jeff prince

@Amorphous - Julian No issues, it's just a little slower rendering a video on the MacBook compared to the Imac. Provides a reason to take a little break I guess 🙂

This. The last place I worked was a 900+ AEC firm. We had a dedicated and highly talented 3D department doing renderings. They used 3D Studio Max with VRay. They rarely used the models created by architects using Revit, Sketchup, or Vectorworks, choosing to build the models themselves to suit their purposes. Why? Because architects model with a different level of detail suited to their purposes which often conflicts with what the 3D team needs to produce. Add animation and things get even more complicated (see link below for some really complicated stuff). Two of the design architects at our office provide and interesting case study. One used Revit during conceptual development, the other used Sketchup or Vectorworks. The Revit guy's rendering production really ground to a halt as his models became increasingly more detailed during design development. The dedicated 3D team couldn't salvage his work and chose to remodel, in spite of MAX/Revit integration. Meanwhile, the Sketchup/Vectorworks architect always hit the deadlines and produced beautiful work on his own without the 3D team. It wasn't the software that made him better, it was process. He made drawings in Vectorworks and maintained separate sketchup models to suit his study model rendering needs, saving significant time over the Revit architect's efforts. I showed him how my landscape team was using Vectorworks as a sketchup replacement, but even then his process was faster overall. I think having a fair quality built in rendering engine is important to those of us who are designing, rather than rendering, for a living. If I need something highly polished, I'm outsourcing it to a professional 3D artist. If I need process study models or progress renderings, I want VW to quickly generate the appropriate level of detail, I don't want to go outside to another program and have to redo my efforts. My time is best spent addressing my client's needs and focusing our resources to achieve that. If you want to see some of the design animations I have directed and contributed to, visit https://jeffprince.weebly.com/video-production.html I played with VW to Twinmotion last year. It's a fun toy for me as a landscape architect. I figured it out with little time or effort. I won't bother with it on an actual project until I can: 1. link my VW model to the Twin Motion and have it update automatically in both directions (example: move a tree in TM, location changes in VW and vice versa) 2. have Twin Motion automatically texture and plant a scene based on my VW specified materials and objects at a coordinated scale (bi-directional functionality again would be helpful). It would be nice to have the Twin Motion renderings update on my sheet/viewports as a normal VW drawing does, but that's not a deal breaker. Until then, it's faster and cheaper for me to hire an outside 3D artist to get the work done. I don't have the time or interest, though I posses the ability, to become a true 3D visualization expert. I expect software to be my assistant and do it for me. The only reason I bother to do some of my own drawings anymore is because I actually enjoy it and the software makes it economically feasible for me to do so. Rendering needs to have the same financial/time benefit. The software industry has been marketing this to us professionals long enough, it's time to deliver on these promises IMHO.

I haven't pulled the trigger yet, going to wait until January 2020 for tax reasons 😞

You can always make your own plants with image props or converting sketchup (or other 3D formats) models to VW. I pretty much have to make all mine to suit my aesthetic preferences and to make up for the general lack of quality desert plants in every software package.

I wouldn’t adjust the survey, it is indicative of the existing condition. What you do is add proposed countours to the VW site model made from the survey. This then gives you cut and fill. The guides will clarify this. Good luck, it’s easy when you follow the guide.

Thanks. I think the mesh leaves a lot to be desired compared to my other projects, but it was useful and fast.

Thanks. Yes, I’ve used the VW cloud services in the past. Unfortunately, it doesn’t not produce acceptable results compared to other software solutions using the same set of photos. For the residential job, I used VW Cloud and Maps Made Easy with the same photo set. VW Cloud couldn’t produce a usable result. Maps Made Easy did a good job given the quality of the photos due to time of day and wind/temperature issues. It was 105 degrees when I shot the house, which is at the operating limit of the drone. My ipad and iPhone both overheated while flying the drone and taking ground based photography. The drone itself started having temperature issues too along with the problems associated with flying in high temperature air 😞. For the Marina, I used AutoDesk Recap to create the model, which did a fantastic job on producing an accurate mesh, especially considering it was flown 90m altitude on a rainy day. Both of these examples are from worst case scenario flights. I suspect the softwares are only going to improve moving forward and hope for more automated processing that can determine the difference between architectural features and classify them accordingly. Hopefully VW Cloud will realize how useful this process is on developing projects and up their game so we can do better work faster 🙂

Yes, I used the drone generated mesh to create a 2D plan view (which it did great on) and for 3D feature levels (which on this project left a lot to be desired). On the marina project, the levels were within 100 mm as compared to a survey, so good enough for initial conceptual work seeing as the survey was not finished until after the design was done 🙂. The current level of drone photo reconstruction I am using does not built the BIM model...yet. I’m guessing that within 5 years the technology will have matured enough to do this to a certain degree. High contrast architectural features can be processed with a reasonable level of accuracy, but low contrast images in the same color families are real challenging as in this residential example. Vegetation is really problematic, especially on a day with a little breeze due to the plant movement. White architecture is really difficult if the lighting isn’t good. For the high accuracy stuff, I’ve used a Faro laser scanner. Unfortunately, that equipment is cost prohibitive to use on small projects where the level of detail is unnecessary. Digital surveys are nice, but there is equipment, data collection, processing time and costs that make it impractical on projects like residential landscapes. On the commercial job, I can sub out scanning or surveying, with a survey being necessary for the civil engineering and property legal definition. For the quick and dirty site analysis, the drone photography has proven to be the fastest and least expensive method of getting basic usable data for conceptual design. For the residential project, I had 30 minutes of drone time and 15 minutes of site photography to collect enough information to then build the existing conditions in about 2 hours. So say 4 hours total with the end results including a drone mesh, a 2D geotiff, and manual modeling of the existing conditions in VW. Had I measured everything, I probably would have been doing about 4 hours of site work given the angles of the features and such with the end result being a 2D drawing and a bunch of ground based photos.

Applying this technique to a residential remodel project. Aerial Survey -> existing 3D context -> new design. It's quick, it's dirty, but it works. First time I haven't created an as-built manually. Now if only VW cloud services could produce the model from the aerial photography instead of having to use a 3rd party... Here are a couple of animated GIFs showing the progress from: 3D aerial based mesh to 2D ortho photo to modeling existing conditions to a quick redesign of the pool deck, etc.It's amazing how fast this workflow is. Like I said, it's dirty, but it works. I took some context photos from the ground for visual measuring and correcting the predicted aerial errors on this complex site.

@creatrix I just downloaded this one as sketchup 2016 and it imports perfectly. https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/c79ed5b2-6bc7-4806-9151-87c378d30061/suburban

@malonso here's a quick visual example of what has been said. I made this a while back to communicate what class overrides do.

@barkest Nice work, great to see you helping out!

Is there a place to view the classes offered at past design summits? Reason for asking... I’m curious to see what they are like in an event setting and how in depth they go to determine if I want to go.

@martinfdc Good advice!

Nicely done! This thread has become a master class on modeling pools thanks to your video.