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Introduction and Theory |Inadequacy of Current Visualization Methods

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Introduction and Theory |Inadequacy of Current Visualization Methods

Revit Perspective Viewport

During the design phase, most architects would simply utilize the shaded view within their drafting software to get a sense of the current building. While this is quick and effective in getting feedback for the design, it is still lacking in dynamics, materiality, and atmosphere.

Sample Architecture Project from Revit, screen-captured by Author.

The main culprit of this large discrepancy in rendering quality between the film and architecture industries is likely a combination of budget and time constraints. While videography consisted of simply pointing a video camera at the scene, animation requires creating and rendering the scene from scratch. This requires vastly more time expenditure compared to single images, as one would need to render a minimum of twenty-four images to provide a single second of video. (Fig. 1.2.26) To put this into perspective, with current architectural rendering methods, if a single frame takes 10 minutes to render, then a 1-minute video would take 10 days, not counting the post processing that goes with it. Because of this time expense, it is often unrealistic to utilize this medium within architectural design, where deadlines are consistently present. In the few projects that do utilize architectural videos for client pitches, architects often do not have the time or budget to allocate the resources required to make these visualizations at the same visual quality as films, let alone animating crowd dynamics on top of this. Film studios are tasked with delivering the resulting video; therefore, it makes sense that they will allocate the majority of their budget to perfecting the final video file, and thus have the capacity and flexibility to absorb this large time expenditure in animation, or avoid animation entirely by utilizing extras and practical effects.

In contrast, architecture firms are tasked with developing a design, where their visualization mediums are merely methods used to communicate said design; therefore, it should make sense that architectural visualizations are of lower priority than the actual design. What usually happens during the design phase is that the perspective visualizations are often ignored until the design needs to be communicated externally to another person or client. This is done once again not because perspectives are unnecessary during the design phase, but because of the additional time required to produce them compared to orthographic drawings. While the design phase is arguably the most important phase—since it will influence all the other phases after it, thus having the largest impact on the resulting building—most architects are forced to spend less time on it due to budget constraints. By the time adequate visuals are required to portray the space, they are often rushed due to time limitations. On top of this, architecture projects can operate at many scales ranging from exterior site planning to interior designs, and anything in-between. This further forces architects to prioritize their renderings on the larger scales first to convey the overall design intent, while allocating less time to the interior visualizations even though the interiors might have a higher impact on occupancy.

Security footage showing various frame rates

From daksec1, trimmed by Author, “IP Video Frame Rate Demo,” YouTube, 0:50, accessed December 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRaDV8YADiQ.