More and more talk of BIM these days, but I just wondered how the visualisation community feels about it.
Will it affect us, or do you see ‘high end’ visualisation as a seperate thing that will always need its own, bespoke 3D model tuned to the renderer/effects/plugins/scripts that we use?
If the latter, do you see purse strings tightening even further, with archviz being pushed out of the picture all together in favour of a simpler (allbeit lower quality) ‘BIM render’?
Maybe marketing images will always require a seperation from BIM, whereas planning-type images will need to be more integrated?
Take a look at the rendering capabilities of Bentley MicroStation. They have incorporated Luxology’s Modo rendering engine for a few years now…and in my opinion it looks like they can already achieve ‘high-end’ visualization within their BIM package.
Even Autodesk recognizes this trend by replacing AccuRender with Mental Ray in Revit.
Despite this though, BIM is a costly transition for an architecture practice, and especially so for the larger firms. In this case, client demand will be what drives the change. So until all clients demand BIM, I think there will be a place for dedicated vizualization models.
I would say that now would be as good a time as any to find a place in the BIM pipeline. If you can efficiently accept a model from a BIM package and turn out ‘high-end’ visuals then one could market that capability.
I’ve just seen a headline in the Architects Journal stating that BIM is to be mandatory for all £5M+ public buildings in the UK! Personally, I don’t think they even realise what this would mean for UK practices. It is fine for the big boys, but for the smaller outfit, this could be a nightmare.
As BIM-based designs are required by the General Services Administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the USAF is now requiring a BIM-based design approach for all vertical military construction (MILCON) projects in fiscal year 2011 and beyond…
I have not found BIM to be a magic bullet for visualization. Most medium to large size firms in my city ave adopted Revit. We seem to be early adopters in this neck of the woods. As a freelance visualizer I do several Revit exported projects a years. When reviewing the project with the client invariably I hear the phrase “well this is how we had to build it in Revit, but thats not how it will be built. So can you fix this area and that.” For these projects I spend a ridiculous amount of time “fixing” the exported Revit model by repairing geometry or material assignments. The BIM projects I’ve worked on were all very large, difficult projects, performing arts theaters, university science buildings. Since I’m a one man shop I can’t afford one seat of Revit just for a few projects a year. I was fortunate enough to receive Revit training classes when I was employed at an architectural firm, so at least I understand the BIM process. Some clients produce better BIM models than others, but I find that I’m really at their mercy. One time I was given a 786MB FBX file. It took two hours for my machine to import and once imported I wasn’t able to interact with the file and ended up killing Max. After some time educating my clients I was finally given a 156MB file that I could deal with.
I could rant on about BIM, but will just say that yes, it is the future and the future is now. However there is a need for specialized skills that can transform a BIM data set into something special. It may require visualization specialists to offer different types of services.
I agree it is the future, but I don’t agree that it is now. My understanding is that people who don’t quite ‘get’ the implications of insisting on BIM (authorities/governmnets etc) are the people that think it is ‘now’.
At the moment, I can’t see that high(er)-end archviz will be able to exist purely within a BIM world. Our experience is that whenever we try and work with supplied data (3d models or even 2d plans & elevations), we normally end up building new 3d models from scratch to our own standards that work with our own pipeline and with the rendering software that we employ. It would be nice to take a supplied model and just click ‘render’, but the client inevitably says “the design has moved on slightly so you will need to make some adjustments to our model”. This is almost always easier with a new ‘clean’ model and worth the initial investment of time in re-modelling from scratch.
Interesting thread, BIM was one of the reasons I was made redundant as the internal visualiser, the top brass seemed to think your average Uni leaver could do what I did (Max, VRay etc). Yet all the students (part 1, 2 and 3) they employed were amazed that this was said and all the people trained in Revit also said ‘its OK for the general stuff, but we still need visualisers’, the management seemed to think it was a ‘magic bullet’.
Although after complaining about SketchUp and then Revit, it really helps in the company I am in now when architects have modelled in these two packages (properly of course) as I remember someone modelling a reception desk in SketchUp that was 56 mb in size! after I had pared it down in Max it was a reasonable 800 k!
I know this may be considered blasphemy, but as of late I have been working towards understanding Mental Ray better because it seems to handle these ‘dirty’ models without much clean-up effort…I guess that could be considered as a feature request for VRay.
Our biggest problem is not necessarily VRay’s ability to handle foreign models (although I appreciate there are issues that must be addressed), but our own ability to modify/edit models when the design inevitably gets tweeked. Modifying a ‘dirty’ model is a chore and a half
Agreed. Architects almost always seem to think that because it’s modeled in revit that it’s render ready, same for sketchup. While their model is great as a BIM tool in describing what to build they usually cut corners in the detail areas for 3D. Either adding in these details or fixing them (i.e., a tricky intersection, flipped normals, odd mapping, etc) takes way longer than if I had just done it myself. For BIM jobs I usually quote the price as the same as if I’m doing the modeling as they usually come out equal after I need to fix things. Whenever I get an architect who says “but it’s already in 3D”, I always want to shoot back at them (but never do) that I’ll model it myself and then I’ll give you the model so you can generate your drawings from it and see how they react. All 3D is not equal.
