I just got off the phone with one of my clients. With a little laughter in his voice, he remarked, “renderings are ruining work for us. All these television shows are showing cabinets getting dropped into place, and everyone seems to think now that this is just a simple push of the button.”
He’s partially correct. There’s no doubt that costs which would have been normally would have been passed to the architect in the past, have now filtered through to the architectural renderers involved in projects. What was once the realm of the architectural elite (those with the funding), has become more commonplace. The general public sees the flood of new building images, whether it’s on TV, billboards, or on the Internet and have taken our work for granted. Ultimately, this boils down to public awareness and education on the topic. People simply do not often know what is involved in our process and often jump to conclusions that the programs do all the work for us. If this was the case, then most of us would be out of a job.
Secondly, if we do have to place blame, I’d place it partially on technology itself. As computers have become more powerful, the ability to process these images has gotten easier. Highly realistic images are still time-intensive, but nowhere’s as involved as it would have been. One good desktop computer can easily replace a farm of 15 computers from 10 years ago. I recall a time where I’d have to wait almost two days before seeing a final product. Now I can do the same job with one computer in less than a few hours.
Third, I would blame the actual quality of the artists and what is being expected. There’s a lot of bad renderers out there. I don’t mean this as an insult, but their foray into the field is average at best. It’s the difference between looking at a photograph and staring at a cartoon. Photo-realism requires a lot of knowledge combined with computing power to take a rendering to the highest level, whereas a cartoon can be instantaneous. The problem is that a lot of people are satisfied with looking at a cartoon and that sometimes conveys the intended message. It’s basically what people are willing to pay for, and what the clients are content with. Sometimes the clients make the leap in logic themselves, thinking that it’s “just as easy” to produce something more realistic.
Fourth, the barrier of entry has been reduced. Computers and the software have come down drastically in price compared to a few years ago. The 3D software itself is still expensive, but rampant piracy has made the tools available to many hobbyists and start-up companies. A long time ago, the software would have easily run you over $8,000 for a single license. Now, there’s packages available for less than a few hundred dollars. Granted, most of them aren’t that good, but you get the idea.
Fifth, the level of education has increased. Collective Intelligence on the Internet has increased. Once upon a time, I had to buy books and spend weeks figuring out how the software worked on my own. Now, there’s free tutorial available on sites such as YouTube. There’s even better tutorials available for purchase including “out of the box” scene setups which people starting out can study. I still don’t think this is enough to teach someone the finer aspects to our field, but it gets them up and running a lot faster than the way we used to have it.
Sixth, I have to say that outsourcing has been a major issue. I get large companies calling me up all the time saying that they had their work done in another country. Quite often, they eventually learn a lesson and get frustrated with the lack of communication, but for every one of them, there’s another smaller company trying it out and sending their money overseas. Many of these foreign companies are not running legitimately purchased versions of the software which impacts software development in the US. Due to this, their lower costs of living, and often substandard work practices/ethics (long hours, etc.), they can afford to threaten US prices. It’s hard for me to justify one week’s worth of work when they are charging the equivalent of a few hours. I can only hope that other companies in the US recognize these ethics as well as the quality of our own work. Outsourcing has put a real toll on many of us, and have forced plenty of my colleagues out of a job.
Last but not least, I would say that our society has a new level of unrealistic expectations. As I first mentioned, renderings have become more commonplace. Recently, I had received a phone call from a car mechanic that wanted to open up a small garage in a preexisting space. The property required some work — some new doors and a paint job. He went before the town to see if he could move forward, when the committee suggested that he would get some renderings done. So he called me up in a panic, and I explained to him that it might take a few days and I told him the costs. When he heard that, you could hear him almost stop breathing. There’s no way I could really lower my price for him (I did offer him a discount because I felt terrible), but I thought the town was being unrealistic in their requests to begin with. 10 years ago, this would have been unheard of. Now people have come to expect it. I should also note that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard a similar story from people.
So was my client partially correct in placing the blame on my field of work? Yes and no. It’s only one component of a much broader picture. In order for us to truly understand what is happening, we have to take some time to learn about a topic without jumping to conclusions. And just fyi, I got into this field for the sake of art. Money was only secondary. If you take away the financial aspects, then it’s going to be a lot more difficult for me to spend the time working on a masterpiece.
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10 Responses to Renderings Are Ruining Work for Architects
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LunarStudio
There is a building in a nearby city which seems to illustrate the problem quite nicely. It appears that the windows have been cut and pasted from a manufacturer’s catalogue without regard for how they relate to one another. The building elevations appear to be a hodgepodge of such quickly placed elements.
No doubt, the same software that allowed for the rapid development of the elevations for this rather large edifice (it is a retirement community), was capable of outputting some sort of three dimensional image as well. No doubt, the developers examined the product of such a process and deemed the project desirable, but could they actually “see” what they were getting?
What was missing was the hand of an artist/architect to guide such an unruly assemblage into some sort of consonance. “Dropping in” is no substitute for concept development.
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Hi Lunarlog.
Just a few words.
Innovate or Die
We can´t expect things remain as 10 years ago specially in a tecnology based business.
