Developed by Eduardo Souto Moura (Pritzker 2011) and João Álvaro Rocha, this architectural competition project is located in Ourense and includes a TGV Station, Hotel, Office Building and a Master Plan surrounding all this buildings. Finished last November, this is the digital result of around 15 days of work. Constant modifications – even to the building structure and materials – were carried out till the last hour and we had to follow very strict rules regarding image dimensions. Not the perfect job we would say, but this is what was possible to do taking into consideration that the important thing was to achieve exactly what the client wanted, mostly focused on the building form and materials. Surely in this case, 3DS Max was used more as a tool than to create a finished product, like my friend Fabio D´Agnano would say.
Lovely mood to the images - the diffuse lighting is great.
I guess my only comment would be that they don’t look at all like competition images. They just look dirty/grubby/worn/used. Don’t get me wrong, I like them because of this, but I am just very suprised that your client wanted to go with this style. It looks like a building from the 50s taken with a camera from the early 80s. When we have been asked to produce competition images, our clients normally want everything to look new/shiny/clean etc with a clear blue sky and bright sunlight with strong shadows (though we try to play these requests down a little).
I do like the lack of people as it focuses attention on the architecture, but again, our clients never really allow this. They would want the plaza full of activity to ‘sell the dream/use of the space’.
I completly understand your point of view and I also have those type of clients, but gladly for me (because i love vray dirt), Souto Moura and Alvaro Rocha enjoy dirt surfaces and prefer it over everything else, mostly because their architecture is also a bit about that. Materiality getting old. Seing the building grow and stick to the environment and have that kind of look more attached to the ground.
But of course this is all very controversial, subjective and also risky for a competition. I just follow the orders and people´s reaction to the images during the process. If they want it clean, Ill do it also, but in this case it was the opposite.
I don´t mind sharing it at all. For the main building surface i unwrapped the building façades and painted the dirt in photoshop. The diffuse channel uses a composite of stucco + those hand-painted maps. This Vray Mat was inside a Vray Blend Material also with a Vray Dirt (more soft) with inverted normals.
The other dirt surfaces are less complex, just vray dirt with a dirt map in the diffuse channel. Some of them also with inverted normals ticked. I do a lot of tweaking to the vray dirt settings in order to have around 50% of dirt over the main diffuse texture.
I had the same response as tricky when I saw yours images ! “When we have been asked to produce competition images, our clients normally want everything to look new/shiny/clean etc with a clear blue sky and bright sunlight with strong shadows (though we try to play these requests down a little).”
This is my daily !
Again, it’s cool to see those kind of mood for competition images !
Congrats
I find them beautiful, as happens very often with your work and I can perfectly see as they may stand out oddly among typical competition images. being taken by surprise it’s good though, and given the results (not the actual outcome of the competition itself but the quality work produced), I’m glad you had the freedom to take the chance.
When I saw the renderings without knowing that they were part of a competitions, I thought, it’s a personal project showing an existing building so I totally agree with that dirt commentary…it could work for your client(architect) but It may not for the final client…As an architect, I worked on many international competitions and everybody wants to see the perfect picture, those images are marketing material for investor, donations, etc…having that type of finish to me was a mistake…but from CG point of view they look beautiful.
and I can perfectly see as they may stand out oddly among typical competition images. being taken by surprise it’s good though, and given the results (not the actual outcome of the competition itself but the quality work produced), I’m glad you had the freedom to take the chance.