Project 11 MIT Hub | Visualizing Architecture https://visualizingarchitecture.com by Alex Hogrefe Sat, 18 Jun 2022 15:13:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3 MIT B&W Sections https://visualizingarchitecture.com/mit-bw-sections/ https://visualizingarchitecture.com/mit-bw-sections/#comments Sat, 05 Jun 2021 19:48:51 +0000 https://visualizingarchitecture.com/?p=55490 Sections are some of my favorite types of architecture illustrations to create because of how well they show the relationship of exterior to interior. Traditionally, section drawings are illustrated perpendicular to the cut with minimal perspective and presented in a much more diagrammatic way. Much of the earlier sections that I illustrated on this site maintained this simplistic and minimal look. However, The way I have approached them in my last few projects was by treating them more like a standard perspective illustration showing lots of textures and shading. This method of showing perspective makes the visual more engaging and in my opinion, easier to read.

I also start out many of my sections with these grand plans to use lots of color but I ultimately end up making them black and white. There is a lot going on in section illustrations to the point that adding color can get a bit busy and overpowering. desaturating the sections maintains some of that diagrammatic feel. I even tried adding color to just the section cut, but this made the cut pop way too much and again became too distracting.

I created two building sections for the MIT project. To switch things up a little, I layered in lots of fog and atmospheric lighting. Part of why I created these sections was to force me to figure out the interior floor plan and spaces which I have been putting off ever since I started this project. I was going to generate some perspective floor plans for this post as well but ran out of time. Below are some of the base files I used create the section illustrations. Because these illustrations are more diagrammatic, this put less pressure on needing to develop a detailed model for the interiors.

Top- Clay Model V-Ray Rendering, Middle- Materials on, Bottom- Material ID Rendering

To start things out, I really only needed 3 base renderings from V-Ray: A rendering of the model with no materials, and rendering with materials turned on, and a Material ID rendering for making quick and easy selections.

Clay Rendering with Levels Adjustment

I started with the clay rendering and adjusted the levels to increase the contrast. The idea being that I wanted the highights on the section cut to read more strongly against the darker interior spaces.

Additional Textures Added Via Photoshop

Next, I layered in materials and textures. Some of this came from the V-Ray base rendering with materials. Others came from manually photoshopping in dirt and grunge. I also added in a dark sky and gave a gradient to the section cut.

First layer of Fog and Toning

At this point, the image was getting too dark so I started to lighten things up with another levels adjustment, but by also painting in some fog across the entire image. You can also see the sky now has much more of a gradient as well. The left back building was also lightened to create more of a contrast between the background and foreground elements.

Second layer of Fog and Toning

The second layering of fog focused on texture and overall image gradient. I wanted the building to feel like it was receding so fog was painted in more more heavily on the right side. As I was painting in the thick fog, I was also switching between dark and light paint so that an overall gradient of light to dark started to appear. Light was focused at the top right of the image, and vignetting in the bottom left. Finally, some additional texturing using miscellaneous cloud textures was used to give the fog some complexity. This texturing was very subtle but really goes a long way in giving the fog a more natural feel.

Crop
Crop
Section 02

I ended up taking the second section cut a little lighter, but still very foggy. This image was originally rendered out as a horizontal layout but the proportions and composition felt off so I significantly cropped things out on the right.

Crop

And below are some of my past sections including one only seen in Portfolio Volume 05

Research Lab Section: Seen in Portfolio Volume 05
Porter Square Station Section
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MIT Site Plans and Diagrams https://visualizingarchitecture.com/mit-site-plans-and-diagrams/ https://visualizingarchitecture.com/mit-site-plans-and-diagrams/#comments Sun, 18 Apr 2021 20:22:50 +0000 https://visualizingarchitecture.com/?p=55176 The past several weeks have been sort of a right-brain focus on image making. I wanted to play around with colors and textures and iterate on style a bit and not get lost in the technical and detailed side of things. However, before I started with the graphic studies, I first needed a good base. I originally was thinking I could accomplish most of what I wanted in Photoshop however I changed my mind and ended up modeling just about everything including the the ground plane textures and paving as well as trees and buildings. While this required more time up front, it meant I could move much quicker once it was time to play around with styles.

I also generated a before and after semi-photoreal illustration of the site plan. Again, because I had modeled most of the geometry, generating these illustrations didn’t take too long. Plus, I like the visual contrast of the abstract diagrams next to the realistic illustrations of the site. Google Earth was used to create many of the textures such as the rubber roofs of the existing context buildings and to age the ground paving and vegetation a bit.

V-Ray Clay Base Rendering with Soft Shadows
V-Ray Clay Base Rendering with Sharp Shadows
V-Ray Base Rendering with Materials On

For maximum flexibility, I rendered with both soft and sharp shadows. Sometimes, especially with diagrams, shadows can be distracting and impact clarity so I wanted to have both options ready to go.

