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Chicago Apartment Renderings
Come on, oh baby, don't you wanna go
Back to that same old place
Sweet home Chicago
“Some good news on my end, the project you recently did for me actually sold out in 3 weeks! With only drywalled and framed out units to show. Thanks to your nice renderings!”
Chicago, the best city in the world! Okay, since I am from Chicago, I might have a strong bias. I was approached to do some interior apartment renderings for a real estate firm in Chicago; I got excited; see, I work from my home office. They don’t let me out often, so sometimes I live vicariously through my projects.
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Little John House Rendering
Here is another small house from a series that I have been posting. This one, unlike the others, is a two-story small house. There weren’t interiors requested for these, and it isn’t my place to share, but it is a cool little house inside, too.
I would love to read about the demographics of these little houses. I am assuming, it is for single couples, maybe in their late 20’s or early 30’s. I live in a resort town, and our population dwindles in Winter. These people are called snowbirds, and they go South in the Winter to avoid our brutal cold weather. Not many people can afford more than one house, but imagine having small homes around the country where you can travel. If we went small, we might be able to afford more than one residence. After all, remote working is now standard, and I doubt they will change once the pandemic is over, so who cares where you live?
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Joanna Small House Rendering
Here is another small house, part of the same project I posted earlier this week. There are a few more, and I'll post those as I wrap them up. This, I think, is my favorite of the lot.
These small houses remind me of an Architect I worked with 20+ years ago. He was a mild-mannered guy, pretty average in appearance, so I would have never have guessed that he lived out of a tent. No, really, and by choice. He didn't want to be tied down, and he loved the freedom of being able to pack up and move anytime he wanted. He would go to the gym every morning, workout, bathe and come to work. He was a cool guy, and I enjoyed working with him. We both worked late often, ordered out, tossed around the beach ball when everyone left (long story), and became pretty good friends. Oh yeah, he didn't own a car, either. I wonder where he is today. Probably retired at 40 and living on an island somewhere.
I don't think I could live in a tent, but a tiny house right now in my life would be fantastic.
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Lena Small House Rendering
Lena, in Greek, means "sunlight". I love houses with names; it helps me give the architectural rendering a personality. Most often, I get project names like House 1, which doesn't inspire me much. For this series, I wanted a lot of contrast between light and shadow, so you can really see sunlight.
In a few years, I'll be an empty nester. I anticipate it not being easy since I live for my family. However, I am looking forward to downsizing. Right now, my wife, two kids, and I live in a 5,000 square foot house, that we literally utilize less than half of that. When the nest is empty, I am downsizing to one of these little houses.
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8 Lowell Road Rendering
If you have been doing something long enough, you can see trends and patterns. Architectural Renderings for real estate brokers have been a trend over the last few years. For the first decade of my career, I create architectural renderings for architects and architectural firms. Software became more comfortable to use and less expensive, and the architect wanted to find a way to create new revenue, so they started doing their own renderings in-house. There is also a trend there; Architects are looking to outsource because they are not able to compete with the price and quality of a professional architectural illustrator.
When creating a rendering for real estate brokers, I have found too many people get involved. I only answer to the person who is the project lead to avoid this, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t pass around the images to get feedback. Now, there isn’t anything wrong with this, if that information is managed. Notice something about these renderings? Both the right front and the left front are pretty much the same view. I was told by someone to move the right camera left several times; I can only assume this person never saw the front right rendering, but I could be wrong. At some point, you simply have to take direction to complete a project.
I do like this home, you can’t go wrong with a white colonial home.
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Nest at Centennial Crossing Renderings
Often I am asked for a ballpark price without seeing any drawings. I don’t request the drawing files, but I do request to see the project PDFs. I don’t give ballpark numbers without first seeing the project. I know the trend overseas is flat fees, but that doesn’t work for anyone unless you are looking for something fast and cheap, which I don’t compete with. As I write this, I am reminded of how sometimes people get disgruntled if I don’t reply to their request with a number without seeing any project documents. Also, many times, other illustrators want to see what they should charge, so they pretend to be a prospective client, so asking some simple questions allows me to qualify quote requests.
The Nest at Centennial Crossing renderings is a prime example of why I don’t quote without reviewing the PDFs. When I ask for PDFs, I might get a reply like, it is a single-family home. Honestly, I illustrate 40 thousand square feet homes, so I can only assume they mean an average American single-family home, but that is still too vague. The Nest at Centennial Crossing is a series of small single-family homes. However, they pack a lot of detail. The roof was pretty complicated, just as complicated as a much larger home. Two of these homes had custom brick, both running bond and stacked, so I had to custom build both. The landscape plan had a dozen specific species, which I had to custom model. The homes are clustered, so I had to use some photography tricks, which greatly extend rendering times. All this has to be taken into account when quoting a project.
I love these homes, they were designed well, and a lot of detail was put into them. Had I not requested the PDFs, I would have assumed they were the typical American single-family home, which they are not.
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Wildflower Farms Renderings
Often I get email inquiries, and they don’t turn into a job until time passes. I might field emails for months, answering questions, and I do it happily. One of my passions is to help people, and even if I don’t land the job, I want to be a positive resource. The Wildflower Farms renderings took about six months to come to fruition; most of my inquiries do.
Each project has its own life and story. Sometimes people come to me, and they think they know exactly what they want; they have their camera angles, lighting, and mood decided. I don’t mind, and all I can do is make suggestions; however, sometimes there isn’t much wiggle room in people’s minds.
