Melbourne’s most acclaimed architects (Bates Smart) have designed this multi residential – mixed use building to maximize views to the river and create residencies where urban life seamlessly connects with nature.
It was important for our studio to set the right tone and composition for each shot to help compliment the design language. One of the major elements in the design is how the large terraces cascade down the northern elevation and almost merge into the contours of the river bank.
Technically it was very hard to capture certain angles due to ongoing neighboring construction, so the decision was made early on to go full 3D for the majority of the shots.
The largest challenge was file management, with some scenes ending up over 7 gig even though the building was modeled procedurally with rail-clone and all interior assets (furniture/curtains/plants) were scattered with Forest pack. We probably did go OTT by scattering debris and gravel on the roads surfaces, especially from the distance the cameras were positioned. As they say…The devil is in the detail.
A small animation is in production and will be released next year.

Please turn up the sound https://vimeo.com/248272829

A short xmas animation styled in a paper town look. As the camera pulls out further we realise that we have been in a snow globe. The snow was added in AE.

The Making of Edition

Since we posted this showcase, we also published the making-of Edition in Parnell on Ronen’s Blog.

Check it out here!

Concept / Mood

In an oversaturated property market, where there are many great render studios creating lovely images, we felt this project warranted a different formula. When I talk of formulas, I am referring to the standard late afternoon/sunset shots or if a client is feeling ‘crazy’ they will run with 1 or 2 dusk shots to compliment the suite of everlasting sunshine for the remaining 20 shots. Let’s not forget that it is always sunshine and smiles in the 3D world of architectural visualization!

Auckland is known for its cloudy skies and rainy days, especially at this time of year (Winter). We like to keep real-world values, it gives a place a true sense of locality. Like all good restaurants, keep it seasonal where possible, don’t be afraid of rain or cloud. Our studio is really pushing clients to think about the time of year and locality when generating an overall mood for projects.

Everyone in the studio is a big fan of Iwan Baan’s work as a photographer, his super soft blue grade for dusk or silver white days really float our boats. We felt his tone and grade to his photographs would suit the Auckland mood perfectly. With this inspiration we presented a mood board to our client of the direction we wanted to take the images and to our surprise, they jumped straight on board.

Composition / Lighting

The facade of the building is made up of thousands of handmade glass bricks from Italy. This was a really important/expensive design feature to highlight, to do this we knew the shot had to be a silver dusk. We needed to play up the reflective qualities in the brick whilst still being able to see pockets of interior light within, giving the facade an ethereal quality. The ethereal quality of the facade was amplified further by elevating the camera position, this helped us make the cantilevered upper 3 floors float above the podium entrance/reception below, something the architects were keen for us to demonstrate.

New Workflow

This was the first set of images that our studio had used Corona for the entire project, normally we mix between V-Ray, OctaneRender and Corona Renderer.

We also grew all of the plants in GrowFX and made custom shaders using Megascans. Railcone was also used for the glass bricks, curbs, and some hard landscape elements.