Above: Sketchup Line Work

Images like this are difficult because there are so many different elements involved in large quantities: Lots of buildings, trees, cars, ground plane textures, etc. Luckily, I had much of the town already modeled from previous renderings. However, I still needed to model some houses in the distance and add proxy trees and cars. If you are not familiar with proxies, they are a way for V-Ray to render heavy meshes like cars and trees without actually placing these high poly objects in the Sketchup model. Instead, only a simplified low poly wire frame placeholder of the object is used in the Sketchup model. This means you can load hundreds of trees and cars without ballooning up your model size or using up all of your ram during the render process.

Above: Sketchup Model with Textures

Another difficult aspect of this image was the ground plane. There are lots of changes in textures happening and this was not something that I had time to model. Instead, I ended up using the aerial map as the ground plane. I modified parts of the image to remove cars and building shadows. The aerial map was not at a high resolution, but since the camera was so high in the air, this lack of detail didn’t matter much. In the image above, you can see the aerial map applied to the ground plane.

Above: V-Ray Base Rendering

The V-Ray base rendering still has a lot of things that need to be cleaned up in Photoshop, but I at least have a good start in terms of trees and context buildings. Trying to Photoshop in all of this stuff would have been doable, but would have take a ton of time and would not have been as accurate or clean.

Initial Photoshop over base rendering

Once in Photoshop, I first worked on the landscape adding some more trees, wild grasses around the site, and adjusting the tone and reflections of the reservoirs. I then moved to working on the context buildings, bringing in facade details to the main street buildings, adding textures to the train pavilion, and lighting up the buildings. Finally, I added details like people, crossing lights, water tower text, and other misc. adjustments.

Above: Final Color Adjustments

I kept the color adjustments simple with a slight atmospheric haze in the distance, some yellow and blue color overlays, and some toning and detail adjustments made in Topaz Labs.

Some final notes, I chose the view based on where the fold of the spread would have minimal impact. Since the image is an aerial and all of the detail is so small, I had to make sure the view was designed in such a way that none of the important information was getting lost in the fold. I also rendered everything at a higher resolution than normal (6,500 px wide) so that the detail remains sharp as viewers get close to the page. This meant a very large Photoshop file of over 3.5 GBs though still easily manageable on my laptop.

As I near the end of this project, I have started to compile all of the imagery into portfolio spreads. This is the first pass at organizing the illustrations and diagrams to tell the story of the project. As I put this series of spreads together, I am still thinking about the past two project spreads and how these will relate and differ from each other. For example, I plan to stay consistent with page numbers, fonts, and intro page design. The familiarity and consistency of these few elements throughout the document help to orient the viewers as they flip pages and acts as a universal structure that connects the different projects to one another. With that said, elements like color schemes, graphic typology, and page layout are fair game. Changing these up from page to page holds the viewer’s interests and keeps the suspense going.

This is the third project of what will be a four project series that I plan to create and turn into portfolio vol 4. I still haven’t decide what the 4th project will be, so if you have any suggestions, I am listening. I am interested in a location that I have never done before. Most of the projects on this website are of past school projects or places that I grew up around and am familiar with. However, I may explore a project in a mountainous terrain, arctic tundra, or even a desert environment. Each of these locations bring with them a different series of lighting conditions and a unique set of materials/textures.

Below are the posts discussing the first 2 projects spreads in case you missed them.

Project 1 Spreads:

Project 2 Spreads:

I have been experimenting with some interior illustrations and wanted to post a breakdown of this image.  Determining the view for this shot has been difficult because there is so much going on in the design, and I wanted to find a view that properly captured many of the design elements. Ultimately, I will probably need to create several interior shots to tell the full story, but this one seemed to do the job of expressing the layering of the elements.

The breakdown of the image is like most of the others that I post. I started with a Sketchup model and created some textures for the metal and wood materials.

Sketchup model with textures off

Sketchup model with textures on

Base rendering directly out of V-Ray

Final image after Photoshop post processing

There are several things that I was juggling in my head when I was deciding on the view. The design contains several layers of structure and sun shading devices. I wanted the view to express these elements and show how these layered on top of one another. This meant shifting the view around quite a bit to avoid certain walls covering up other walls,  or letting steel structures block views of the context. The materials themselves also help express the layering by using dark and light tones along with cool and warm tones. Finally, a hint of atmospheric haze was added to give a better sense of depth and further enhance the layering effect.

I also knew that I wanted to play up the contrast of the bright exterior from the shadow generated by the shading canopies.  What is nice about this view is that the light areas of the image creates a strong diagonal move across the illustration. This is not only nice compositionally, but it also encourages the viewers’ eyes to move around the page.

Finally, the view takes into account the rule of thirds. The horizon is placed directly on the bottom third of the page and the converging lines of the perspective fall on the right third of the image.  I don’t always follow the rule of thirds, but it is something that I keep in the back of my mind when setting up images.

I rendered the image out at 5000px x 3125px on my Macbook Pro and it took about 2 hours. This isn’t bad considering the resolution that I am working with.  I spent quite a bit more time in Photoshop but the point is that you don’t need massive rendering farms to be able to generate high res images. With that said, I am not using displacement maps on any of the textures nor am I loading the scene with a ton of lights which can really increase rendering times. My Photoshop file grew to just over 1.5 gb in size which is typical for my illustrations at 5,000px wide. In my experience, images over 6k or 7k px wide with lots of layers will start to generate PSD files that are difficult to manage unless you have an amazing graphics card.

One final note about this site, I have went through and re-embedded all of the videos so hopefully everything this up and running again. However, if you come across any videos that are still not showing up, send me an email or leave a comment and I will try to fix it as soon as I can.

