Just a few months ago CGarchitect celebrated its 10th anniversary. We launched on August 1, 2001 as some of our more veteran members may recall. Over the last ten years CGarchitect has grown exponentially but, for better or worse, has looked pretty much the same since the first day we first opened our doors to the architectural visualization community. After many delayed attempts to launch an updated version of CGarchitect, we are VERY excited to announce that the fruits of nearly 1,000 development hours have resulted in an exciting new site for the community. We really hope you will enjoy the hard work we've put into it!

While we'll continue to deliver interviews, reviews and event coverage, the new site will literally put CGarchitect in the hands of the community. We've redesigned CGarchitect to act as real-time media engine that will be updated hundreds of times a day with news, articles, links, images and videos. Leveraging a cutting edge proprietary submission engine, users will be able to create portfolios of their best images and videos, submit interesting links, video and image content found on the web as well as rank and comment on submitted content. 

There are many awesome features that have been added to the site and we've detailed them below. Take a read, give the site a try, upload your portfolio and let us know what you think.  We've set up a Feedback and Suggestion tab on the right side of the page so please be sure to let us know what you wanted added or fixed. We'll continue to develop the site throughout 2012.

Share Images, Videos, News and Links in Real-Time

The new share bar on our home page becomes active as soon as you log into the site. You can share three types of content on CGarchitect using this bar:  Links to external sites, articles, news etc., Images and Videos.  When you submit an image or video you'll also be asked if you want to add it to your portfolio. In less than 10 seconds you can add any sort of content to the site related to Architectural Visualization. All submissions are submitted in real-time (and scanned for potential spam) and appear on the site just seconds after you submit.

Create Personal and Company Portfolios

We've added personal and company profiles! (NOTE: All of your gallery images have been imported from the old site into your profile) Now you can upload your videos (from YouTube and Vimeo) and your imagery directly into your own profile that can be shared with the entire community. Using the new Share Bar on the home page mentioned above, just paste links to your existing YouTube and Vimeo videos and we'll automatically create thumbnails and import all of your video information. No need to enter anything twice! To upload imagery, just select the image icon on the Share Bar, browse to your imager to upload and provide some information about the image.

When everything is uploaded, just click on the "Profile"  menu item at the top right of the page to view, edit and share your portfolio.

Customize Your Homepage

By default the CGarchitect homepage shows you the most recent submissions to the site, but you can also customize the homepage to sort our content in a way that is most interesting to you. By using the Community Feed Tab Bar you can filter site content by News, Images, Videos, Likes and Subscribed.  (More information on Likes and Subscribes below).  You can also filter within content types based on what the community finds most interesting and based on specific timeframes. Want to see the community's most talked about image in the last week. No problem, just select the news tab and filter by "Most Comments" and select "Last 7 Days".

CGarchitect Specific Social Media

In addition to traditional Social media links embedded throughout the site to share content to places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, we also have our own built-in social media platform to allow CGarchitect members to subscribe to people within their own field.

Like Posts and Detailed Content Statistics

On the top right side bar of every content submission you will find find information about who posted the content along with their name, company name and a link to view their profile.  You will also find real-time statistics about the content showing how many times the content has been viewed, how many people "Liked" the content and how many comments there are.  Which brings me to the built-in "Like" functionality. Just below the content statistics, you'll see a big green "Like" button.  Pressing this button adds the content to the "Likes" section of your profile and tells the community that you think the content is really cool.  If you recall earlier you can filter content on the homepage based on what you and the community Like. Because anything you like is saved to your profile, you can also use the "Like" button to bookmark content for future reference.

Subscribe to Cool People

If you think a CGarchitect member has a really awesome portfolio or they are always posting interesting links, you can subscribe to them so you will always see what they are posting. Don't worry if you ever change your mind you can always unsubscribe from them and they won't know.

Inside of any other members' user profile or in the top right sidebar of content they have posted you will find a "Subscribe" button below their avatar. Clicking the subscribe button will add this person to your "subscribed" section of your profile. On the home page or within your own profile, you can click on the "Subscribed" tab to view only content from people you subscribe too.

Social Media Sharing

Every page on the site has embeded social media sharing. Just click how you want to share and tell your friends and colleagues you have found something great!

Comment on any Site Content

At the bottom of every page on the site, you will be able to submit your comments. Want to know more information, have a suggestion or some constructive criticism, just log in and post your comments.

Browse the Largest Arch. Viz Gallery in the Industry

Although we have a new site, don't worry we have migrated literally tens of thousands of images that have been submitted to the site in the last ten year. Any images will show up in the profile of the person who submitted them. Use our new gallery section to browse portfolio images and our exclusive Visualization Pro of the Week Gallery.

Report Spam and Inappropriate Content

In the right side bar of every page you'll find a "Report Inappropriate Content" link.  If you see something that you don't think belongs on the site, just report it to us and we'll take a look.  As we are allowing real-time content submissions, we're relying on users tell us when something does not look right.

Submit Feedback and Suggestions

We have spend the last year collecting feedback from experts in the industry to make sure our new site features and functionality were on track, but if you find something that is not quite working as expected, or you think you have an idea for a new feature, please click the orange tab on the right side of the page and send along your submission. You'll also be able to see other community members suggestions and vote on which features you would like to see first.