Before and After Illustrations

Existing Site Plan Illustration
Proposed Site Plan Illustration

The MIT project that I designed is a large intervention on the campus and I thought a before-and-after series of images would help illustrate this idea. As I mentioned above, I extracted a ton of textures from Google Earth screenshots to more accurately depict rooftops and other misc. textures.

Graphic Iterations

Once the before-and-after illustrations were completed, I switched modes and started experimenting. Above all else, I wanted to study color combinations and texture levels as well as test out styles that ranged from minimalist to full on texture and complexity. My Photoshop file had lots of groups and masks setup so that I could adjust colors and textures rapidly. Again, this took a little more time upfront to setup, however, it allowed for super clean edits that didn’t get messy and confusing after hours of playing around. More importantly, it allowed me to really fine tune and dial in things because I had full control of every color and texture. Below are some of the images that were generated from this exercise.

Style: Vibrant Soft Shadow
Style: Vibrant Sharp Shadow
Style: Texture
Style: Minimal

Crops

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MIT Day Versus Night https://visualizingarchitecture.com/mit-day-versus-night/ https://visualizingarchitecture.com/mit-day-versus-night/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2021 19:17:31 +0000 https://visualizingarchitecture.com/?p=54840

A long time ago, I put together a day to night illustration for my Philly Bridge project. Back then, I had a hard time deciding what kind of scene lighting to go with so I just did both and ended up creating a tutorial around how you could shift an image from daytime to night all in Photoshop. For the MIT project, I again was struggling to decide what time of day to go with so I decided to go with a “Day versus Night” series of images again. There were elements in the view such as the green courtyard that would have a better narrative with daytime light, but then elements such as the brass portal entry would have a more dramatic reading at night. It became clear that creating both a day and night illustration of the same view could be a powerful way of showing how these elements change and adapt with different lighting. 

This time around, I didn’t make the transition from day to night all in Photoshop as I did with the Philly Bridge images. I setup the model with completely different lighting for each image so that I could be a little more accurate with materials and reflections. It is also just a massive time saver rigging the model with lights rather than managing in Photoshop. Back when I created the Philly Bridge images, the materials I was using in 3D were less refined and my 3D lighting abilities were not as strong. Therefore it was quicker for me to actually make it all happen in Photoshop. Nowadays, I am relying on the 3D much more to get reflections and textures where I want which saves time and is more accurate.

3D

Sketchup Model (Daytime View)
V-Ray Base Rendering for the Daytime View
V-Ray Base Rendering for the Night View

As I mentioned above, I setup the 3D scenes for the daytime and night rendering with different light. Specifically, I used a different HDRI for each sky and I added in interior lighting for the night scene. I also dropped in some leaves on the ground for the daytime scene.

Brass Portal and Interiors

Brass Portal and Interior (Daytime)
Brass Portal and Interior (Night)

An important focal point for both images was the brass portal surrounding, so I punched up the color and adjusted the texture so that the brass had more of a presence in the image. I also added in the interior detail via Photoshop. I envision the portals at the end of the buildings to be a place to display art. The art also helps to draw out the diagonal stairs crossing the space.

Trees

Fall Trees Added In (Daytime)
Up-lit Trees Added In (Night)

Adding the trees in was a little tricky as they needed to look “similar” in each view but with totally different lighting. Originally, I was going to take the same tree and edit it for both views, but this ended up muddying the colors too much. I decided to do a little surgery and switched around the tree tops so that I could get different lighting on the leaves for each scene but maintain the same trunk forms. This allowed me to properly up-light the trees at night while still showing proper color in the fall.

Tinted Daytime Trees

To properly up-light trees at night, you first start with finding the right kind of cutout tree. I look for daytime lit trees that have a nice highlight both in the leaves and on the trunk. I then adjust the color so that the leaves are a little less green but have some warmth to them.

Darkened Trees

Next, I duplicate the trees and darken them almost to the point of being completely black. My night scene is pretty dark so this is fine. If the scene is a little brighter, I will leave a little texture, but really desaturate the tint the colors blue.

Light Trees Masked Over the Dark Trees

Finally, I carefully and slowly mask the light color trees on top of the dark color trees so that highlight is contained on the bottom side of the tree and around the trunk. I have used this method so much that I have built up a library of these manually made up-lit trees because they do such a good job of activating the ground plane.

People

People Added In (Daytime)
People Added In (Night)

For this type of eye level perspective in a campus environment, the entourage is really important. I wanted to play up the pedestrian street in the foreground so most of the the people are moving horizontally across the image. Conversely, most of the people in the courtyard on the left are standing or sitting in groups implying a place of gathering. I have been starting to use blurry cutout entourage more and more for the low light images because I really like the look and realism it adds to the images.

