Is it possible to get an Archviz critique here?
polycounter lvl 5
I am currently diving into archviz and product visualization. Few years ago I’we got some nice answers here and I wonder if I could get any archviz critique here?
I have a background in classical art and technical design, and I've been developing my skills in Blender, 3Ds Max, and V-Ray. I'm looking for experienced art leads in archviz or product visualization who can critique my portfolio and provide actionable feedback.
You can view my portfolio on Behance here: https://www.behance.net/dashacanavar
Moreover, I’m eager to master the archviz working pipeline. Could you recommend any comprehensive courses or resources that cover everything from modeling to final render?
Looking forward to your guidance and thank you in advance!
Replies
In terms of critique and feedback, it depends on what role you would see yourself in.
- A contractor who gets paid to build specific real buildings/ objects? Your skill in Solidworks show that you could work in engineering or possibly architecture, but your visualizations would probably be farmed out to a pure rendering studio.
- An architect? If you are working in a small firm then you would have to do basic visualizations, but focus on the architecture and buy all the other assets. 3dsky has the best free, Turbosquid the best quality, and cgtrader the best balanced approach .. cheaper but worse quality sometimes.
- A visualizer? If you want to work in pure archviz, there is a lot you have to master. Since this is what I do, I'll critique your portfolio from that aspect.
3d modeling: when you are constructing from build docs your modeling is pretty good, but when you have to model things outside of that you have some flaws. I specifically talking about the fence in the Silo render, the doll, and the bedside table in the bedroom scene (only examples I could find quickly that weren't Chaos library items.) The only way to get good at modeling is do it in scale, and try to find furniture sites that have full dimensions. I have to model custom furniture all the time, the client doesn't want to see "look of" they want to see the exact chair with the exact finishes on it that are selected by the interior designer. The best product and item renderer in my opinion is https://bertrand-benoit.com/. Look through his blog, he has tips/ tricks and full breakdowns.
Shader development: Hard to tell what are downloaded and what are made by you, but the headboard wall in the bed scene and the shower wall in the bathroom scene have the same problem, weird UVs, wrong scale and blurred bitmaps. When you load a bitmap, you can specify the blur amount in the bottom left. I use .2-.4 for bump maps that have strong grout lines like in the shower. Another huge topic. The best resource here that I used back in the day is Mastering Vray by Grant Warwick, don't know if the site is still up, but his free material video is here:
Lighting: Very hard to teach, and hard to learn because you have to be willing to work in this for a while. Thankfully we have IPR rendering in Vray which allows you to tweak lighting in small previews. I studied the techniques of Peter Guthrie the most here, and luckily for you, my favorite archviz artists just released a full mastering lighting course on youtube for free:
Common Point's blog is also a treasure trove of helpful info.
My process at my job requires me to build almost everything in the VRAY frame buffer, without post, since my direct boss makes design changes directly and immediately from the 3D file. It's much tougher, since you can't "fix it in post" but I think it has made me a much better artist.
My TL:DR advice, is focus on building real things, studying very closely real materials and learn about lighting fixtures and their output (lumens, CRI) and try to model existing spaces matching the materials and lighting as close as possible.
Hope that helps.
Wow! What a fantastic critique! Thank you so much for your time! Really, so much useful info!
I aim to become a visualizer, focusing on pure archviz or product visualization, probably interior. I worked with technical drawings in a furniture firm and fell in love with the aesthetics of furniture visualizations. I really love 3D, and while I started as a classical portrait artist, I couldn’t really find myself in that. But in 3D, I feel really happy. So, I’m not afraid if I have to master a lot. I love doing it, and it’s just a pleasure. But, of course, there’s the reality of needing to earn money, so I know it might not end up the way I want.
For the last 2.5 years, I mainly worked in Solidworks, so modeling in 3ds Max and Blender was paused. Especially because of the workflow in my previous firm: all the models were made in Solidworks, used for drawings, BOMs, etc., and then imported into 3ds Max for visualization.
So, my wireframe modeling needs a lot of improvement. I like modeling, I don’t think it’s going to be an issue. And yes, I get the importance of dimensions because I did a lot of precise solid modeling.
I have a lot of problems with shading. I kind of skipped this topic. That’s the problem with self-teaching; you tend to skip the things you don’t like or don’t understand the first time. Thanks for the link, it wouldn’t play here, but I found it on Google.
A huge thank you for the tutorial on lighting! I love lighting because when drawing realistic portraits, you deal a lot with lighting (you actually deal only with lighting), and I know it’s one of the most important parts of any scene. So yay! A good tutorial is gold!
Post-production is also my weakness, so that is added to my study plan too.
