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Powered by Excitech
“
Accurate and realistic architectural visualisation is no
longer a ‘nice-to-have’. It is rapidly becoming
business critical.” Who says? Well, Vince Flynn, for
one, and he should know. For Vince is Director of Visualisation
One, one of the UK’s leading 3D architectural illustration
and multimedia companies. In this article, Vince talks openly
about the importance of visualisation in today’s construction
market and about how to become successful in the field. He
explains, “Visualisation enables end-users to understand
what they are going to get. It promotes and communicates
the scheme months if not years before it is completed.” The
company must be doing something right, because it has just
moved into larger premises in the superb environment of 3
Linenhall Place in the centre of historic Chester: a new
home for its new Excitech-supplied high-performance visualisation
and rendering system.
Technology available to all
According to Phillip Gill of Excitech, one of the UK’s
leading computer aided design systems and solutions company, “It
is more important than ever that architects are able to
provide clients and planners with visualisations.” He
points out, “Since virtually all current 3D architectural
CAD systems have some level of visualisation capability,
more and more practices are trying their hand.” However,
he cautions, “If you want to produce visualisations
yourself, make sure you do it properly. There is nothing
worse than a bad visual and it could jeopardise the success
of your project.” He advises, “To produce them
effectively, you must invest: in the right hardware, the
right software and in the right training, skills and staff.
That is what Visualisation One has done and that is one
of the reasons why they are so successful.”
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Significant time saving already
The system is already in use by the company’s team of 14 visualisers and
multimedia designers and enhances Visualisation One’s existing equipment.
The new system comprises eight high performance PC workstations, each of which
is equipped with ATI Technologies Inc. ATI FireGLTM 5100 PCI Express graphics accelerators.
The system also includes a dedicated 15-server render farm. Phillip points out, “Of
course, you can’t really create effective solutions like this without understanding
the client’s needs. Vince knew what he needed, so we sat down together
and devised a solution that is now delivering results for Visualisation One.” As
Vince Flynn, says, “Thanks to the Excitech system, we are saving significant
amounts of time.”
Preferred supplier of visualisation
In 1999, Vince set up Visualisation One and one of its first projects was for
Redrow Homes: Whitworth Street West, the first of the new generation of apartment
blocks in Central Manchester. Vince takes up the story. He says, “We
produced photomontage images, external fly-rounds and internal walk-throughs
together with a touch-screen multimedia presentation for use in the marketing
suite. It went down a storm.” Vince adds, “Redrow Homes were
so impressed that we are now their preferred supplier of 3D visualisation
and are working with them on 90% of their city schemes.”
Professional 3D visualisation for accuracy and realism
According to Vince, “The building design and construction
industry is very good at producing designs and drawings, but not
always so good at communicating conceptual and finished designs
to its community of interest.” Traditionally, hand drawn
illustrations and cardboard models have been used for this purpose.
However, there are certain disadvantages with these techniques.
Vince points out, “A hand drawn illustration doesn’t
represent true life. You can’t get an exact match of brickwork,
textures, colours and so on. Even a whole series of such illustrations
cannot match a professional 3D visualisation in terms of accuracy
and realism.” He adds, “It is true that it may be longer
and more expensive to produce computer-generated images, but if
you have complex changes to make, you might as well tear up your
hand drawn illustration or cardboard model and start again.”
Investing for competitive edge
Visualisation One has invested heavily to maintain its competitive
edge. The new system includes ten licences of 3ds max® from
Autodesk® Media and Entertainment, new workstations with
dual Intel® XeonTM machines running at 2.8 MHz with 2 Gb
of main memory and a central project and back up server. The
render farm comprises 15 Intel Xeon Dell PowerEdge 1850 servers
running at 3 GHz, and equipped with 2 Gb of main memory. In addition,
there are a number of local machines used for rendering. Adobe® Photoshop® is
used to create the photomontages. If multimedia presentations
and web sites are to be created, the company’s multimedia
team produces them.
Speeding up the job with ATI FireGL
High productivity depends on excellent graphic performance. The
ATI FireGL Visualization Series of workstation graphics accelerators
is designed specifically for the new, high-bandwidth PCI Express
bus. The ATI FireGL cards, designed to accelerate 3D workstation
applications based on OpenGL® and Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0,
deliver high performance and image quality for real-time visualisation.
Vince says, “The ATI FireGL cards are brilliant. They allow
us to roam around and manipulate our models in rendered format
very, very quickly. The manipulation of images is much faster
and this has a big impact on the duration of the job.” He
adds, “Some of our models are very large and opening them
up on the workstation can take a long time. One example used
to take 15 minutes to open before we could start work on it.
Now, with the new workstations we can do it in just two minutes.
That’s a huge reduction in time when replicated across
all our workstations and all our projects.”
Unlocking the potential
What is the benefit of visualisation for a residential developer?
Vince’s clients tell him, “…quicker sales.
Selling off plan, we can get early agreement on internal specification
and a commitment to purchase. Work can start and finish earlier,
improving profitability and keeping the purchaser satisfied.
Potential purchasers are now expecting to see good visuals from
which they can easily understand the building.” Vince cautions, “The
design quality must still be good, since even the best visualisation
cannot make a poor design look better than it is.”
Beneficial effect on profitability
Vince finds that more and more planners are requesting visuals
as part of the planning process. He notes, “One recent
commission involved a prominent and sensitive site in Chester.
The planners would not accept hand drawn illustrations because
they are neither accurate nor detailed enough. They wanted to
see contextual photomontages so they could be sure they fully
understood the scheme.” Vince again, “We’ve
just done some work on a small mixed-use scheme in Manchester.
Our charges were miniscule compared with the build cost of £7M.
And remember, faster planning approval means a quicker start
to construction. Faster construction means quicker completion.
Faster completion means earlier payment. All these things have
a beneficial effect on profitability for the developer.” He
adds, “Eventually, I think the planners will insist on
accurate visualisations, not least because they can show up bad
designs just as much as they can show off good designs.”
The only award that matters
Looking forward, Vince says, “There is still al lot of development
headroom with this technology. Rendering will get better and faster
and animation quality will improve even more.” He adds, “Clients
will expect visualisations as a matter of routine, and you’ll
need to provide them if you want to retain their business.” Asked
if Visualisation One had won any awards for all its efforts, Vince
concludes, “We consistently win the only award that matters:
continued repeat business.” Looking at the work they have
done, you can see why.
Product Information
ATI
FireGL™ Product
Matrix