This week, I have begun piecing together the floor plans of the Train Pavilion Project. When it comes to visualizing floor plans, I have always leaned towards a simple representation. Maybe it is because I have spent so many years working in offices where the construction drawings are plastered with call-outs, dimensions, and notes, but I like my plans to read more on the diagrammatic side.  This means simple poched walls and minimal details such as furniture so that the reading of the spatial relationships is hierarchically strong.

I have posted several floor plan illustrations over the years on this site and they all have a similar style. The walls are filled in solid and are usually the darkest or lightest elements on the page depending on the background. I also like to give a slight change in tone of the background color to differentiate between the extents of the floor plan from the surrounding site. Finally, I add a slight shadow to give some depth and help define wall vs glass. It is a simple set of moves that lead to clear, easy to read plans.

Below are some floor plan layouts from my Portfolio Vol. 3

I also like to combine section cuts with the floor plans when setting up portfolio spreads. It is an easy opportunity to relate the two types of illustrations to one another. If you do a little thinking before hand about layout, the sections and floor plans can start to engage one another and actually increase the readability of each. In the case of the train pavilion layout, I placed the transverse section cuts along the floor plan in the corresponding locations that they are cut, making it easier to reference back and forth between the two. I then turned the section cut lines into a graphical move that stretches across the fold into the other plan, again showing where the sections are cut, and then bleeding off of the page.

The floor plans and sections were first generated by exporting section cut line work from my Sketchup model and then opened in AutoCAD. Once in AutoCAD, I cleaned up the line work and finalized the floor plan layout. I then exported as a pdf and opened in Photoshop where I added color and shading. I also exported shadow information from Sketchup and brought that into Photoshop as an overlay.

As with all the portfolio spreads, the goal is to engage the viewer and draw them into the project. Little moves like connecting the sections and floor plans graphically help to make both types of illustration more interesting and easier to read. Incorporating graphical moves like the section cut lines across the spread encourages eye movement and gives me more control of how to tell the story.

All these diagrams were created using a Sketchup model rendered as a clay model in V-Ray. I then used that clay model as a base in Photoshop to apply color. To see some more diagrams that I have done in the past, I have added some links below which go into more depth on the workflow that I use:

1. Boston Greenway Diagrams

2. Boston Wharf Diagrams

3. Cranbrook Site Analysis Diagrams

4. Thesis Diagrams

I have put together some ideas to think about when looking for that perfect sky. It should be noted that these are guidelines. There are many of different scenarios and situations in architecture visualization in which these tips may not apply. However, I have found that to be rare and I follow these ideas in almost every image that I create.

1. Avoid Oversaturated Color

Oversaturation is an issue I see often. Many of the sky images that I find online have this problem because the sky has been enhanced or amplified to be more dramatic and catch viewers attention. However, too much color saturation in the sky will overpower the colors in the architecture and ground plane ruining the hierarchy of the illustration. To fix this, I go into “Image>Adjustments>Hue Saturation” and I move the “Saturation” slider to the left to remove some of the color.

2. Avoid Awkward or Unnatural Colors

Unnatural color brings with it similar issues as oversaturation. Unnatural sky color can throw the whole image off from the start making it difficult to pull off a successful composition. Not only that, it creates a “Photoshopped” look instead of looking harmonious with the architecture and ground plane. Due to the many gradients and color tones, I prefer just finding another sky vs. trying to alter or fix the unnatural colors. However, if I really like the cloud forms or texture of the image, I sometimes will desaturate the color, and then use the color of a different sky overlaid on top.

3. Minimize Overly Busy Skies

As much as you may like clouds, too many will hurt the reading of the image. Simply put, they take all of the attention away from the architecture. However, there is a fine line between distracting and dramatic. I tend to like cloudy skies, but I will dilute the image by desaturating the color and fading out the detail so that the texture is softer. An easy way to fade the detail is by finding a sky with no clouds, just color,  and setting that as the base sky. Then take the cloudy sky, set that layer on top of the just-color sky, and lower the opacity so that the clouds read much lighter.

4. Wrong Sun Direction

This is one of those situations where you look at an image, and something seems off, but it is not clear what is wrong. However, once a light source issue gets corrected, the image reads dramatically better.  This holds true for other Photoshopped elements such as entourage shadows and trees shadows. The more that the light source of all of the elements relate, then the better the entire image will read as a single cohesive illustration instead of a bunch of single Photoshopped elements.

5. Look for the Correct Perspective

This idea is more important or less important depending on the view. However, scenes showing a lot of depth will read much better with a sky that shows the correct perspective. In the example above, the clouds have almost no perspective, meaning the clouds don’t change in scale as they recede into the distance and get closer to the horizon which causes the background reads much flatter.

6. Don’t Be Afraid To Go Simple

You don’t always need to show clouds. Sometimes, the perfect gradient is all that is needed to set the right tone for an image.  This move creates a calmer scene and helps to highlight the architecture and ground plane.

The Final Image

The sky I ultimately chose was a cloudy one with pockets of blue. This allowed me to play up the sunlight coming from the left and give the overall image a dramatic light to dark gradient. I combined two different cloud images using a similar process as described in tip #3. I found a sky with no clouds and great color and then combined that with a cloudy sky. By adjusting the opacity of the cloudy sky, I was able to zero in on a good balance of color and softness.

Once I had the sky, I amplified the warm and cool tones using color overlays and added more shadow at the base of the image. All these moves help to start the viewer’s eye on the left side of the image, and slowly move it to the right over the bridge and to the train on the right, mimicking the path pedestrians take. In this way, I am using the light started by the sky to help tell the story of the project.