Just wanted to ask something else. I asked for critique not only here but on several other platforms. On Reddit, my Big Bag Silo project (an exterior with 3 silos and a girl in the foreground) was heavily criticized for being “bad in everything” and ugly
. Can you advise on that? Should I just take it out of my portfolio? Also, probably the doll from a cargobike project? If you have time, could you advise which projects should stay for now and which I should not show?
Additionally, do you have any tips on balancing between mastering technical skills and developing a unique artistic style? How can I ensure my work stands out in the competitive archviz field?
One more time, a big thank you for your time and effort! I really appreciate this!
Hi Dasha, sure I can give more focused advice on this. Looking at the project (Big Bag) I liked the isolated simple renderings more, since it was a showcase item. The same can be said for the child's toy, in isolation the final rendering in isolation shows that you can execute a design from Solidworks all the way to product showcase, which is excellent for a portfolio. I think the issue with Big Bag, as well as the bathroom scene, is that you are trying to place them in a more realistic setup but are not basing it in reality. In other words it's "too" creative. In the same way human 3D models have the uncanny valley if they aren't close enough to real; I think environments have the same trait. The Common Point video series has a video on "memory colors" and how we see the sky and greenery so much, that if you get these tones wrong, your image will look off no matter what.
To improve your scenes, I would say you should look on a site like ArchDaily.com to find something that matches your style/ aesthetic and model that more closely, changing not the architecture or proportion, but rather the textures and accessories. Like life drawing, by replicating the architecture as close as possible you will start to develop a feel for proper proportion and scale.
See: https://www.archdaily.com/1017374/kdh2-house-noesis-architecture-and-design/66607afbfdfa22000115e941-kdh2-house-noesis-architecture-and-design-photo?next_project=yes
I did a quick paint-over of your main render over lunch, so sorry if it’s messy, but to illustrate, on your page you mention this is for Danish farmers and you like a visualization studio from Denmark. So I simply googled Danish farms and trees then looked to match some of the photography I found.
When you work in the field there will be a client that has a real farm or place they want to install this. So you can create a fake client, pick a real location and try to place it there and hopefully it will feel more realistic.
In my personal opinion, I think you have a good amount of variety, and I think you have a decent amount of projects. I wouldn’t delete any, I think you need at least 6-8. I would focus on bringing up the quality, or attempting a new project and removing the weakest one later.
Let me know if you have any more questions or if I was unclear.
Best
But seriously speaking, with your feedback I can make a very good study plan for myself and continue developing. Without understanding where to go, it can sometimes be very frustrating. Right now I actually have time to learn and develop because I am getting unemployment subsidies (which is very good here in Denmark), and while searching for a job or internship, I can continue developing my knowledge.
And thanks for a link to a great architectural resource!
Hi Dasha,
I hope you had a good weekend. Yes there is nothing wrong about experimenting. In fact, taking older projects and testing out new ways to light, render and animate them is great research and dev. That's usually what I do. Sometimes trying to isolate one aspect of study is the best way to evaluate it, especially since there is SO much to learn.
I actually got my college degree in Game Design focusing on modeling, but where I live there was no game studios and I didn't want to move, (I was poor and in the USA 90% of the studios are in California, arguably the most expensive state.) So I stuck around and by luck got hired by a lighting design studio, then an interior design studio. Working in architecture kind of forced me (by circumstance) to learn the basics of AutoCAD, learn the technical terms of architecture, and most importantly, how good designers think of spaces. Bringing together operational criteria (so the space functions well and achieves the goal for which it is built like how waiters can move in a restaurant, or how people can transverse a store or a hotel) with the finishes to make something beautiful is a hard skill to learn and master. There was some times my boss told me to model something and in my head I was like "this guy's crazy, that's going look awful", but I trusted him because he literally had been designing 5 star spaces for 20 years, and it turned out to be amazing. I learned so much just talking through design with him and trying to understand.
Point is, I thought I would just do Archviz for a few years then do games, but I ended up sticking around because I loved it, and you more often get to see your projects completed! Now we do VR walkthroughs of resorts and hotel rooms in Unreal so my game design knowledge has really payed off and we have come full circle.
I'll attach some examples of my work to help you understand. You can see that I build my furniture in isolation, trying to match the lighting in a photo shoot like setting. I angle my camera as close as possible to the reference, making sure I can get the correct proportion. This testing of shapes and form take a while, as the hallmark of a beautiful piece of furniture is pure form. Perfect arcs, volumes and scaling down a leg or back of a chair is what differentiates cheap and expensive furniture.
The next image is actually dev work I did in the last 2 weeks. I save a lot to my Vray Frame Buffer History. This allows a quick saving of any render, so I saved them out and compiled them here for you to see. Many studies of light intensity, shader reaction and development. Break each problem down into a simpler scenario and you get more accurate results because you are limiting the variables.
Last image is a comparison of my commercial renders vs photos of install. Most of my current work is locked behind NDA, but this is from 2017, and I think it doesn’t look too bad. I have improved since then, mostly in the area of lighting, but understanding shading is important too and it looks weak in these comparisons.
