for architects
Consistent quality, meeting of deadlines, system approach
Working upon architectural projects, architects regularly face the question of how to efficiently present project to any given client.
Technical drawings, drafts, project documentation — all the familiar things architects are accustomed to are not suitable in this case: the client is light years from the subtleties of an architect’s workflow.
The most effective and convenient way to present architect project is to utilize architectural 3D-visualizations, which will help architects to:
- Free up valuable time for creative work
- Earn extra profits
- Achieve a competitive advantage
Write us at info@lightcache.ru to order visualization for your project or get to know about all the advantages of collaboration with our architectural visualization studio.
Natalia Lomeiko (founder of Elizabeth Interiors) tells about colloboration with our studio:
Benefits of having high-quality visualization
Elena Krasnorutskaya (Novosibirsk) Architect, Professor of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture Department
This is my first experience of cooperation with a visualization studio. Quite a positive one, I must say! Fellow architects! Just try it, and you will be most definitely not disappointed! :) In the end of the project I was given with magnificent visualizations. It’s only left to amaze the client! Thank you for your work. Looking forward to the further cooperation!” |
Oftentimes, explaining your project’s concept to a client is quite a challenge.
It’s difficult to put it in words, and the project’s stuff — drafts and pencil drawings understandable for you — doesn’t help either. Accumulated misunderstandings can delay approval dates and your workflow process a great deal.
Renovation project: first drawings and current situation (the client is unlikely to get the idea):
Ideally, he should be able to see the prospective building in 3D.
The renovation visualization is rendered, and the client is now fully aware of the architectural conception. The project is endorsed and approved at once:
Every client has business partners, colleagues, friends and relatives, with which he would consult in order to make a final decision. And project documentation, with all its architectural and space-planning solutions, might be too intricate for them to grasp at once. Moreover, it’s the client who presents it, not you. In this case a visualization — a steady, sightly and clear image — is the best means to generate a positive opinion among those advisers. As practice shows, clients tend to use soon-to-come house visualizations in the capacity of wallpapers for their PCs. And as it turns, they show the images to their acquaintances via iPhones and other smartphones, thus unwittingly advertising your work.
If presented on public or in front of a planning commission, your project is bound to include visualization as probably the only proper way to demonstrate your architectural solutions.
Persuade your clients to order a building design
Your client has doubts about whether a technical design is needed? Or maybe he thinks the foreman will build the thing anyway?
It’s important to “catch” your client, to motivate him to order a full set of project documentation, having spent as little time and resources as possible. The art of visualization meets the challenge in the best way: making of a beautiful promotive image requires nothing more than a couple of drafts and reference images.
A reference image and one version of a layout (a rather simple and fast-solved task for any experienced architect):
Therefore, you can show the client what the house is going to look like (even before the phase of schematic design begins) and convince him of your professionalism and of the necessity of further cooperation.
The visualization — the project looks elaborated and finished:
Earn extra profits
Visualization is always cheaper for an architect than for a final client.
During visualization, cooperation between an architect and a visualizer takes place: adjustments are made, angles are approved, terms of reference are endorsed. It is this cooperation that produces additional cost of visualization and, in turn, the project itself. In other words, your visualization is eventually sold to the final client, but for much greater price, thus earning you additional profit.
That is to say, high-quality visualizations add to the project’s worth in the client’s eyes.
Save your time for creative work and forthcoming projects
Occasionally architects have to deal with rather rigorous requirements, and that’s why nearly all of us have a number of kitschy designs — hackneyed and insipid to the architect’s eye but downright appealing to the client.
Full-blooded architects find such a rut quite burdensome but nevertheless gainful, especially when the case in hand is the facade design of existing buildings.
Minute project documentation, technical drawings and detailed drafts are of no avail in this situation.
And this is where visualization comes in handy: all you have to do is just describe the project’s concept to your client and draw schematic drafts — that would be enough for our modeler to start working on your visualization. Or you can order only facade visualization — in certain cases this approach can help you to go without technical drawings and thus save your time and finances.
