Project gallery
Published Tue 16 Dec 2008
Some of the most exciting architectural projects from around the globe
2010 World Cup ready to roll
In preparation for South Africa’s hosting of the FIFA World Cup in 2010, this ‘African Pot’ style design will shine in typical African colours as supporters approach the completed structure in Johannesburg.
Soccer City is one of the latest projects from South African architectural firm Boogertman and Partners, where design visualisation is key to this particular structure. When the designers came to understanding the concept of the new building and its outdoor spaces, the visualisation helped them achieve the end product.
Avinesh Pather, the firm’s senior associate, says that the process is a crucial tool for the firm, now in its twenty-fifth year. He explains, “It helps iron out a lot of design issues, thus decisions can be made earlier in the design process, saving time and money.”
With the stadium, the design visualisation was formed using 3ds Max. “The shape of the structure was complicated and it was complex to document using standard 2D,” states Avinesh. “It was constructed accurately in Max for visualisation purposes and, as a by-product, accurate drawings were generated and issued to consultants. Design visualization in 3ds Max is a crucial tool for Boogertman and Partners.”
www.boogertmanandpartners.co.za
The team at Uniform is used to putting together eye-catching work that shows a building not only as a high sheen rendering, but as a part of everyday life.
Uniform was commissioned by Minerva Plc to produce a series of captivating marketing images to showcase the St Botolphs scheme in the City of London, a 14-storey building, covering 560,000 sq ft. An initial problem faced was the high resolution needed to produce the visualisation at 15,000 pixels as the client wanted.
Many extra details like the elevator core and internal workings were exposed and all of this detail would need to be modelled in high detail. “Fortunately, 3ds Max imports AutoCAD drawings with layers intact and we were able to work with very complex drawings right inside of 3ds Max by just exposing the layers we needed to work with,” said Rob Deja, senior designer, Uniform.
V-ray was then used to add accurate lighting. “By using the detail enhancement feature it allowed us to brute force the lighting solution where we needed it (the small details), but use an irradiance map global illumination method for the large flat areas of our image, continued Rob. “If we’d had to use a brute force global illumination method for the whole image, I think we’d still be waiting for it to finish rendering.”
Producing graphic design, film, brand and images for clients in all sectors, including architecture, Uniform has some interesting ways of putting together architectural visualisation images and films. The people used in this project, for example, were green-screened, before having lighting and perspective altered to match the stills.
Living on the strip
University accommodation was never this plush in our day, but 22@ The District, located in Barcelona, is the latest for young students looking for a high spec campus life in the Spanish city.
One of three Nido (meaning ‘nest’ in Spanish) developments, it joins two London-based builds. The promotional visualisations are brought to life through a comic strip of events by Uniform, the project adds the vibrant cartoons of external artist Jamie Mckelvie.
“Given the brief, a simple fly-through would have been adequate, however Uniform wanted to take a more creative approach to ensure the films engaged with the youthful target market,” says Laurie Jones, creative director at Uniform. “The films needed to appeal to an international audience with potential residents residing all over the world.”
The team worked with 3ds Max and V-Ray for all the 3D elements which were then composited in Fusion. For the comic elements Photoshop was used for re-touching, and then AfterEffects for merging the 2D and 3D, and finally Premier Pro to edit it all together.
So how was the art of creating a fly-through comic book film? “It was pretty straightforward,” explains Charlie Pastor, the lead 2D artist, “The only slight technical challenge was the aligning of the composition of the characters for the 16:9 frame of the animation with the changing ratio of the comic frames. Once we got our heads around that it was easy!”