So you can see here what I was talking about earlier. The clients want to see exactly what they are getting or 90% there. So you have to be able to model and render stuff pretty close to real life, or keep pushing till you get there. A lot of people do "close enough" renders, but only really experienced developers will forgive you for stuff that is purely conceptual.
I don’t do too many animations. They are very time consuming and expensive to produce, but if you are interested in pursuing that further, the gold standard in archviz is Alex Roman’s – The Third and the Seventh. The bokeh, lighting and camera techniques are copied so much now it’s funny to me.
One of my favorite archviz companies, The Boundary’s main page copies the lighting and camera movements on their front page. That’s how influential it is, after you see it, you can’t unsee it. But that’s not a bad thing! Alex Roman brought a beauty to archviz that didn’t exist before. I'm a huge fan. When you watch it, you can see how all the camera movements mimic real camera dolly and track movements like film.
https://www.the-boundary.com/us
EDIT:
Lastly, I forgot about your software question.
I have been using 3dsmax and Vray for about 17 years now. Vray is a little tricky to learn at first but the newest version is much easier than it was 10 years ago. Another viable option is Corona, which is almost plug-and-play (meaning you can use everything without touching the defaults). It also is much cheaper. Only downside is I don't think it has Blender integration, but Blender's internal renderer Cycles is pretty good. I have used Blender a bit, I did the donut tutorial and a few others. I thought it was very powerful and if I needed to, I would learn and use it exclusively, however I have a decade of muscle memory in 3dsmax which makes it hard to leave. Also a lot of plugins like Forest Pack and Railclone are max only. Vray integrates well, and everything is customizable. Like I have almost all my frequent commands hotkeyed to custom keys near my left hand. Very hard to do in Blender, so I'm much slower. IF cost is an issue with 3dsmax, they have a hidden hobbie license:
https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/me-indie/3dsmax-indie
It's only 300 USD which is extremely cheap since its usually 3000 per year. I would get that since so many archviz people use max. A ton of tutorials are in it too, so a lot of resources.
Anyways, I have written a book here, so I'll stop now. Let me know if you have any more questions.
Best
Hi Roxxor!
A big, big thank you once again for tons of knowledge. You indeed wrote a book here! I will save all this in my notes so I won’t lose it or forget it.
I have disappeared because, in the meantime, I received a “test assignment” for an “unpaid internship.” Not sure what it will turn out to be, but I already tried to use all the advice you gave while working on this assignment. I had to make “studio” renders of a chair and a render of a chair in an environment. I really paid a lot of attention to references and tried to replicate the lighting and texture exactly. Maybe it’s not perfect, but I am satisfied with the result. I didn’t do the modeling of the chair; it was given. But for the environment, I modeled some furniture for practice and tried to be very precise.
Thank you for sharing your work! It’s really great to see them, and yes, it gives a good understanding of what is actually needed. I forgot about the NDA, and I understand that you can’t show client work to anyone. It’s great to see your experiments; I also like to test things to see how they work out. But I didn’t really understand the colorful yellow and purple line thing where you were studying a view-dependent velvet effect.
About Alex Roman, I am not sure, but I think my former colleague showed me exactly this video. This colleague was making visualizations in the company, and I was working with technical documentation. Really very impressive! And a lot to learn from. I don’t think it’s a problem that somebody copies others’ good work. After all, this is what we all do: If I am drawing a realistic drawing, I copy from nature, nearly the same
Thank you for the tip about 3ds Max! That’s amazing! It’s around 400 euros per year on the Danish Autodesk website, and it’s totally affordable! Never heard of that! Just amazing news!
Roxxor, thank you once again! If you don’t mind, after I’ve made improvements to my portfolio, I would love to ask for your feedback again, if you have time.
That's great that you are trying to reach out and get real world experience. If nothing is under NDA you can always DM me and I can look at the scene for you and give you more detailed advice, but open forum is better I think because perhaps some other artists on this site can help you too.
If you want more advice/ critique from me, you can create a new topic and DM me that you made it.
I don't mind at all, I have 2 junior artists and one senior at work that I coach and I love helping people improve.
Best wishes
Hi Roxxor!
And once again, thank you! I think it is not common that people can give structured feedback, even if they want to. It means that you are not only a good professional but also a good leader in your team.
Yes, I think making another topic is a good idea. Not only can I get more advice, but it can also be useful for somebody else facing similar difficulties. Great idea! Right now, I am experimenting with modeling. I am making a plan for my studies and will try to first acquire new knowledge, and then make a new project using this knowledge. Of course, it also depends on if I find any freelance job or some internship, because I am constantly searching for that as well. When I have something to share, I will definitely make a topic and DM you.
Wish you a great week.