Make sure your planning process and material choice are inerrable
Visualization reveals the play of light and shadow — and no other methods can do that. Materials change their color and reflective power in accordance to both illumination and perspective, and this property should be taken into account when choosing materials.
Also, visualization makes it possible to look through various color schemes and choose the one that suits your design the most.
Visualization is, in a sense, a checkout for your entire project. It’s lower in cost to make corrections during the phase of planning than during the phase of construction.
A planned and visualized project can be added to your portfolio before the construction is finished
All too often the construction process is delayed, and sometimes it doesn’t start at all. But your project is all ready and worked up, and you are eager to demonstrate it to new clients and colleagues, or even put it up for a tender. Sounds familiar, right?
And since our visualizations are usually believed to be photographs at first, they can easily replace the photos of your constructed building. This approach will hasten the process of portfolio filling and shorten the period of time after which the design starts working on your name.
Achieve a competitive advantage over other architects who have poor visualizations
Unfortunately for us (visualizers) and fortunately for you (conscious architects), some unconscious architects deem high-quality 3D-visualizations superfluous.
Such architects:
- Refuse to take advantage of visualization, thus disregarding its demonstrativeness for clients
- Save on visualizations and ignore the quality standards, adhering to the tick-box approach, because “everybody does that.”
For closed architectural societies this is more or less acceptable. But for the others saleability comes to the fore in the business of architectural design. And much depends on the appealingness of your designs — exactly what quality visualizations significantly add to.
Boards with our projects made for PAM Allegro and Bely Kvadrat architect’s bureau:
Your old tender entries and unsold designs will get a second wind
Safe to say, almost every architect has several dated and unsold but very interesting designs; designs that would perfectly fit the portfolio but are not there because of an old-fashioned presentation they have (e.g. aquarelle tinting, axonometric drawings or an ArchiCAD model).
Visualization can resurrect these designs and make them work for your name and wallet.
Unfortunately, we deal with suchlike situations very often; we ourselves used to make similar mistakes back when we thought that having learnt the basics of any 3D-modeling program is enough to start making decent architectural visualizations.
But as time passed, we realized that it is a full-fledged field of graphic design, with its own rules and laws, where interior visualization greatly differs from exterior visualization.
Our studio is engaged in commercial visualization of exteriors, and we’re always ready to help you present your design project — as informatively as possible, but not giving up the artistic part. Quality visualization not only resolves the immediate problem of demonstrating your images to the client but also works on you in the meantime, before the building itself is constructed.
Vladimir Pulyaev (Bratsk)
Architect, Fellow of the Union of Architects of Russia, Executive Director of the Bely Kvadrat architect’s bureau
“We’ve been collaborating with Nikolay for quite a while now — he helps us visualize designs of our architect’s bureau.
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Assistance in the assembly of your requirements specification
First, we discuss your project, and then we help to draw up its objectives and to assemble a detailed and correct requirements specification. After that we explain how the work process will go according to the architect-visualizer communication model that we elaborated at great length.
Quite contrary to popular belief, architectural visualization is not art. Every project is carried out within the framework of one consistent set of rules and is bound to fulfill one and only one task — to present your project as informatively and demonstrably as possible.
And exactly because we consider visualization a purely technical process, much attention is given to the assemblage of all relevant information and your requirements specification.
Consistent quality
Visualizations you will get are of our portfolio works’ quality (no less!).
The quality of our works is not only consistent — it’s growing day after day.
We don’t go into two extremes:
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Super-fast low-quality projects (which we’d be ashamed to put into our portfolio)
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Ultra-detailed works of art (which have to do with visual art, not architectural visualization)
From time to time, reading descriptions to works at websites and galleries, you will occasionally stumble upon a phrase akin to “reworked for the gallery.” Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time to revert to previous projects and perfect them to our enjoyment. This is why all the works established at our website have the exact look of what we handed over to the satisfied clients.
Meeting of deadlines
Every once in a while architects deal with severe deadlines, and the image so needed on Wednesday can turn needless on Thursday.
We name real dates needed to accomplish any given project. We estimate all the factors concerning the speed of the workflow process and name all the timeframes needed for each of the working phases.
