For those of you following our humble blog, during select projects, we will be providing updates and insights during the development process. With these updates we are giving you an opportunity to follow our progress, successes, and mistakes. While we are a company of digital learning, and exploration, we offer you a seat along side to learn with us as we explore the very best of our talents and creativity. To that regard I leave you with the first project update.

When the project was initiated with Glennstar our deliverables were 1) to create a 3D asset of the Ironwolf Communities Duplex show home, designed by Architectural Designer, Elisa, McLellan; 2) render several print ready assets for marketing materials; and 3) Create an architectural fly-through showcasing the virtual home, so that it can be deployed to DVD and the Web.

Fig 1. Duplex Show Home – Main Floor

Fig 2. Duplex Show Home – Developed Basement

I won’t get into too many technical details of the project but I’d like to highlight a few big ones.

Working on any project, especially a project with so many aesthetic components to consider, can be a daunting task. Even a small 3D home project there are thousands of bits, parts, and pieces to create and maintain. In residential construction, the client or even the clients customers can request colour changes, small tweaks, “minor” wall changes, door type changes, etc. We use a technique called file referencing.

For example, if a house has 3 windows that are exactly the same, then those windows should all be pulled into the main model from a single source file. The benefits of this are two-fold. First we only need to model the asset once and any future changes to the asset will propagate up to the composite model. Secondly, assets that aren’t complete can still be added to the composite model in proxy form. An example would be knowing the size of a new door model but not knowing the final design of the door. The artist doing the layout of the composite model can make a new file with a cube object of the same size, shape, and with the same pivot point as the final door model. They can then reference that file into the composite model and position it on the house. When the design for the door arrives from the client, that proxy file can be modified to specification and voila! The door in the composite model will have maintained the changes.

Other advantages to using a reference pipeline can allow multiple team members to work on the same file, and build a database of reusable assets. Since developers use finishing products and materials from many different manufacturers, file referencing allow us to maintain a library of assets which include many types of metadata, such as, manufacturer, product type, product style, product color, and the list goes on.

Specializing in interactive tools like the Unreal 3 Engine, that which most Arch Viz companies wouldn’t even consider, not only do we need to take into account how our assets are constructed but also their performance abilities in real-time. All assets that we develop are created using the latest in rendering technology such as Parallax mapping, giving final assets that photorealistic shine without hindering engine performance. The benefit is that all of our houses can be used in interactive simulation software like Project Carma, without a lot of extra customization.

One last consideration which requires both experience, patience, and proper planning, is the pre-rendered fly-through. Creating a video of a camera moving throughout a virtual house is more than just hitting the easy button. your home television outputs approximately 24fps, which is 24 frames (images) per second. If a video is 3 minutes and 30 seconds long, the number of frames that will make up that video is 5040 frames. First of all creating assets with game development practices helps with this process. Today’s rendering technology doesn’t impede visual quality by using lower poly assets. The time required to create each frame is determined by a number of variables that the computer needs to calcuclate. This process is called rendering. These factors can include number of polygons, visual objects, light sources, resolution of the frame, shadows, reflections, refractions, and camera depth. Any minor changes to any of these variables and settings can drastically increase or decrease the time it will take to render each frame. In our process we do a number of tests before a scene will enter final production. These tests include camera flow, lighting, resolution, and production quality to name a few. The trick is to get the scene as perfect as possible before hitting the production cue.

Below is an example of camera test #22.

In summary, the only challenges that we’ve faced in this project thus far have been the lighting design of the project. Ensuring that the lighting is set just right to give not only realistic illumination but enough ambiance enabling the proper mood for both the video and still renderings.