Final

Final Daytime
Final Night

To finish up the images, I increased the saturation for both views and adjusted the levels. I also added foreground trees to balance out the image compositionally and to be a little more accurate to the site design.

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MIT Student Hub: Pedestrian Street https://visualizingarchitecture.com/mit-student-hub-pedestrian-street/ https://visualizingarchitecture.com/mit-student-hub-pedestrian-street/#comments Sat, 23 Jan 2021 01:35:12 +0000 https://visualizingarchitecture.com/?p=54553 One of the first views of the MIT project that I wanted to explore was an approach shot down a new proposed pedestrian street. It is not necessarily the most compelling view of the new architecture, but I like that the view shows how the student hub volumes reinforce the edge of the new pedestrian street. The existing conditions of the site consist of aging narrow streets, overgrown vegetation, and lots of on-street parking. Yet it runs parallel to some of the most beautiful views of Boston’s Charles River and skyline.

I was trying to think of a different way to break down this image rather than showing a slow buildup of layers in Photoshop like I normally do. What I came up with was to show some side-by-side comparisons between the raw base rendering and the fully Photoshopped final image. I think this method helps reveal all of the nuanced adjustments that happen throughout the illustration. I also tried to extract some of the 2D assets that I used so that you can see how I reworked the lighting and tones of these assets or how I overlaid them to add age and texture to the base rendering.

1. Left Side Closeup

Left Side: Base V-Ray Rendering; Right Side: Final Photoshopped Image
2D Assets Added in Photoshop

With each new image that I create, I find myself spending more time thinking about and exploring how to blend the 2D with the 3D to the point that the two are indistinguishable. It has become a borderline obsession for me. The more that I do this, the more I realize that it is less about over-the-top complicated moves in Photoshop but instead more about implementing really simple moves that nudge the tone or lighting to where it needs to be. I’m constantly studying light and tone in the real world which then allows me to better estimate what needs to be done with 2D or 3D elements to better blend the two.

In the above image, there are a lot of really subtle things happening in Photoshop that add up to a much more dramatic final result. I overlaid a ground texture to breakup the plaza. I added a ledge texture in Photoshop to create the appearance of more weathering and age to the seat wall in the foreground. Similarly, textures were added to age the buildings in the background. For the vegetation, I really just used a careful layering system to create moments of highlight and shadow. From there, it was all about reworking the toning so that all of these different cutout elements read holistically as one.

2. Right Side Closeup

Left Side: Base V-Ray Rendering; Right Side: Final Photoshopped Image
2D Assets Added in Photoshop

The first thing you may notice with the right side is just how dark certain areas had become to the point that all of the detail was lost. Though this bothered me in the past, it doesn’t much anymore. I tend to worry more about the highlights getting too blown out rather than the shadows getting too dark. The dark shadows help to soften an image when there are a lot of textures going as well as add drama to the highlights of the scene.

3. Center Closeup

Left Side: Base V-Ray Rendering; Right Side: Final Photoshopped Image
2D Assets Added in Photoshop

Again, I used some textures to breakup the paved plaza. I pulled textures from photographs of the La Grande Voile sculpture to more accurately represent the age and sheen of the steel. I wanted the metal on the new student hub volumes to relate to the sculpture which meant lots of toning and extracting of texture. The whole point of the illustration was to show the relationship of the architecture to the iconic sculptures and buildings surrounding the site and how a well placed pedestrian street could connect these elements. Most of the people were placed in the center of the image to keep the focus there. However, I let them move in and out of the light and shadow to create clear focal points and push elements forward and back.

4. Sky

Left: Original Sky; Middle: Toned and Denoised; Right: Sharpened
Sharpening Close-up

I actually had a little breakthrough moment when I was working on the sky for this image. It seems whenever I find the “right” sky for an illustration, the quality is terrible. I can sometime run a denoiser filter to smooth it out, but it still lacks detail. In this case, the sky I wanted to use was really poor quality. But I had spent too much time looking for the right cloud formation and was coming up empty so I had to make this one work. The first step was to tone the colors to match the lighting of the scene. I then ran a denoiser (I use a denoiser by Topaz). However, at this point, the clouds still lacked detail. This is where the breakthrough came in. I grabbed the smudge too, set the strength to 90, and used a soft round tip. I then started smudging the edges of the cloud through a series of small quick movements to get back the crisp edge. I was surprised at how natural it looked considering how simple the move was. I spent all of 10 minutes and the image looked like it was at a much higher resolution. I know I am probably not explaining this well, but perhaps I will do some quick tutorial about it in the future.