If, in the course of working on your project, the deadline shifts backwards, we shall finish the project no matter what, with the maximum quality possible.
Acceptance of any source data
Visualization is useful in various instances. When you need to visualize only a concept, a full set of project documentation is absolutely superfluous. Most of the time it’s enough to have some drafts and photographs of analogous buildings.
But in the same time the more complete your source data is (ideally it’s AutoCAD or ArchiCAD figures), the sooner your visualization is made.
Visualization based upon a draft — children’s leisure centre (the urban-type settlement of Energetik, architect Vladimir Pulyaev):
Visualization based upon an AutoCAD figure — service centre (Bratsk, architect Vladimir Pulyaev):
Visualization based upon an ArchiCAD model — bathhouse (the Novosibirsk Region, architect Elena Krasnorutskaya):
Deep understanding of technical terms and construction/architectural documentation
We have vast experience in collaborating with architects and design engineers, which is why we have deep understanding of their needs, requirements and clues.
Openness to dialogue
We’re always ready to rationalize any particular element of our workflow and, if necessary, help you choose off-the-shelf but effective and reasonable architectural solutions to convert a draft into a finished and elaborated project.
Communication accessibility
Prior to the project’s start, we acquaint you with our communication means: the phone, Skype name, email and address.
Most of our clients are managed remotely — via email, Skype or phone.
We have a smooth-running system of client management, which is why neither distances nor time lags (some of our clients are 5−7 time zones away from us) affect our productive and quality work process.
Some clients prefer to communicate by email, some by phone or by Skype, and after each successful dialogue we send our client an email, in which we briefly sum up the previous talk and describe the further course of work, point by point.
Time-log
Sometimes, having ordered a visualization, you are in doubts whether the work is in progress or everything will be done the night before the deadline.
In our studio, the workflow is evenly distributed throughout the project’s allotted time.
Once a day (or every second day, depending on the volume of work) we send you a small progress report. This way you are always fully aware of what stage the project is in — and you can be sure that you and your project are not abandoned.
Extra advertisement for architects
If your project is not confidential, we will publish it on our website and on popular internet-galleries devoted to architectural visualization.
Our works at render.ru and evermotion.org:
Therefore you and your architectural studio have extra advertisement located at websites visited by not only visualizers but also your prospective clients.
Expertise
For several years we’ve been making quality visualizations helping architects to gainfully sell their designs. In our studio, questions like “how do I model this element?” or “how do I convey this texture?” are not asked.
Upon completion of each project we analyze its flow, pick out its strong points and try to find all, even the slightest flaws of the work done. This approach helps us minimize any misunderstanding when dealing with clients and to maximize the efficacy of the client management.
Yet we won’t load you down with intricate technical details of visualization such as subdivs, polygon amount, legendary gamma of 2.2, shadow noises, render time etc. The nitty-gritty of architectural visualization is quite fascinating, but we shall leave it for specialized message boards. We’ll only present you with ready-made HQ visualizations.
We believe that high-grade visualization should fit a certain set of requirements.
Below you will find some of the requirements we impose on our projects. This is a minimum, a benchmark for any worthy visualization.
Stanislav Orekhov (Moscow)
Visualizer, Designer, Founder and Executive of Stanislav Orekhov Studio www.d-e-s-i-g-n.ru
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Accurate 3D model
The 3D model underlies everything in visualization. All dimensions are preserved if the source data are technical drawings; all proportions are preserved if the work is based upon drafts or reference images.
If a model is inaccurate or if dimensions of distinct elements of a building are inadequate, neither materials nor surroundings will save the situation. The architect will notice all the flaws at once.
Realistic materials
You won’t have to make guesses about what materials are applied. All of them are worked up and recognizable. Every element’s texture and reflective properties are always conveyed to the full.
Moreover, materials are put over in accordance with the scale. Here’s an example. When looking at a sealed road from afar, we’re unable to discern individual stones and cracks. But at the same time we know that it is nothing but asphalt, because characteristic tire tracks and roadside dirt are in place. Conversely, when looking at asphalt at close range, we can clearly see all jogs and cracks, but we don’t have a grasp of the overall picture with its large-scale variance of color and texture.
