget and size of production staff thereās far too much to nitpick for me to go completely ga-ga. The main indignation is, as dlparisi pointed out, that this is effectively a hollywood studio who we all look up taking a peak into our industry, calling it crap, and then presenting this film as the pinnacle of what we should all by striving for.
I know the article is marketing fluff, but thatās a level of arrogance the likes of which none of us ever has to deal with, at least among our colleagues. 
I feel like even the biggest names in our fields are just as likely to talk up the artists they compete against, and certainly never put the rest of the industry down. Obviously Imageworks is an outsider and they can do this with impunity, but they still came off as classless nevertheless.
Shaun
it definitely plays an important role, a wee bit better with the music playing. still failed to impress me though, canāt quite believe all those clichĆ© (white dove, drop of water, petals floating around..) sold as effective ways to build up a narrative.
its funny, the more I watch it, the less I like it. I just finished reading the cgarchitect forum thread on it, and thereās alot of similarly accurate comments about the animation.
Quite dissapointing, really.
Funny thing is that if I watched this without knowing what it is Iād had said it was done by some talented students and a typical āletās put in all the cool things we can think ofā.
Now I can only say: Delevopers-poor suckers.
Director used all the clishes I can think of. Dandelon seed, shimmering water and my favourite (contarry what director said about wanting to avoid all the cliches) people pointing out to horizon!!
Iām not going to even start on finer details like lighting, shaders etc.
Being an architect myself, and not at all an admirer of Calatrava at that, I thing that the whole project is a big flop. A fallic symbol, 700 m high, in the middle of Chicago and nothing more.
I usually donāt respond so angruly on other peopleās work but this was provoced by the directorās pejorative comments towards the whole industry.
But as I said. The biggest suckers here are the developers: spent millions of dolars on something that could be done in a fraction of that price.
Zoran
Looks like they shipped it without the accoutrement?
Cold and sterile?
lol, yes, quite apart from the film, I find chicago a beautiful city which deserves much better.
Anyone know who did the last one?