We have been slowly making the transition to REVIT. Its been slow and frustrating and not a great tool for all applications but it is also becoming much more common to have the client request BIM and I believe it is Kaisers new standard to have all structures in BIM and maybe REVIT specific.
As far as the Luxology engine, I’m at a firm with a large Microstation userbase, and despite having access to these tools, not many of our users have dug into them at all, because they are engineers not visualization minded. So even having the tools, you still need the artist to create good work with it. As far as the Revit work I’ve done, I think things will improve if Autodesk focuses on interop in this area more. There certainly are issues, but in many cases I’ve found it does come down to who models it, or how, as to the results we get in Max. That’s true for Microstation work as well though, probably most anything I suppose.
Personally I often try to use as much of the native data as possible and avoid rebuilding whenever I can. When issues arise I’ll try to push back upstream to get the modelers in the source packages to change how they model when necessary. Granted, I’m in a large firm and have the ability to do so because the source is within our company, whereas if I was freelance I suppose I’d just have to take whatever clients gave me.
I agree with dllparisi…a couple years ago I went to an autodesk conference and what they want to do is creating something similar to multiview block but for revit and max so when you insert a model in Revit for construction documents( they don’t have much detail) but when you hit render button in revit or max the model it will be replaced for the smoother and highly detailed version of it.
I don’t think BIM will ever get rid of the need for specialists doing marketing images. You’re all artists afterall, not factory line workers. We too use Revit models, the only good think i have to say is there are hardly any flipped surfaces.
I agree some of the points made here regarding the implementation of BIM…it is here and it now, unfortunately, visualization professionals will have to adapt to this paradigm just like design professionals are having too. The reality is that, there is always resistance to change with respect to innovation. I for one do not want to stop using Vray but it has become increasing harder to justify wasting so much time (over & over again) reapplying autodesk materials that are accurately applied and would otherwise render just fine using Mental Ray in 3ds Max only because Vray will not render this materials… We need to accept this BIM Revit (Autodesk Materials) workflow and be able to apply a Vray solution to the problem… WHAT IS CHAOSGROUP doing to resolve this issue?
We’ve just started a very large development with 40+ images from a leading archtects (who are trying out Revit for the first time internally!) where the model has been supplied from Revit in stages as FBX files. I now know why people on this forum and elsewhere do not like Revit exports!! The files imported to 2012 very quickly and with no flipped faces etc. The files are very nicely named, and use instanced geometry everywhere (to the point of irratation!), and keeping applied materials does make the convertion to Vray fairly easy and quick. BUT the model is SOO heavy and 2012 can not display it smoothly even with very new graphics cards, and with shitty nitrous turned off. Editting the model is not really an option.
I agree with robman321 that its very tempting to stick Mental Ray and hit render, job done. The architects have done some pretty good internal renders in hours by using metal ray. Just dump the new model in and render through existing cameras, and lighting.
I think Vray might need to work on a conversion tool for Revit models/materials pretty soon. The time “wasted” this week for me is verging on insane, and hard to explain to the client and internally!
I think the nail in my coffin last night was the news that the models we had been cleaning etc all day is getting updated with “minor” design changes tomorrow!!! Today will now be a repeat of yesterday, what fun! TFIF!
That said, just upgraded to 2012 and Vray 2.1 and its very pleasing! A collegue was jumping with excitment to get it installed! Cant say the same about 2012, another shit upgrade with more bugs than fixes. The SP1 has not really helped the viewport issues. Sticking with 2008 where possible.
Not sure what BIM means where you guys are, but here in Norway it is an acronym for Building Information Model, and has basically nothing to do with rendering. My experience is that only a handful of people (mostly engineers) actually understand what it means and what it is for, and they are mostly interested in interchange of data in large databases connected to the various BIM parts.
The rest of the people throwing the word around are usually architects and to a certain degree landscapers (lately) and a few other professions, where they seem to think it is only for xref’ing in models for collision control (architects even sometimes decide to boolean out internal wall structural models from their wall models like H and I bars with super detailed bevels and stuff so the poly count is insane).
My experience so far with receiving models where BIM was a part of the project is that it just gets even more messy than before. The guys exporting from Revit will export out absolutely everything in their file, so even simple models make 3dsmax grind to a halt, and as mentioned in this tread, just ads even more cleanup duties for us to waste time on.
One of the biggest sinners when it comes to this is actually Autodesk. The way block instances are imported into max is a disgrace, and if done badly enough in revit\archicad etc. can make the file completely impossible to edit in max.
On the other hand, something that absolutely will start to eat into our livelihood is realtime viz through apps like Twinmotion2, Lumion and Lumen, but there is no reason why we should not be supplying these things too. At least with Twinmotion2, there is still plenty room for us artists to do our magic and put the simple stuff architects or others less versed in the visual arts to shame.
