Seeing is Believing

Seeing is Believing

Maya’s robust features prove perfect for architectural visualization

By Audrey Doyle (News Article written for Alias)

When Tim Huggard and Ian Potter formed Lumen Design in July 2000, they immediately invested in Maya software. “Maya’s robust toolset offered everything we needed to create high-end 3D graphics and effects for our clients in television and film,” Huggard says.

Since then, the Melbourne, Australia-based facility has changed its focus from digital effects for entertainment to 3D architectural visualization. And it has stayed with Maya. “We already knew we could create high-quality, accurate, photorealistic 3D imagery with Maya,” says Huggard. “These capabilities are extremely important in architectural visualization, too, so we didn’t even think about switching to something else. Maya is the best package for this type of work.”

Lumen Design isn’t alone in its assessment. Indeed, Alias’s Maya is the core application at architectural visualization firms around the globe. It’s also becoming the 3D software of choice being taught to architectural design students


L'Autre Image

Ideal for Architecture

What makes Maya perfect for this application? For one, the software is optimized to handle huge scene files. “Maya can handle scenes with thousands of objects, and it doesn’t crash,” comments Marc Lamoureux, president of Alpha Vision, a leading North American provider of 3D architectural visualization. “Plus, we can maintain a high level of interactivity, even while manipulating very large scenes.”
Also important is Maya’s ability to read files created in .DWG, the file format used by Autodesk’s AutoCAD and the de facto standard for the storage of CAD data. “Nearly all our projects start as AutoCAD drawings,” says Lamoureux. “Being able to read .DWG files in Maya is a huge plus.”

In addition, Maya’s rendering features are second to none. Complementing the highly capable Maya Software Renderer is the fully integrated mental ray for Maya, which boasts advanced photorealistic rendering features such as global illumination, caustics, and blurred reflections as well as HDRI support for image-based lighting and rendering. “Lighting a scene for architectural visualization is a lot like lighting a scene in a film. In both cases the work is complex and requires artistry and research,” says Dino Pesic, owner of L’Autre Image, an architectural visualization firm in Paris. “Maya is great because it lets you create accurate visualizations, and it gives you the freedom to be artistic and creative with lighting.”


L'Autre Image

A host of additional Maya features have also become indispensable to artists creating 3D architectural visualizations. For instance, artists report that the integrated, pressure-sensitive brush tools in Maya Artisan and Maya Paint Effects are perfect for creating photorealistic trees, grass, flowers, and other landscape vegetation. What’s more, users can convert Paint Effects into geometry. “This means if we’re showing an exterior with trees near a window, the reflections of those trees in the window are rendered with the scene,” says Huggard. “We don’t have to composite the reflections in as post effects.”

Maya’s vector renderer, meanwhile, is crucial for artists who need to turn their 3D content into 2D content for clients who prefer the look of a sketch in a project’s early stages, or who want to post the imagery on their website for customers to view.


L'Autre Image

Furthermore, Maya’s vast selection of polygon tools, along with its precise and versatile NURBS and subdivision surface tools, mean artists are armed with the modeling functionality they need to build whatever complex forms their projects require. When clients request tweaks to the visualizations, artists can take advantage of Maya’s fully editable and animatable construction history to modify their modeled data without rebuilding it. And, with advanced features such as dynamics and particles, artists can simulate the effects of natural forces and natural phenomena, filling their scenes with objects that lend additional realism—everything from a whistling tea kettle in an interior kitchen shot to an elaborate, flowing waterfall in an exterior courtyard shot. “All these features combine to let us efficiently create 3D visualizations that are not only accurate, but also photorealistic,” comments Pesic.


L'Autre Image

Visualizing Proposed Structures

And both qualities—accuracy and photorealism—are critical in architectural visualization because of how the visualizations are used. Generally, builders and developers hire companies specializing in architectural visualization to create imagery that accurately depicts how their structures will look before they’re built—be they single-family homes, communities comprising hundreds of homes, or multimillion-dollar high-rise condominiums and apartment buildings. In these cases, builders and developers utilize the 3D imagery as a sales tool to help them sell the homes to prospective buyers.

