Rendering close to reality!

[Anonymous]

I had a customer yesterday asking me if i can do a rendering project for him that looks like reality.After talking to him for a while and showing him my artlantis renderings I ve realised that artlantis 'reality' is not enough for him.What he asked for me was to design two really posh villas with private swimming pools etch and he wants the renderings to look real in order to put them on a web site for next season online booking. He wants the renderings to look like real pictures of the building so the customers wont realise its a render and think that its already built.He has seen renderings made on 3ds max or vis i dont really know (like the one i ve attached) that they are really impresive and he wants me to make the design and then he will give me pictures of the furniture tiles wooden decks etch that he is going to use so i can put them in the renederings.He offers good money for that and i dont want to lose the job.How can i do it?I use archicad 10 and artlantis studio but i dont think they are enough for this task.Please help!

[Rakela Raul]

or by hand !!
a very good friend from chile would do this for u
in minutes

Reality ?? DONT THINK SO !!!

[Anonymous]

Rakela wrote:
or by hand !!
a very good friend from chile would do this for u
in minutes

Reality ?? DONT THINK SO !!!

The whole point is that the customer wants renderings that dont look like renderings.He wants his customers to believe that the building is built so they can book without hesitating and thats the reason for asking me if i can add custom furniture and tiles and wooden decks etch that he is going to use in the project.To make you realise what he needs i ll give you the adress of his web site where you can see the two villas that allready exist and he wants to add there two more before they are constracted for next years bookings (not schetches or cartoon style renderings). Take a look at this http://www.villa-senses.gr/ (by the way its not a bad idea to ask him to give me one of the villas for a week....god they are nice....!!!They look like perfect renderings... )

[Anonymous]

If you would ask my opinion:
First of all it would be smart to define what your client recognize as "fotorealistic" and what are the deadlines. Since we have MaxwellRender and FryRender on the market "fotorealistic" got completly new meaning.
The example you posted is very eye-pleasing for sure, with this glare and bloom all over, but still not good enough to be taken as foto. From the other hand I've seen people looking at Lightworks render stiched with site background and asking "Is that a foto?"
Still if you want to achieve this level of reality with Artlantis you need to be an expert (judging from the gallery, no offence). Most of the render-line-by-line (biased) renderers can produce this level of reality, but they are usually complicated and you need to learn them first which takes time. On the other side unbiased renderers guarantee you the results but you need to learn completly different approach in making materials and lighting the scene, and because of the philosophy they are slow. If you think you can improve your skills with Artlantis and do the job in the same time you are very optimistic. Hope this doesn't sound harsh, but the worst thing you can do is promised something you cannot keep because you don't want to dissapoint your client, belive me, I've been there once and it was hard lesson.
My advice is very much as Rakela's: find someone to do it for you this time it's no shame, you will have a lot of designing/modeling work to accoplish anyway. Money is not an issue, for example on the MaxwellRender forum there is a special job section where you can place an offer and you will see how much it may cost you. The last thing: if your client expect proffesional results he need to understand they are expensive. It's like with lawyers: the good ones are expensive the cheap ones will loose anyway.

Good luck mate!

[Dwight]

Thank you Pawel:

We spend a lot of time on this forum yapping and dreaming of how wonderful the next, fast, automatic exposure, quick preview, intuitive material mapping rendering engine is going to be. Beckett has it right in his play where two computer geeks converse between workstations: "Waiting for Graphisoft."

And we also spend a lot of time as individuals cursing how long it takes to tweak a basic image into something good, no matter what the rendering engine is.

Many users forget the most important aspect of illustrating their work: the entourage. If we spent a few minutes actually composing the story of the neighborhood in each scene, people who wouldn't give a flying puck [strong playoff memories] about architecture still engage with the image and support the design. And that's all you want: People saying "Yes."
You don't want any barriers to the recipient to say "Yes."

Like a tiny building with ugly textures a half-mile away. shuttered windows

This is the primary reason for hiring a professional illustrator: he takes the time to adjust lighting and compose the scene, building a narrative with the entourage. AND, he probably owns enough entourage to build a convincing scene with tree-like elements instead of emerald glass shards. He'll have the Arab Sheik guys to populate the rendering instead of those stale blonde women with short sleeves and the especially stale guy walking with the newspaper. I was in Los Angeles two years ago wandering the UCLA campus and there on a building site board is the guy walking with the newspaper. That guy's image is so old, if you took away the newspaper you'd find a narrow leather tie! Yikes.

My advice to users unhappy with their rendering is to spend more time with the human art of it and less trying to understand caustic decay and global illumination (not that they aren't great achievements).

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

Modeling in-house and outsourcing is the way to go in that situation. Quality rendering requires skills *and* time, it is labor-intensive, and there are lots of awesome illustrators in countries with a relatively low cost of living (and therefore lower fees, at least until they get a solid international clientele and their fees become solidly international).

One of the guys at www.archpartners.com in Buenos Aires is a friend of mine, Raul Gioiosa. They have clients everywhere, so I would not think they can be extremely low cost. But they produce awesome work, which is what your client is wanting.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all guys!So I either need to be an expert my self (that im miles away from it) or have to model it and give it to an expert to render it or to find a professional illustrator to touch it up with trees people furniture etch to make it look real!Really dont know what to do to be honest and at the end of the day i ll ask him an amount of money that will cover my expenses if i need to use a professional for the illustration job or rendering job.If he is willing to pay then fair enough! But Im not going to bother for 1 or 2 thousand euros!Seems like the customer dont have money problems.

[Dwight]

I get the drift that mastering all aspects of what computers can do for architects is bigger than what one person can learn. Life is too short.

Do what interests you.

When Archicad arrived in my life, it made me curious as to what it might mean for me. Such a surprise to have Archicad help me be a successful artist.....

The other thing is how we communciate ideas better with the power of perspectives... here's a SketchRender and a LightWorks rendering overlaid in Photoshop - this is for Jacksonville's Airport Expansion...

[Anonymous]

Dwight wrote:
I get the drift that mastering all aspects of what computers can do for architects is bigger than what one person can learn. Life is too short.

Do what interests you.

You are right dwight.Iam Civil Engineer obsesed with architecture.Thats why i did my second Msc in Architecture.I love Archicad and I love rendering.Its what i like .Its my job and my hobby.I realise that i have to stop when i m falling asleep on the keyboard and look outside the window. Buildings are my art and love them for the excitement they give me.The rendering you ve posted is superb for me cause I am on the artistic side of things but my customers unfortunately not.Hate all the structural design , statics etch and most of my customers think Im an architect even though i tell them all the time that Im a civil engineer! I ll try hard in my life to give the people around me the oportunity to live in a better looking world cause i live in a country that anarchy in construction is a very mild expression for what i see every day! To be honest about the job I was talking earlier Its not the money that i dont want to lose.I want it cause i need to get better and because i want one day to be able to give to a customer what ever they need.Of course that cant be done in a couple of moths....But i know well that I work harder under time pressure and i get better quicker.Do you think that is better to stay in archicad with artlantis and try harder to learn photoshop?

[Anonymous]

1) Learning the basics of photoshop is really easy. Blending background elements is mostly accomplished with layer masking. You can then expirement with filters to create a smoother effect but the important stuff is to get a kick start.

2) Maxwell and Fryrender are really easy ways to achieve good results with little tweaking. Especially for outdoors.

3) Noone in greece will ever pay the amount of work needed for great looking renders

[Dwight]

kritikos79 wrote:
Do you think that is better to stay in archicad with artlantis and try harder to learn photoshop?

That is valid. Everyone needs Photoshop skill.