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The 7th Architectural Visualization Challenge I’m running in partnership with Quixel as the marquee sponsor. The book CABINS by Philip Jodidio and the fantastic illustrations by Marie-Laure Cruschi served as the principal inspiration for this year’s challenge theme. That, and my love for prefab architecture design.
I have really enjoyed working on this competition. I always find it more fun when you get to something you don’t normally render. It has been an uphill battle and like all deadlines i’m glad to see the end but also wish I had even more time!!
The inspiration for this project was stone arches like Hickman Bridge in the Capital Reef National Park in Utah. I designed a multi-level dwelling comprised of a dining level atop two private dwelling levels and a observational level at the lowest level. Each level has exterior glass walls to offer wide-sweeping vistas at any angle of the cabin. A stair-wrapped elevator leads from any level of the cabin to a private helipad access level at the top of the stone arch.
All modeling, save for the landscape (which was modeled in Blender using topographical data based on the Hickman Bridge location), was completed in SketchUp. Area vegetation was populated via the Skatter for SketchUp plugin. Rendered using Thea Render. Most of the materials used were provided by Megapixels. Postproduction made in Pixelmator.
Regarding the challenge, I have already seem some outstanding entries that are superior in render quality to my offering, but this was a wonderfully fun opportunity to cut loose and have some fun. Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Bekerman, thank you.
The project has adapted quite a lot over the course of the challenge. Starting off with the idea of a swimming pool floating in the trees and imagining a house to go with it, the main concept was not wanting to choose whether you sited the retreat on the forest floor, in the canopy of branches and leaves or floating above the forest looking to the horizon.
The initial design was a pragmatic use of shipping containers on a pulley structure system using the living areas to counterbalance the sleeping areas. I felt I was getting a bit tied up in the pragmatics for a concept so I redesigned the cabin looking more at quality of light and space inside to lead the way. My focus was oriented primarily around the design of the cabin to start with. I don’t have much experience in environment design and not having a real site in mind I tested a few ways of making a realistic terrain, with several failed attempts at terrain generation I settled for some newly aquired polymodelling in 3ds max as the simplest solution.
Eventually I had something to work with that followed some initial sketches of what I imagined the main camera view being. I then started texturing and populating the terrain using Forest Pack and some assets from Quixel.
The main issue I had after everything was getting the environment to extend to the horizon. This didn’t matter so much for the still images as I could edit this part but for the spherical renders this wouldn’t work, especially as the images Yulio produced didn’t like being tampered at all. The house crept closer to the water to enable a better view of the design however the original concept was to mask the support structure within the trunks of the forest and have more “garden” space between the house and the beach but I’m happy with where I got the project to in the end.
So it’s been a while since the last update and much has changed.
I started the month off experimenting with different environment ideas to surround the cabin. My initial idea was to have a secluded lake house in a pine forest. I ran with this idea for a while but ultimately decided to drop the lake idea and focus on the forest aspect.
Having created a little scatter tool for Maya and after building up a library of plants it was quite quick to populate the areas around the cabin.
For the overall look of the structure I decided to go for a more distressed concrete look and feel. I found this allowed the cabin to sit better in the environment and made more sense as I wanted it to feel like it exists in a fairly rugged terrain.
I have a few more renders to get through in the last couple of days before calling this project done. Looking forward to getting some sleep when it’s all over 😛
Inspired by simplicity
A call for exploring the true meaning of life
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Final considerations:
Here is a link to my Yulio VR final submission:
https://www.yulio.com/gfz5hPEvcV
Special Thanks to Ronen and everybody involved organising and sponsoring this challenge. I have enjoyed myself a lot while working on it. I found this challenge has brought me the opportunity to go deep in my thoughts and bring good memories back. I have also grown as an artist by exploring the given assets and finding new ways of achieving a much better result.
Bellow are a few considerations I’d like to point about my final submission.
MegaScans: bringing realism to the next level.
For the final submission, I have explored nature assets provided by MegaScans which I’ve found brilliant to work with. In my opinion, MegaScans assets have improved the level of detail I am now able to offer as an artist. It was quite exciting to explore their library and find so many useful tools.
Yulio: an efficient way of presenting VR.
An absolutely fantastic platform. Easy to work with – very straight forward. I have been able to include three VR camera angles to my final submission. Adding hotspots was also very easy. Stereoscopic looks very good and feels natural. I am definitely spreading the word about Yulio.
Corona Renderer: Impressive by its nature.
In my final submission I was able to explore Corona Renderer features like the Corona Image Editor, Corona Scatter, Fog, Sun and Sky, HDRI, translucency and displacement (LOTS of it!).
In the end, my scene had more than 40 million polygons, loads of displacement and translucency in the majority of assets – Corona Renderer nailed it like it was nothing! I have always used Corona and it has always been a brilliant engine to work with.
The Corona Image Editor is just fantastic – It has enabled me to edit 2Gb+ images in a few minutes. The Corona Image Editor is so comprehensive that it allowed me to go 100% Photoshop Free for this submission! Freedom from Photoshop – Finally 🙂
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Background concept:
As an architectural visualiser, my daily routine is surrounded by thoughts of progress like “building new horizons”, “building the future” and so on… Technology plays a key part on my routine as well – I depend on technology to be able to deliver the realism my clients expect from me. As an individual, my thoughts would take me somewhere else… away from my daily routine in order to remind me of who I am, what I am inspired by and what brings me joy. The result is then reflected into my work… and here I am, back to building new horizons, or the future, or whatever our Marketing experts want us to build… but adding a touch of humanity and sensibility to anything I intend to touch.
The CABINS challenge has brought me the perfect opportunity to work based on my own inspiration. During the brainstorming process I had the opportunity of reflecting upon special moments of my childhood where phones, WIFI connection and social media were slightly less relevant in our lives. The result is coming together to translate my true self: An individual who relies on technology to explore the true meaning of life.
The project has adapted quite a lot over the course of the challenge. Starting off with the idea of a swimming pool floating in the trees and imagining a house to go with it, the main concept was not wanting to choose whether you sited the retreat on the forest floor, in the canopy of branches and leaves or floating above the forest looking to the horizon.
The initial design was a pragmatic use of shipping containers on a pulley structure system using the living areas to counterbalance the sleeping areas. I felt I was getting a bit tied up in the pragmatics for a concept so I redesigned the cabin looking more at quality of light and space inside to lead the way. My focus was oriented primarily around the design of the cabin to start with. I don’t have much experience in environment design and not having a real site in mind I tested a few ways of making a realistic terrain, with several failed attempts at terrain generation I settled for some newly aquired polymodelling in 3ds max as the simplest solution.
Eventually I had something to work with that followed some initial sketches of what I imagined the main camera view being. I then started texturing and populating the terrain using Forest Pack and some assets from Quixel.
The main issue I had after everything was getting the environment to extend to the horizon. This didn’t matter so much for the still images as I could edit this part but for the spherical renders this wouldn’t work, especially as the images Yulio produced didn’t like being tampered at all. The house crept closer to the water to enable a better view of the design however the original concept was to mask the support structure within the trunks of the forest and have more “garden” space between the house and the beach but I’m happy with where I got the project to in the end.
