Photomontage & Architectural CAD
Discussion
This is a bit of a long shot, but it's well known that Pistonheads is the source of all knowledge..
We're going through a complicated planning application for a new house. To show how well the proposed house should fit in the landscape, we need to produce four photo-montages, showing the building from local 'vantage points'. Before we can do that, we need to get the house plans converted to a standard 3D CAD format (our architect is wonderfully stone age and works only on paper).
Unfortunately, architectural photomontage is quite an exact science and is usually done for big commercial buildings rather than individual homes. Finding someone to do it is proving difficult, especially at a realistic cost.
So - does anyone on Pistonheads have any suggestions for getting this done? Really it's two jobs - conversion to 3D Cad (perhaps with textures), and accurate photomontage.
- Please excuse the cross-post with Photography, finding someoen who knows about this is a bit of a challenge.
We're going through a complicated planning application for a new house. To show how well the proposed house should fit in the landscape, we need to produce four photo-montages, showing the building from local 'vantage points'. Before we can do that, we need to get the house plans converted to a standard 3D CAD format (our architect is wonderfully stone age and works only on paper).
Unfortunately, architectural photomontage is quite an exact science and is usually done for big commercial buildings rather than individual homes. Finding someone to do it is proving difficult, especially at a realistic cost.
So - does anyone on Pistonheads have any suggestions for getting this done? Really it's two jobs - conversion to 3D Cad (perhaps with textures), and accurate photomontage.
- Please excuse the cross-post with Photography, finding someoen who knows about this is a bit of a challenge.
chassis 33 said:
We are still only on 2D CAD otherwise i'd ofer to help out.
Off the top of my head i dont know any architectural practices that do this in house, most contract out. I'm visiting one such company tommorrow, and can ask what rates they charge to do what you want.
Regards
Iain
Many thanks.
Tuna said:You could use AutoCAD to do the house and build up a surface model using satellite contour information and survey for the finer detail but to be honest it’s not a complete solution. I would seek out a company with Solid works and/or Pro-engineer users because that way you can very easily play with things and build up an accurate….blah blah blah…lots of work and it’s not cheap at all. Just do a quick Photoshop image job.
This is a bit of a long shot, but it's well known that Pistonheads is the source of all knowledge..
We're going through a complicated planning application for a new house. To show how well the proposed house should fit in the landscape, we need to produce four photo-montages, showing the building from local 'vantage points'. Before we can do that, we need to get the house plans converted to a standard 3D CAD format (our architect is wonderfully stone age and works only on paper).
Unfortunately, architectural photomontage is quite an exact science and is usually done for big commercial buildings rather than individual homes. Finding someone to do it is proving difficult, especially at a realistic cost.
So - does anyone on Pistonheads have any suggestions for getting this done? Really it's two jobs - conversion to 3D Cad (perhaps with textures), and accurate photomontage.
- Please excuse the cross-post with Photography, finding someoen who knows about this is a bit of a challenge.
When I was trying to convince my neighbours (and planners) about an extension design I used Punch's "Home design pro" you can get it from PC world for about £20
It's not photo real but you do get a real impression of how the final design will look (you can adust view points sizes etc to fit it into an existing picture) it has various surface textures and light angles but it's not ray traced like the TOTR stuff
It's not photo real but you do get a real impression of how the final design will look (you can adust view points sizes etc to fit it into an existing picture) it has various surface textures and light angles but it's not ray traced like the TOTR stuff
For what it's worth, when we needed the same sort of thing to grease our planning application through, we did as the (stone age) architect proposed and had a specialist physically build a scale model (about 1:150) on a baize covered piece of MDF at the grand cost of £200. This was then photographed and photoshopped into photos of the existing house and plot of land.
The added advantage is that we still have the model and are re-using it in our design of and planning application for a swimming pool.
The added advantage is that we still have the model and are re-using it in our design of and planning application for a swimming pool.
speedy_thrills said:
You could use AutoCAD to do the house and build up a surface model using satellite contour information and survey for the finer detail but to be honest it’s not a complete solution. I would seek out a company with Solid works and/or Pro-engineer users because that way you can very easily play with things and build up an accurate….blah blah blah…lots of work and it’s not cheap at all. Just do a quick Photoshop image job.
Solid Works/ProE etc arent really architectural packages, and to get photo real rendering you need to use something like 3DStudio.
Architectural packages that would do the 3D side of things are Revit, Microstation (i believe, never used/seen it in action) or AutoCAD (referably with the Architectural Decktop add-on)
Regards
Iain
3D Studio Max, Lightwave, Maya etc are very powerful pieces of software, but don't expect to be able to generate anything approaching photorealism without a *lot* of work.
Rhino 3D has a good reputation at the lower end of the market and is easier to learn (in the same way that flying a 747 is easier than flying a space shuttle). There is a free evaluation edition of Rhino available from their site ( www.rhino3d.com/ ) which is fully functional but only allows you to save 25 times. I suppose it's possible that if you uninstall and reinstall it may reset the save counter.
Mike
Rhino 3D has a good reputation at the lower end of the market and is easier to learn (in the same way that flying a 747 is easier than flying a space shuttle). There is a free evaluation edition of Rhino available from their site ( www.rhino3d.com/ ) which is fully functional but only allows you to save 25 times. I suppose it's possible that if you uninstall and reinstall it may reset the save counter.
Mike
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