By relying on interior and exterior 3D visualizations of their structures, builders and developers don’t incur the cost of building and furnishing model homes. Also, they can begin their sales cycle months before land is cleared and foundations are poured. “This saves developers a bundle, and it’s very effective,” comments Jonathan Brosseau, Alpha Vision co-owner. “Recently we modeled a community in California for Shea Homes, a large, active adult communities developer. Prior to building any model homes, and using only our 3D visualizations, they pre-sold 150 homes in just 10 months.”

Similarly, 3D architectural visualizations are often used to depict how an existing structure will look once it has been rehabbed. In such cases, which occur frequently with older urban buildings being modernized for use as office space, for instance, real-estate investment firms use the visualizations to sell or rent the space ahead of time.

In addition to sales tools, 3D architectural visualizations are used to create shadow analyses, so developers can secure approval of structures from city councils, and to raise investment money from potential financiers.


Courtesy of TO&I Faculty of architecture TU-Delft

Regardless of how they’re used, however, 3D architectural visualizations created are becoming increasingly popular. And Maya’s high-end features are proving crucial in terms of solving technical and design challenges in all kinds of projects.
Take Lumen Design, for instance, which recently used Maya to create interior and exterior visualizations of a proposed, $150 million 35-story apartment complex in Melbourne for a large real estate development and investment company, so it could begin selling units before the structure was built. According to Huggard, Maya’s rendering features were especially handy for this project.

As he explains, the artists were hired to create visualizations of 13 different, fully furnished apartments, along with common areas including the foyer, pool area, spa, and gym. Although they originally had one month to complete the work, the developer kept changing the design, so the project stretched into six months. As such, ensuring efficient rendering was imperative.


Courtesy of TO&I Faculty of architecture TU-Delft

To handle the challenge, the artists relied on Maya’s Render Diagnostics, which helped them determine how best to optimize their models and textures for more efficient rendering. “Using the Render Diagnostics information, we cut rendering times from 40 minutes to about four minutes per frame,” Huggard enthuses. The artists also utilized Maya’s Material Editor to create brushed stainless steel for kitchen appliances and semi-opaque glass in sliding doors; Maya Particles to create bubbles in hot tubs and water flowing down a sculpture in the foyer; and Paint Effects to create patio plants blowing in the breeze. “All these subtle nuances added extra realism to the scene,” Huggard notes.


Courtesy of TO&I Faculty of architecture TU-Delft

Many of these features are also used extensively by the artists at Alpha Vision, which has been relying on Maya to create photorealistic visualizations for such developers as Del Webb, Lennar Homes, WCI Communities, and Related Group of Florida since the software became available in the mid-‘90s. “Buying a home is an emotional decision. Our Maya visualizations are photorealistic and detailed, enabling buyers to grasp the look and feel of a proposed structure. This can’t be achieved with simple floor plans,” says Brosseau.

A case in point is the 3D visualizations Alpha Vision created for Related Group to depict a proposed multimillion-dollar high rise in Florida’s South Beach section, designed by Philippe Starck. For this project the artists created the lobby entrance, bar, and restaurant, plus exterior amenities including the pool, gym, and view of the beach while precisely following the designer’s specifications.

After importing AutoCAD files of the proposed structure into Maya and while maintaining the CAD files as a Maya layer, the artists used Maya’s enhanced snapping tools to “snap” to the underlying CAD file. “We used the CAD file as a reference and built the model in 3D from that file,” says Brosseau. “It’s an efficient way to model.”

For this project the artists relied on the Interactive Photorealistic Renderer (IPR) in Maya and rendered everything in layers. “We could fine-tune lights and textures without re-rendering after each manipulation,” Brosseau says. “We did day and night scenes. Maya’s IPR helped us get a realistic feel regardless of the time of day.”
Additional beneficial tools included Maya Particles, which they used to create water fountains; procedural textures, for creating water in the pool; and Maya’s shaders, for tweaking scanned fabric textures that were applied to furniture, walls, and floors. The artists also used Lifestyle Virtual Reality, a technology Alpha Vision developed in 1998, to add people to the scenes. “To create the technology, we shot people moving in front of bluescreen,” Brosseau explains. “For this project we imported some people and their camera moves into Maya, where we finessed the camera moves and perspectives to make it look like the people were part of the scene.”