Elaborate surroundings
It’s essential to have your designed project visualized in natural surroundings rather than on a blank piece of paper. Trees, bushes, flowers and landscape elements make your images lively and natural.
Any greenery should:
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Correspond to the region’s climatic zone (imagine a palm tree in the Moscow Region or oaks and elms in Siberia)
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Harmonize in color — acid-green or lurid vegetation is inadmissible
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Be of sufficient detail — no square leaves or six-sided tree trunks!
Attention to detail
We strive to avoid free-and-easy ways in visualization: we don’t simply copy drafts and photographs — we delve into their purpose and layout, and this is why all image elements are fitting and recognizable.
We add minor elements to the scenery: drainpipes, benches, trash cans etc. These details are seldom included to drafts, but they always add to the realism of visualization.
High-resolution images
From time to time we see visualizer-made low-quality images which would look good only on netbooks. The bad news is architects almost always print out their visualizations, and it grieves us to see how images only usable for greeting cards are stretched to the size of a large piece of photographic paper.
Our studio makes exclusively high-resolution images suitable for at least A3-format printing (3600×2400px). When dealing with banners or presentation boards, the required resolution is stipulated individually.
Even the slightest detail won’t be lost:
Proper image composition
The only objective of architectural visualization is to represent buildings. This is why:
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Constructions should be centered relative to the composition
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There should be scenery spots from the grown man’s point of view
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Structures should wholly fit into the frame
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Objects should be sunlit sideways
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The golden ratio rule should be preserved
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All vertical lines should be parallel
Scaling
Every single element of a visualized building and its surroundings is reproduced to scale. There’s no place for tiny cars, giant humans, three-meter doors and half-a-meter steps in our visualizations.
Working principles
During the years in service, we have generated certain principles concerning our studio and its working process. Some deem our principles as disadvantages, but we consider them essential.
First off, we don’t accept projects cheaper than $400.
Even if the project in question is a canopy or entrance lobby (which are visualized much easier than, say, a cottage or bathhouse), the minimum price is still $400.
Second off, we always do our best.
Every now and then we’re asked to “make it very simple, not complicated, and not bother much about it.” Obviously, the client is trying to save money on visualization. We can’t work this way — we have our own quality standards, to which we adhere, and falling below these standards we deem unprofessional.
Third off, prices for confidential projects are 30% higher.
Occasionally we get projects that for one reason or another are not permitted to be published anywhere, including our portfolio. Unfortunately, such requirements are not always reasoned by business factors or construction’s secrecy.
We’re ready to meet this requirement, but with a certain increase in the project’s price tag.
For us, visualization is not simply money-making. First and foremost, it is making of complete quality products that work on our clients and earn them extra profits. And they work on us, too — they demonstrate our professional advancement and represent our ability to carry out projects of incredibly diverse stylistics.
And lastly, we’re not engaged in video game graphics, object visualization, character animation, and we don’t accept orders on catalogue furniture modeling and visualization.
We guarantee you precise fulfillment of assigned tasks
Before the work process starts, we help you assemble the requirements specification, and upon the project’s completion, we check the conformity of the final result to the specification’s items.
In those rare situations when something doesn’t comply with the requirements specification, the work on other projects is stopped, and all energies are bent to the elimination of the identified non-compliance — to fix the issue as soon as reasonably possible.
Vitaly Zotov (Novosibirsk) Architect, Executive of Vitaly Zotov Architectural Studio
“The very opportunity to work with Nicolay is a great piece of luck!
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We’re ready to work with any source data. We just love delving into various schemes, technical drawings and drafts, just as we love making beautiful photorealistic images based upon those schemes. And that is why we chose this niche specialization: architectural exterior visualization.
Write us at info@lightcache.ru to order visualization for your project or get to know about all the advantages of collaboration with our architectural visualization studio.
Best regards, Nicolay Shulyak
Founder and art-director of lightcache studio
P.S. Don’t forget that visualization is a glossy cover of your project: it sells, it presents, it advertises.
P.P.S. Visualizations are reusable information products — they don’t lose their value with time and can work on you and your company for years to come.