I sat on the jury of the Communicating through Visualization category of the BE Awards yesterday. It was interesting to view a series of high-end visualizations and animations designed to market buildings and developments mixed with other visualizations that detailed large-scale road network or redevelopment efforts. The large-scale visualizations were very familiar to me, but I haven’t had much exposure to the high-end visualization tools for individual buildings.
I received a few insights from our jury moderator Joe Croser, who is global marketing director, Platform & SELECT at Bentley. He discussed several rules that should generally be adhered to when creating a visualization.
- Color palettes should be restricted to three colors, shades of the same color can be used, but with more than three colors the images become very busy and distracting.
- Interiors are far easier to visualize than exteriors, particularly in daylight. Evening views of the exterior are better to highlight exterior design features. Bright daylight visualizations tend to make the buildings look flat and one-dimensional.
- Animations, in addition to the standard fly-through, adds more realism and a sense of interaction with the model.
The tools to create high-end visualizations have come a long way. In one of the interior visualizations that we viewed, the television in the scene showed an animated clip from a nature program that gave a good focal point for the interior design. In another scene, we watched the lights of the car wash over a building at night, the garage door opened and a car drove in. These animations and clever use of textures, reflection and shadows made me understand that the power of today’s toolsets to communicate a strong sense of place in the design phase.
The incorporation of exterior views from inside in several of the presentations was a level of detail that I haven’t seen often. Photo matching technologies for interior and exterior views makes for an impressive sales tool. One development was able to sell 80% of their home inventory before the first home was completed.
