VIZ vesus Watercolor: You decide.

[Wayne H]

Robert,

It would be interesting to see a cost comparison between the hand rendering
and your Viz rendering. I would also like to see a subjective Viz rendering
with a perspective similar to the watercolor as Fermi mentioned.

-WH

"Robert Asher" <ras...@gbutler.com> wrote in message
news:3893CA128F329105...@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> This was a unique project. The client couldn't decide to choose between my
> rendering technique and the work of a traditional watercolor artist here
in
> town, so they chose one of each. I was given the instruction to try to
match
> the watercolor as much as possible which was a fun exercise.
> I think the watercolor looks a little richer, but then, my version has the
> entire project modeled and ready to render additional views.
>
> Let me know what you think.
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Robert Asher
> Staff Architect
> George Butler Associates, Inc.
>
>

[Fermi Bertran]

> Let me know what you think.

I think you suceeded in giving your materials a water color or "guasche"
painting look, may even be you succeeded a bit too much with the asphalt,
perhaps a bigger noise?, well the later is meant to be a small joke. (IMO
nsight trees are a good choice for this point of view)

Now, don't make the comparison you've brought to this forum, (you have
disadvantadge from the start line) a subjective ground level point of view
will always be more apealing than a bird eye perspective, the bird's eye can
compete with advantadge (from a comercial point of view) with a plan view
or a Plan Mass, but the person height perspective places the observer
"inside" the project, so, next time you compete with a hand renderer choose
or add the ground level point of view ;o)

Fermí

[Robert Asher]

By the way, I've found that the materials that ship with the Nsite trees to
be generally too dark and oversaturated. I've redone all of the materials to
make them look at little better for me.
The asphalt has a noise map, but I also attached a noise map projector to
the Sun light, so perhaps on the pavement there ends up being too much
noise.
The biggest comment about the aerial versus the ground level is that the
lack of sky in the aerial makes the image look a little "colder". This
coming from my boss. I told him if he wanted to get some sky in, then maybe
he should have let me do a ground level view... Much easier to model and
render with far fewer objects.
The biggest bugaboo has been the grasses. This project is supposed to have 4
different types of native prarie grasses. I've used grass-o-matic before to
make some pretty good tall grass simulations, but I didn't have time on this
one.
Seems as if a future version of VIZ could address global illumination, grass
materials and improve foliage, that would go a long way to making my life
easier.

[Robert Asher]

I agree with what you say about the ground level perspective being a
preferable view. However, we needed an overall aerial to show the scope of
the project.

Here's the cost breakdown:
We presented the client with a cost comparison that went as follows-
To do the watercolor, the artist needed wireframes. I had most of the model
done previously as part of the proposal. We had not recieved any fee for the
model yet, as this was a spec proposal, and I was interested in getting some
or all of the work on the model payed for. I estimated 24 hours, or $1920.00
to update the model and provide the watercolorist the wireframes. He
proposed $1500.00 to do the ground level and $2000.00 to do the aerial.
I proposed doing both of the images with additonal time to work on lighting,
materials, and photoshop post-production at 6 hours each or $960.00 apiece.

Therefore:
1. Watercolor ground level rendering total cost: 1/2 of my time to prep
model ($960.00) plus watercolorist fee ($1500.00) = $2460.00
2. Digitally rendered aerial perspective: 1/2 of my time to prep model
($960.00) plus additional prep and rendering ($960.00) = $1920.00

If I had the watercolor artist do the aerial at $2500.00, it would have cost
$3460.00, so we provided definite value to the owner. Of course, it would
have been still cheaper, and about 3 weeks faster if they'd just had me do
both of them.

The good thing about pricing it that way was that regardless of which way
the owner picked, we were going to get paid for our work first. Turns out
the time estimates were pretty right on.