Real-Time Architectural Rendering:
Suppose you need a high resolution architectural rendering of the image above – something that you intend to print and put on a 30 x 42 board for customer meeting. Can you accurately predict what the final image will look like once rendered? How long would you expect to wait for the rendering to complete?
Helping our customers get deeply satisfying results from photo-realistic rendering is an incredibly subjective and time-consuming process. While the results often look fantastic – that’s not the real challenge. The actual challenge is process:
- Rendering is often met with an incredibly long wait time made worse by the stresses of a rapidly approaching deadline
- You never really know what you’re going to get until you finish with step one
So imagine the frustration of waiting hours for a high quality architectural rendering to complete only to be dissatisfied with the results. Imagine the frustration as a designer after hours of tweaking lighting and materials to end up with a rendering you’re not happy to show your team and project manager. Imagine the frustration as a project manager knowing that it’s going to take hours or more to create another rendering.
Do you risk re-rendering and missing the deadline or do you go with what you have and risk underwhelming the customer?
In reality neither option is a viable solution.
Or consider this. The image below is what you’ll stare at for the better part of 7 1/2 hours while waiting for a high quality rendering to complete in Revit. In other words you start with the image at the top the page, you press the render button and hope for the best.
The image below is the final rendering from Revit. Not bad for seven and a half hours. But if I was a project manager? The ambient lighting looks great, but I’d be pretty dissatisfied with the color of the furniture because it seems far more orange the the material assigned (and will confuse the customer). If your deadline is a few hours away there’s no time to change the lighting and / or materials and re-render. So it’s off the Photoshop for post-production.
Here’s the finished image at 4K resolution. If you’d like to download the image it’s over here.
Two of the reasons there’s so much interest in Enscape is because it removes the ambiguity and stress of real-time archichtectural rendering by letting you know what you’re going to get before you get it and then giving it to you in an order of magnitude less time.
In Enscape, your real-time architectural rendering is a live and explorable real-time window that runs side by side with Revit. To get the right vantage, you move the camera into just the right position (or base it on your camera in Revit). You adjust the lighting in real-time. And if you want to change the materials assigned to furniture, flooring or other fixtures you simply change the material in Revit and it updates in Enscape (which keeps everything nicely coordinated).
The image below is what you see in Enscape before pressing the Screenshot button. And after pressing the Screenshot button you wait for a lot less time. How much less? 1 minute and 16 seconds.
Let’s recap our real-time architectural rendering:
– Revit: 7 1/2 hours
– Enscape: 76 seconds
Here’s the finished image at 4K resolution. If you’d like to download the image it’s over here.
In my opinion each rendering has its pros and cons. I really prefer the reflectivity of the ceiling and ceiling based lighting fixtures in the Revit rendering. But I prefer the subtle shadows and rich material textures of the floor and furnishings in the Enscape real-time architectural rendering.
But what if I’m not satisfied with either image in Revit or Enscape? The real benefit of using Enscape is that it’s possible to adjust the lighting and the materials with real-time feedback and then save another high-resolution image in under two minutes.
This is a real-time architectural rendering process.
In other words it’s not just about result – it’s about process.
You know what tastes great? Eating lunch away from your desk and with your team rather than stressing out over an incomplete rendering needed for a deadline. And you know what tastes even better than eating your own lunch?
Eating your competition’s lunch.
Or in the words of General George S. Patton: