Architectural Visualization In The Creative Process

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Trajectory of Light
Introduction to utilizing architectural visualization in the creative process

The purpose of this text is to discuss 3D visualization and modeling as part of the architectural creative process, revealing the aspects that can be an addition to the contemporary architect’s arsenal of tools, furthermore exploring possible drawbacks that result from the use of this approach.
Introduction
Architectural visualization is becoming an industry standard not only in the presentation of large scale projects but it can play an essential role in merchandising single family homes as well. Although the workflow of contemporary architects in most cases includes the use of 3D models, simulating reality is not common in the design phase. …show more content…

The product of rendering is the render.
This text is meant to discuss the third and final part – rendering, as in the author’s experience it represents a tool that is overlooked by most contemporary architects but which has the potential of being a valuable and versatile asset in creating architecture.
Trajectory of Light A camera creates images by intercepting the reflected rays of light from its surroundings. The color and trajectory of the reflected light depend on the color, material and shape of the object that reflects it. This process can be simulated digitally in a 3D environment. This study is based on Chaos Group VRay as the render engine and Autodesk 3D Studio Max as the software in which the 3D model is created, as a result the notions will be separated, treated and named as they appear in the two software. Nevertheless the ideas can be implemented in most every available software in this field. The behavior of light is divided in the rendering process. We differentiate a few types of behavior: Shadows, Reflection, Refraction, Indirect Illumination(GI), Ambient Occlusion, Caustics, Dispersion.
The examples are from the VRay Manual except if indicated …show more content…

This is useful for interior or semi-interior scenes whith lots of lights or small windows. The photon map usually does not produce good enough results to be used directly; however it can be used as a rough approximation to the lighting in the scene to speed the calculation of GI through direct computation or irradiance map. Compared to BR it is very fast, also view independent, but generally is not suitable for direct visualization.
- Light cache (LC) is a technique for approximating the global illumination in a scene. It is very similar to photon mapping, but without many of its limitations. The light map is built by tracing many many eye paths from the camera. Each of the bounces in the path stores the illumination from the rest of the path into a 3d structure, very similar to the photon map. The light map is a universal GI solution that can be used for both interior or exterior scenes, either directly or as a secondary bounce approximation when used with the irradiance map or the brute force GI

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