Application in Restoration

As noted earlier, in addition to visualizing proposed buildings, sometimes Maya is used to visualize existing buildings in need of restoration. One such building was the original headquarters for French bank Credit Lyonnais, a 40,000-square-meter, ornate structure, built in the 1870s in the heart of Paris, which was gutted by fire in 1998. Asset management firm AWON hired L’Autre Image to create stills and an animation of the building’s proposed interior and exterior for AWON’s client, Jean Jacques Ory, a leading Paris agency specializing in rehabilitation and restoration of historic structures. Once renovated, the building will be used for office space. AWON is using the imagery to pre-sell the space.

After importing AutoCAD elevation plans into Maya, the artists modeled the interior of the space, including offices as well as restaurants and other common areas, relying on Maya’s snapping tools for enhanced precision. To re-create the ornate exterior of the original building, which the client wanted to preserve, L’Autre Image mapped photos of the original exterior onto simple geometry created in Maya.

According to Pesic, a major challenge with this project was the size of the resulting files. “This is a complicated building structurally, and the Maya mesh was heavy—around 2 million polygons and hundreds of objects,” he says. “In other packages it would have been difficult to impossible to manage and render these images. But Maya can handle large files like this extremely well.”

Companies worldwide agree Maya is the ideal tool for photorealistic architectural visualization. “Maya is an extremely popular 3D application in the entertainment industry for creating accurate, photorealistic images,” concludes Huggard. “What better tool than Maya for creating accurate, photorealistic architectural visualizations?”

Maya Enlightens Architecture Students

Alias’s Maya is the primary 3D application instructors at Technical University in Delft, The Netherlands, are using to teach architecture students. “Every student fresh out of high school immediately starts working with Maya,” says Ernst Janssen Groesbeek, assistant professor with the chair for technical design and informatics with the school’s faculty of architecture, which is outfitted with 850 seats of Maya 5. “Maya’s features are well suited to the principles of architecture that we teach here.”
For instance, using mental ray for Maya and global illumination, students can analyze how light enters a room and reacts to materials in it. Because Maya supports the VRML file format, they can create physical models they can analyze further by outputting their 3D designs to rapid prototyping machines. Using the animation tools in Maya, they can create animations that reveal how all the parts of a building are connected.


Courtesy of TO&I Faculty of architecture TU-Delft

Maya’s dynamics capabilities also play an important role. “Many famous international architects use dynamics as a means of concept development, and we’re teaching this technique to students,” says Janssen Groesbeek. During a project’s concept phase, he explains, important decisions are made regarding basic shapes and materials used to build the structure. Using dynamics enables architects to visualize different sources of information—sound measurements taken at the proposed construction site, the number of people and cars accessing the building, sunlight measurements—as well as predetermined aspects, such as keeping parts of an existing building intact.


Courtesy of TO&I Faculty of architecture TU-Delft

This information can interact in a computer model built in a Maya scene. “Using Maya, a rough model of the location can be built and fields can be used to attract or push away particles that define soft body curves,” Janssen Groesbeek explains. “Springs can be used to control the movements of the curves and define the level of impact a field may have on certain curves and bodies. In between the curves, surfaces and 3D bodies can be created. Those can define, for example, building mass and areas of free space.”

By playing the automatically created animation, the designer can see how a concept shape is created. The resulting shapes can be read as if they were a 3D diagram or sketch, and can be used in the remaining design steps to help create the final shapes.


Courtesy of TO&I Faculty of architecture TU-Delft

In addition to its use as a final visualization tool, Maya also is being used in the university’s engineering department to visualize earlier design stages. “We’re exporting 3D surfaces to calculation programs to see if student-designed buildings can be built. We’re teaching our engineering students to use Maya, the parameters they need to export the surfaces, and through that, what to design and what not to design,” says Janssen Groesbeek.


Courtesy of TO&I Faculty of architecture TU-Delft

The architecture faculty has even developed its own Maya plug-ins—including a sun simulation tool and a fish-eye lens tool—to further increase Maya’s role in the design process. “Maya offers more of the features we find important than any other 3D application,” he concludes. “As such, we feel the use of Maya in this field will only proliferate.”