Get out of your confor zone and listen to your market, they will tell you what they want.
Ask a local architect, a susessfull one how his business had has to change this last 10 years.
Greetings from Mexico!!
It certainly doesn’t help that promotion of the unrealistic and the fantastical instead of tactile and pragmatic is the normative practice . Most of these creations are done by people with no grounding in the construction field and could care less.
It makes me cringe when I see work such as Factory Fifteen being promoted as future of architecture.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/newsfeed.asp?nid=5353
Partly the problem is the accessibility and education of the architectural process. Who wants to read about building codes, real estate valuation, engineering when they can just flip through sexy images.
This system is further eroded by the education where value is placed on the technological theoretical rather than creative. There’s just too many schools that favors the absurb proceduralism rather actually showing a student what cutting a piece of stone involves.
@ B Kirchman
Sorry, getting back to the topic. I was in the mood to skewer somebody, however I really enjoyed all of your responses. Sometimes rage is a good motivator lol.
So you’d argue that the industry itself is largely responsible for it’s own issues — it’s turned into the Ikea monster.
@ Renderer
Fantastical seems to has been there, but it is getting to the extreme and has set some unrealistic expectations. I don’t look at Factory Fifteen’s work and think, “wow that’s possible.” Not even for a second, but I do find their work fascinating.
What’s really interesting to me is that both you and Kirchman both point to larger symptoms as a partial cause for some of these issues concerning unrealistic expectations.
This is a great article. It speaks volumes for what my coworkers and I talk about often regarding our field. There are two sides to the phrase “unrealistic expectations.” One being that the client wants something amazing but doesn’t want to pay for it. The other being given a project with limited resources and/or direction and then being asked to come up a masterpiece.
@Cleo
What i mean in my first post here was to innovate in service, quality, or i don’t know. There are many ways to improve in business in terms of client satisfaction and resources optimization. But if you want to keep doing the same render thing that rise your company 10 years ago, then you are doomed to failure.
Take the case of 3DATS, they are a “Team of architects and profesionals focused in 3d architectural visualization” but they have made a sucessfull business with tutorials, specialized training and books too.
Greetings from Mexico
***update*** I deleted some previous passages in order to stay on-topic.
I didn’t realize this was posted to CG Architect.
As for what you meant, there’s no reason why people in this field should have to switch careers. I would consider writing tutorials, running online stores, etc. a different job altogether although they might be somewhat related. There can only be so many 3D model websites, texture sites, 3D tutorials, 3d DVDs, etc. before they even get copied or saturate the search engines. I guess what I’m trying to say in regards to your example is that those fields become very narrow as well.
When it comes to any job these days, the Internet provides such a broad resource to people looking for a service, that it’s a struggle to stay on top.
My brother in New Hampshire started a new company recently concerning specific baby products. A year later, there were two others companies in the area copying them on the web. He had to decide very quickly that it probably wasn’t going to be profitable due to the competition and narrowing market size. So he decides to do something else. If that’s at all successful, you can guarantee that there will be 20 other people copying that idea as well.
So, “innovation” without some sort of legal protection (which there’s basically none on the Internet) can only take your efforts so far, and it might be a waste of time. In order for you to be successful when it comes to innovation, you need:
1) early market dominance.
2) early and successful marketing campaign.
3) a good idea to begin with (which is hard enough to find.)
4) demand.
5) a skill that very few others can copy or do.
6) a willingness to see your new project to the end.
7) constantly being innovative while remaining secretive.
You’re referring to adapting to work outside of our actual field, and there’s plenty of reasons why most people don’t want to. I can’t blame them. You can spend all this time coming up with a wonderful texture website that you charge money for, and a few months later, there’s torrents of your work available to everyone online.
It’s a gigantic hamster wheel.
So, we can talk about the merits of innovation, and there are some positive things to be said about it, but that’s not the solution. That’s one possible solution, and is often short-lived.
To me, the answer would lie more with a quality and service angle — to become very good at what one does for a living. I would hope that would speak more volumes to a potential client. But that in turn takes on the role of educating the clientele.
Renderers are up against a “quality versus quantity” race with quantity constantly increasing. Unfortunately, most people would prefer to eat at McDonalds every day instead of a Five Star Restaurant.
Btw, I’m not trying to have a defeatist attitude, but rather stating a reality. I’m just hoping that someone will come along with a better, more “innovative” solution without jumping ship.
I think that this is a conversation that applies to almost every field.
We have learned more in the past 10 years than in all of previous human history combined. Information travels around the world in nano-seconds. NEVER before has human daily activity looked like it does right now. (100 years ago, there was less than 10 miles of paved roads in America. Running water and electricity were uncommon in most homes.)
We are evolving at an unparalleded rate.
And you are correct in your observations. Economically Friedman says, “the world has been flattened,” –i.e. the competitive playing field has been leveled and it no longer matters what country you live in, or whether you can afford access to education…to become a “player” in the game.
We face a new frontier. WE are the new pioneers, and its UP TO US to find ways to safely transverse the new reality.
Personally, I believe that we can meet the challenge…but its going to take everything we’ve got to meet the complexities we face.