Renders...

The philosophy behind my renders attempt to tell a visual story of the amazing ability Zaha Hadid posesses to create an architecture that exhibits sculptural qualities.

The Contemporary Arts Centre(er) in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA is a perfect example of this ability. It is a building that accuratly reflects its purpose through its facades, interior walls, vertical circulation and lighting. It is not often that architects achieve such resolution through such a large building and although it can easily be argued that money was a large factor in her ability to do this (which I do not dispute) you only need to look to such other projects as the TERMINUS HOENHEIM-NORD in Strusbourg, France, the LANDESGARDENSCHAU in Weil Am Rhein, Germany and the VITRA FIRE STATION (an early project) also in Weil Am Rhein, Germany to see her integration with site context and detailing.

Zaha Hadid has recently recieved the highest architectural accolade as the Laureate Pritzker Prize in 2004 and is currently the top female architect in the world if not top architect in both the male and female domains. Despite her proven success she is still to build a significant work in her home 'town' of London, England. Personally I put this down to the reluctance of the 'British Old Boys' who scoff at the thought of having a female architect surpass them in ability. Maybe when she sometime in the future slips from number 1 they will allow her to design and construct what will enevitably be one of the most powerful buildings in London attracting world wide attention leaving the 'Old Boys' kicking themselves. Well at least that's what I hope for.

Enjoy the renders, give the left mouse button a click to view the render at a larger size, share in my awe/obsession over an architect who if we start collecting money now could one day design and build in New Zealand.

Problems I encountered while rendering

My initial philosophy to tell a story about the sculptural nature of Ms Hadid's architecture through my renders was pretty much blown out the angled window after finding that applied architectural materials will not recieve shadow in Autodesk Viz. This is a major design fault in the program, one that if remidied would result in an increased useability. The other option I saw was using standard materials, which by comparison were extremely washed but at least they could recieve shadow...

My dilemma therefore was whether to hand in renders that represented the building's material but did no justice to the front facade due to the shadow problem, or, to hand in renders that cast shadow but looked nothing like the material actually on the building.

I was determined to remedy the shadow problem caused by using Architectural materials. For countless hours and wasted days I tried different lighting conditions, sun, daylight, omni, spot lights etc. For each of these lighting types I tried Advanced Raytraced, Mental Ray Shadow Map, Area Shadows, Shadow Map and Raytraced Shadow variations. Other things experimented with in the Modify tab were Advanced effects, Shadow Parameters (seemingly logical place to fix the problem), Mental Ray Light Shader and Area Shadows pull down menus. Other things such as exposure settings and brightness/ contrast were also used.

Being a male of our species I decided only now that it was time to consult the help menu...

The Autodesk Help 'wizard' for Viz says that to recieve shadow on Architectural materials you must use a Photometric version of the light used. Had the computer god looked fondly upon me? For a change, no, he toyed with me giving me false hope. Renders were still shadowless under Photometric lighting settings. It was time to bring in the heavy artillary: The Donn (aka Mike Donn) was searched for, this was on a friday, Mike scheduled to fly to Japan on Saturday. He was nowhere to be found. At around 5pm I started to lose hope that he would ever be coming in before he left until I heard that he had entered the building. I was saved!

Unfortunatly after a few more unproductive hours and also revealling I would have the same problem in both Mental Ray and Lightstudio (something I'd rather not have known) we came to the conclusion that I should change my story for my renders; instead of telling of the sculptural marvel of Zaha's architecture I would instead try to put aside my frustration and scathing thoughts towards this particular program and write about the limitations of Viz, in particular the use of Architectural materials in renderings.

I completed 8 renders in architectural materials and a few trial ones in standard materials to show the difference between them. That night some magical elves of somekind must have sprinkeled some of their magic dust through my I:/ because the next day when I created new standard materials for full renders they were essentially as good as the Architectural materials, still not as bold, but much more believable. I can't explain why this happened, but it's just one of those lucky breaks when you inadvertantly click something and everything falls into place.

The opposite renders now needing to be completed at quite the last minute were created in Autodesk Viz using Radiosity based Lightstudio and Mental Ray and Radiance based Scanline Renderer.

Radiosity. Radiance. What's the difference?

Ok, Radiosity uses a thing called Global Illumination, which calculates a general lighting level within the space from materials applied, i.e. colours, reflectivity etc. It deals very well with lighting conditions, sources and surfaces (provided they're not too complicated) However is quite hard to get looking good, especially in Viz where there are so many buttons and options to click on.

Radiance, is similar but is defined as Backwards Ray Tracing Global Illumination. This is what's used in Scanline Renderer within Viz. This method attempts to render close to perfect specular reflection; ending up with in my opinion better, more realistic looking renders.

For a more detailed and scientific explanation about these rendering processes you can visit either of the websites below.

Radiance vs Radiosity

Introduction to Illumination