Category: Architecture

Chaos Czech released Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max last week, designed to enhance the realism of 3D scenes and boost render speeds across the board. Now that I have it installed and running let’s share more info about it!

New Features Video

The New Features video is below for the short guided tour of what’s new in this release…

  • 15-50% faster rendering across the board.
  • A new Physical Material to make hyper-realistic scenes in minutes. Includes 35 presets for metal, glass, and fabric; Clearcoat and Sheen parameters; thin glass controls and more.
  • An expanded Sky Model with altitude parameters

With 35 new presets for glass, metal and fabric, the new Physical Material makes it simple to set up hyper-realistic scenes in minutes. Though intuitive for beginners, the Physical Material also comes with multiple features for deeper control, including Sheen parameters for creating photoreal fabrics like velvet, and Clearcoat, which

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What Does SHGC Mean When Talking About Glass?

SHGC stands for Solar Heat Gain Coefficient. It measures how much of the sun’s heat will pass through a window.

SHGC can be thought of as a percentage.  For example, according to this NFRC Rating below, this window will only let in 32% of the sun’s heat.  So a window of a SHGC of 0.50 will let in 50% of the sun’s heat!

The TECHNICAL EXPLANATION

Glass absorbs and redirects heat inward in three different ways: conduction, convection, and radiation. Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) is a standard used in the North America to estimate solar radiation that passes through glass relative to the amount of solar radiation hitting the glass. Solar radiation tends to be the primary method of energy transfer through fenestration products. Factors such as reflection, absorption, and transmittance will affect the SHGC. Expressed as a number between 0

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Today I’m proud and happy to announce the winners of the CONVERTED challenge, the 9th International Architectural Design & Visualization Challenge, in partnership with Substance by Adobe and ASUS as primary sponsors.

I’m highly impressed to see all the hard work, talent, and dedication the participants have put into this edition of the challenge.

This challenge was mainly sponsored by…

Substance is the complete suite for object texturing and material authoring for your 3D projects, and you’ll be using it to create your challenge entry. All winners will get a yearly license to Substance Suite and Adobe CC.

An ASUS ProArt StudioBook is waiting for each of the Grand Prize winners in Converted’s three entry categories – Still, Animation and Real-Time. A ProArt StudioBook is a mighty mobile powerhouse with extreme performance. It packs a professional-grade Quadro or GeForce graphics card, a wide-gamut display, and exceptional color accuracy makes it

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The Animation GRAND PRIZE winning entry by Jamie Holmes for the CONVERTED Challenge. An exercise at complete world-building and storytelling to boot! Jamie Holmes is no stranger to such a challenge as we’ve seen him doing it previously during the CABINS challenge. Enjoy this one as he takes us for a spin in his process of making of Red Barn.

First, I just want to thank Ronen Bekerman for putting on another excellent competition. Thank you to all the sponsors that supported this competition for supporting the Arch Viz Industry!

Every day I sit in front of some sort of screen looking at plans, elevations, site photos, all someone else’s design. 20 years ago, I trained as an architect. Just when I was on the cusp of getting registered and diving into a career as an architect, my business partner and I started our architectural visualization business.

The “RED

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The annual BIG ArchViz BlackFriday to CyberMonday promotion is underway with 7 Partners early to start this time around. Many more to join in leading up to the official Black Friday date – November 26th. Expect up to 50% Discounts on software, content and training going on well into (3)December.

Visit the special landing page prepared this year to showcase all the great deals you can grab right away!

Check deals that already started by :

  • XfrogPlants – up to 50% off on all of their plants.
  • Enscape – 10% off on this amazing real-time design visualization software.
  • SOA (State of Art Academy) – Amazing 20% off discounts on the best training courses for ARCHVIZ!

 

Most of the deals run until Monday 29th 23:59 GMT, but some run well into December! I will highlight those after the Monday deadline is passed.

Visit the ArchViz BlackFriday to CyberMonday 2021 page now!

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I’ve recently started to use Enscape for early design stage visualization, and I love the workflow it allows me to work with. I get to stay inside SketchUp during the early design stages with better visualization capability. I get to use the modeling tools I like and scatter things around, and all of it picked up smoothly. Check out this short glimpse of how these assets look like for a fast pre-viz while modeling in SketchUp.

Also, and treat this as an official disclaimer, it is ArchViz BlackFriday time, and all of the tools I use and mention here are on some kind of sale. This is good! Take advantage of that.

On with it…

“Test House” SketchUp + Enscape + Globe Plants + Skatter

One of the biggest hurdles with this workflow was the lack of high-quality yet low poly vegetation 3d models for SketchUp.

This wasn’t a

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Content courtesy of HGTV

Choosing Windows In The Pacific Northwest.

Choosing windows isn’t as simple as going with a look you like. Durability and performance are key factors to be considered, and windows will perform and age differently in different areas of the country. Here’s a suggestion to what to look for and what to avoid living in the Pacific Northwest.

Pacific Northwest
Residents of this area love their views, and finding windows that offer plenty of glass without sacrificing energy efficiency is essential.

Best choices: Moisture-resistant window materials such as vinyl, wood-resin composite and fibreglass will hold up well.

Choosing windows with a high resistance to temperature transference is a must; look for U-values of 0.3 or lower for optimum insulative properties. On the flip side, summer is a traditionally mild, short season here, so look for windows with a higher solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC).

*SHGC measures how

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This is big news! Chaos and Enscape to merge, backed by TA Associates and LEA Partners. The merger will create a global leader in 3D visualization and design workflow technology.

KARLSRUHE, SOFIA & BOSTON, January 11, 2022 – TA Associates, a global growth private equity firm, and LEA Partners, a technology focused private equity firm, announced today an agreement to merge Enscape, a leading developer of real-time rendering and design workflow technology for the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industries, and Chaos, a world leader in photorealistic rendering technology. The merger will establish a global leader in the 3D visualization and design workflow software sectors, with a focus on the AEC, Visual Effects (VFX) and Product Design verticals.

Founded in 2017, Enscape offers solutions that connect directly into modeling software for the AEC industry, integrating design and visualization workflows seamlessly into one. This allows the company to support its customers

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Every element must be an exact reproduction so it would match the photography. I made measurement notes combined with the reference images starting with the kitchen appliances. Many manufacturers offer free 3D files of their products directly on their websites. 3D Warehouse is another good site for quick free models. Free models often need refinement and detail, but it’s a good starting point.

To create the stool, I imagined it as a flat object bent to form the back and seat. I crudely shaped folds and added thickness starting with simple polygons, knowing it would be smoothed with a turbo smooth modifier. We then bend that mesh using a path deform modifier, creating the final shape. Stitches are made from a generated spline of the final mesh and use the MCG Stitches script.

The cloth has been simulated with Tyflow. The fine cloth details use a mesh I created to

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After this journey with Epic Games, I started to create fewer ArchViz scenes and focus more on gaming and environments. It makes me tell a story in a cinematic way, creating my compositions and drawing on my photoreal and lighting experience.

Make your Archviz come to life with Reallusion ActorCore scanned people.

The difference from other scanned people is that this one is fully rigged for facial and body motion. For this scene, I wanted to create a sunset scenario with a house party going on. The house model is from Evermotion and was modified a bit before I imported it into Unreal Engine using Datasmith.

All interior furniture and props are modeled with 3ds Max and Quixel materials. Trees were created using Speedtree. The water reflections give the scene more realism using Lumen for GI, and Reflections helps achieve that also with Unreal Engine 5.

Populating your scenes using

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