Part of my process is composition, and you would be surprised at the percentage of time I spend on this. I can move the camera 1000 times, and I can change the light just as many. Zoom in, zoom out. pan left, pan right… It can take many hours to find the best shot. When a client comes to me with a preconceived thought of how the image should be composed, they miss out on someone’s eye who has been doing this for decades. Until you are looking through the camera lens, you don’t know what the right shot is.
Often when this happens, the client thinks they know what they want; the view isn’t actually composed. There are art, color, and light theories to follow, which haven’t been given any thought.
Anyway, these did turn out pretty good, and I hope you agree. If you have any questions, feel free to comment.
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Hotel Rendering
Happy Halloween!
In the early 90s, I cut my teeth on hotel renderings. I worked for Motels of America out of Des Plaines Illinois, and as you might have guessed, they designed, built, and managed hotels across America. One of the Architect had an unopen box from Accurender. Since he had little desire to learn the software, I took the opportunity to dive into the world of 3D Visualization.
Computers were slow, and so was the software. I was amazed at being able to hit render and come back in the morning to see something on my screen, but it was painstakingly slow. From interior hotel renderings to exterior hotel renderings, I did them both. I would fly around the country, taking measurements at existing hotels due for a remodel and creating 3D renderings to show the company owner the design intent. Of course, we did new hotels, too.
When I was asked to illustrate these hotels, I took the opportunity for nostalgia's sake. They were rush jobs, which I usually don't take (I’ll tell you way sometime). Anyway, with further ado…
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Duck Pond Renderings
The Duck Pond house is a return with some updated features. The owner is trying to set his property apart from the other mansions in the area. The goal is for these architectural renderings to allow him to market his property before the property is completed.
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412 webster NOLA Rendering
Often I have clients who have to list a property. However, that property isn’t ready for photography. The 412 webster NOLA rendering is one of these situations. It might be months before the parcel will be prepared, so what better way to get a jump on marketing than a high-quality architectural rendering?
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Vassallo House Rendering
Most of the time, about 90% of the time, I start from 2D CAD files. Most people still work on AutoCAD and draw lines. When I get these CAD drawings, I almost guarantee that I can’t build the 3D model from the 2D CAD files. There are often many things I have to guess at or make work. On the Vassallo House Rendering, there is a truss detail that didn’t work and is still there, but obscured by a tree, which was intentional. This house is fantastic and works for me. I get all kinds of homes, from all sorts of designers, and some I like more than others. The Vassallo House Rendering has to be one of my favorites.
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Attach by Layer
What a time-saver, Attach by Layer. I model on layers, and I want everything on that layer to be one object, which helps viewport performance. I use SINI Software’s suite of scripts to help me get through my day. It is all about quality and speed. I am not one to sacrifice quality for speed, but I do want to do my job as fast as I can, and SINI Software helps me do that. The SINI Software subscription is expensive (at least if you ask around), but the time I save with these little tasks makes it a great value.
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Sketches to Photorealistic Renderings
Often, I am asked if I can create a photorealistic rendering from a sketch. The answer is, yes I can. All my projects get two grayscale proof and two-color proofs, so starting from sketches does have it’s obstacles. What I try to avoid is someone trying to circumvent the design process to save a buck, which usually ends up costing people more. For smaller interiors, like this project, starting from sketches were perfectly fine. After 2-sets of color revisions, I was able to capture what my client wanted.
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NPR Renderings
The more computer power we get, the more we toss at it. The trend over the decade has been photorealistic rendering; however, that is very subjective. I have recently seen some “photorealistic” renderings that resembled what I was doing in the early ’90s. Having said that, not everything needs to be photorealistic. I have several clients that prefer the softer look of digital watercolor. I started out in watercolor, so these are not even close. I think we should coin a new term. Digital watercolor might work, and here are some of those I just completed this week.
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Coleman Residence
I started, 25 years go, illustrating structures that don’t exist. I worked for a high-rise luxury residential design/build firm. To get bank financing, you needed to sell 80% of the units, and how do you sell a million-dollar studio, architectural renderings.
The Coleman Residence was a different story. The house is built, and there is a scheduled open house. The developer wanted a rendering and 2D color floor plan to have printed and set on an easel for people walking into the home.
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Front Nine Lane Renderings
Great project for a great client. Architectural renderings are a great way to get people interested in your project. Either potential investors or future clientele, a rendering can tell the story.
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Apartment Interior Renderings
How can you sell a view? Show them! These are interior renderings using site photos, used out the windows.
Generally, I overexpose the outside, just like real photography, however, the view was necessary on these, so they are correctly exposed, like the interior. Do you like it? Photorealistic purists might have issues :).
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Garden Room Common Area Rendering
Often, I get interior designers who need to convey their design ideas to their clients. The Garden Room Common Area Rendering is one of these cases. All the pieces you see were modeled and colored according to the interior designer's specifications. These are some of the more time-consuming projects since I am matching real-world elements. I get photos, and I model the pieces to work in my 3D environment.
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Bowling Alley Rendering
I love creating something from nothing. I mean, except for someone's concept. I start with a blank screen, and I virtually build the environment. In this case, I received sketches and inspirational photos to create these bowling alley renderings.
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Up North Rendering
Summer is coming to an end, which means families are flooding in to get those last weekends at the resorts. I do work for people worldwide, but I don’t often do work for the locals. This is a local resort looking to attract some of those families to a proposed new cabin.
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