Final Image

Full Image

I just about posted this image as a black and white because I almost think it is more successful as a black and white. But given how much time I spent playing with the colors and toning everything, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Close-up
Close-up
Black and White
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Winter Special #9: MIT Courtyard https://visualizingarchitecture.com/winter-special-9-mit-courtyard/ https://visualizingarchitecture.com/winter-special-9-mit-courtyard/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2020 00:55:31 +0000 https://visualizingarchitecture.com/?p=54332 I was getting a little nervous there thinking I would run out of time but luckily I was able to squeeze this in before the holidays. This courtyard view represents the 9th Winter special image that I have created for this website. It is also the first highly detailed image that I have created for my new MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) personal visualization project which allowed me to really think through many of the details that I have been juggling in my head. This image was quite time consuming for me because I am spending more time than normal on the little details: the materials, the reflections, the aging of the building, etc. I am working on pushing every part of the image to the same level of quality and resolution which means I can’t hide behind Photoshop as much or other quick fixes like in the past. I’m excited with how this first image in this project series has turned out and am looking forward to the other illustrations to come.

Below is a break down of the image and a closer look at the process I used to create the snowy walkway.

1. 3D Model

Sketchup Model Screenshot

The one thing I wanted to point out in this screenshot is that I am using 3D people in the interior. The view point into the lower café was too difficult to find people at the proper angle to Photoshop in. Therefore, I fully modeled the interior and dropped in 3D people to avoid the headache of trying to stitch 2D people into that scene.

2. Base Rendering

V-Ray Base Rendering

I built the dark steel material from scratch because I had a very specific look that I was going for. That material carries through the entire project so I needed it to be high quality and large enough to not show tiling. I also built the paver material in the sunken plaza from scratch and created a reflection map to give the texture a wet look.

3. Snow

Material Override White Ground Plane

The process of adding the snow began with setting up a material override in V-Ray for some of the ground textures so that it renders out white. I wanted to create the effect of people’s footprints creating a slushy path through the plaza. The plan was to mask away the white material override rendering to reveal the wet stone material below.

The Start of the Footprint Mask
Completed Footprint Mask

I searched through Google and built up a library of images of people’s footprints through the snow. I then began bringing them into Photoshop, desaturating the color, and built a black and white image of how I wanted the snow to be masked away. White represents where the snow would stay and the black represents where the snow would be masked away revealing the wet ground below.

Final Slushy Footprint Result

Once the black and white image was complete, I simply copied it into the “Layer Mask” of the white material override layer.

4. Final Snow Details

Snow Details

With the plaza at a good place, I added in the remaining snow details such as the snow collecting on the horizontal surfaces and in the corners of the scene.

5. Texture Refinement

Texture Details

As much as I tried to get things resolved in 3D, there was still tweaking I needed to do over many of the materials. This mostly consisted of adding in imperfections such as adjusting the reflection in some of the steel panels, aging the brick façade, and adding dirt stains along the roof line. I also reworked the glass to resolve some of the reflection issues and added details inside the space.

6. Trees and People

Trees and People

This part went relatively fast but I did realize that I need a better winter tree library. I ended up copying the same few trees over and over again.

7. Final Image

Final Image

I applied very little final effects or color grading to the image. I did push the image a little darker just because I wanted to play up the contrast of the dark steel with the bright white sky. I think the mood landed right where I was aiming and didn’t require any drastic atmospheric effects or coloring.

Closeup

Past Winter Specials

Winter Special #8

Winter Special #7

Winter Special #6

Winter Special #5

Winter Special #4

Winter Special #3

Winter Special #2

Winter Special #1

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New Project: MIT Student Hub https://visualizingarchitecture.com/new-project-mit-student-hub/ https://visualizingarchitecture.com/new-project-mit-student-hub/#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2020 13:57:03 +0000 https://visualizingarchitecture.com/?p=54210

I have begun a new personal visualization project to start off the winter season and help me switch things up a bit. As much as I liked working on the Texas Prairie Office, the project and scope was huge which meant every image required lots of design and time to develop the illustrations. For this next project, I am keeping the scale of the project smaller and the design more paired down. The project is located on the MIT Campus and will be a “Student Hub” containing restaurants, large event spaces, and smaller study spaces.

My ultimate goal with this visualization project is to spend more time on the 3D side developing better materials and light. Along with the 3D, I am also going to be exploring the “Aging” of the building and illustrating what the building may look like 20 to 50 years down the road. For example, how will the metal patina or how will the dirt build up in corners and crevices. I am curious if attempting to illustrate a building’s age will influence the design and if it alters how the building is percieved.

For now, below are a series of diagrams explaining a little bit about the project and how the form was conceived.

 

 

 

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