This is fantastic!
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Hi guys - I haven't checked this out yet, but from the descriptions it has to have some very slick/hi-end production values. I used to be in the business of creating animations and digital video and I'm very accustomed to having customers with utterly unrealistic expectations of what is possible at the price point I was working. I was working with an Amiga, making broadcast quality ray tracings at 25 MHz, and competing against people with SGI Reality Engine super computers...it can be a drag. But, I found a niche and produced work that I was proud of and that made my customers happy.
That being said, SketchUp's future is being worked on and we're listening to your desires for a product that grows with the industry. I know that sounds cagey, but I just can't give details. Know that we are working. We've been extremely busy as a matter of fact and I haven't been able to spend as much time as I'd like, here.
You've had faith in us before...don't give up. Keep discussing your thoughts and ideas, and we'll be better able to keep a direction that's more in line with your needs.
Cheers,
- CraigD
P.S. I watched the animation: Gorgeous rendering! My professional opinion is that the shots were rushed...the camera never gets to settle before a dissolve transition, which causes the viewer to re-orient their perspective...making the transitions disorienting. A minor quip for a beautiful production. I have come to appreciate that design that much more, because of that perfectly detailed, intricate look at the house. Thanks for sharing!!
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Wow CraigD,
Wonderful to hear some positive sounds on the development of sketchup.
I almost gave up hoping for better CG tools for Sketchup and a way to use high poly models towards third party render soft.....as some old marketing phrase used by electronics firm Philips : "Let's make things better!"
Thanks for the positive news.I think the SU community needs more of this.
Cheers
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Okay this is killing me...so I used a SU model and Vue and tried it myself, I used low settings as full settings would take 64 hours to render, imagine how long it would take to animate!
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interesting thread, (I did manage to load the whole thing.)
As a render it was very impressive, but as an example of animation or what I see at the movies, it was ordinary. (Im not saying I could do it.)Which is my point, Su is a design tool and renders are artist visualizations, how real do we need to be?
'Real' is whats happening around us right now, and time is running out so quickly if you want to make a difference.
Oh boy, now I have to say it: I think a lot of time and intelligence is being wasted making stuff look good, when imho, the time would be better spent 'designing'.
But, please remember, most of us are dealing with those wondrous beings called 'clients'.
I bet ya that a hypothetical client in that vis for 'falling waters' would have several 'issues'.
ie; you didnt show how the water would be so loud, I cant sleep',
etc.is this a hijack and am i out of my depth here?
if so, sorry, but feeling frustrated, we've just had apec here, ie: 9 major leaders of the free world and they just woossied around the important things, as we have come to expect.
I've always believed that good design could change the world, oh well, never mind.baz
ps: can anybody come up with more 'client issues' re 'falling water'
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Amazing Animation!
I understand what your saying Kannonball but I'm with Baz on this, I am in the same position as you, small business trying to deliver what the client expects. I think perhaps my clients are less media savvy than some. I am a perfectionist but I can't afford to let that stop me bashing out cad plans and a model and showing it to the client. I've tried 3DS Max, Vue, Kerkythea, Podium. I'm not great at rendering but my clients want me to design and model, they are not paying for rendering and wouldn't understand the concept. I'm never happy with the renders I've tried, it's too hit and miss for me. There is no way I will leave my computer idly rendering when I could be starting another job. The way I look at it, you introduce your clients to photorealism, you give them the idea that you might be able to achieve Pixar like results, you have raised the bar and you'll have to keep raising it. That's great but at the moment I can't factor in that time.
You have to ask the question, is rendering intrinsic to good design?
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Well, to add a bit of irony to the whole thing, I have had very little respect for Fallingwater and, quite frankly, Frank Lloyd Wright in general. I never understood how everyone got into a lather about a house that was falling apart before they even finished building it, leaks water like a sieve, and took 9 million dollars worth of remodeling to bolt the house to the rock to keep it from falling off the hill. And this is considered one of the greatest house designs in America. Kind of tells you something about us, just interested in the surface fluff with much less value placed on quality and longevity.
Craig, I am glad to hear that things are in the works! I am not to the point of giving up (the Sketchup interface really is flat out awesome and makes the other modeling programs seem like stone age tools) but I do more architectural visualization work than design and most of my projects are developing flyovers for 50+ acre, 100+ unit projects for "big" developers. But still "cheap"
There are just times when I feel that I have wrung all the quality of export I can out of Sketchup and find it still lacking somewhat. Too much flickering; too much moire; clipping can sometimes make the interior animations a real trick to get right since camera locations have to be just right to avoid it; and dxf exports that drop more lines than they bring in.I could not agree more about not enough time being spent on design excellence. But, since I am already hovering on the edge of hijacking this thread, I am going to leave that be for now.
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I don't think that there is one "perfect" software especially when it's being used for design, modeling, animation, rendering, and presentation, there probably never will be. "Falling Water" wasn't modeled and animated using just one app. I think the trick is to find the right combination for your workflow and desired results. Everyone here uses more than one app to get the result they want and I think that most everyone will agree that SU has improved their workflow. However that doesn't mean that there isn't needed improvements for SU and Layout and hopefully as CraigD has stated, they are coming.
Mike
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Did you notice the artist in his FAQ's notes his fees for a 3d animation can be upwards of 60,000 pounds. That's lots of meatballs baby! It seems reasonable that Falling Water is a portfolio piece that he likely spent many-many hours creating. I suspect he'd put it in the 60,000 pound category. So if your client wants something like that then how about quoting 75,000 pounds and contract him to do it for you?
Regards, Ross
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Hahahaha!
I like the way you think Ross!
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60K!!!
Surely thats totally unrealistic! It reinforces my view, we are designers - not animators. If he can get 60K for that then leave him to it because he's not competing with us.
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@ross macintosh said:
Did you notice the artist in his FAQ's notes his fees for a 3d animation can be upwards of 60,000 pounds.
His quote is actually 60,000 Euros (about 40,000 Pounds, 80,000 US$), but he is DREAMING about that sort of money IMHO. Put simply (and I'm willing to be proven wrong), there is NO WAY a sole practitioner using 3 not all that great computers is able to command anywhere those sort of fees. He could ask for them, but he wouldn't get them. The only way an architectural visualization specialist can charge 60,000 Euros for an animation is if it contains an enormous amount of work AND the turn-around time is VERY fast AND the animation is of extremely high commercial value, i.e. for tv, the movies or a HUGE development. In other words a large, talented (read well-paid) team working flat out for three weeks and a massive render farm capable of rendering it in a couple of days- both of which require the sort of overheads that justify these fees. If you asked this guy how long it'd take him to deliver 60,000 Euros' worth of animation he'd have to say a year- which would be no use to anyone.
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Perhaps. Maybe his 60,000 euros fee represents his hiring a big team & farming out processing to a big render farm. I agree that it doesn't make much sense as a sole animator. I also agree that while the results can be nice it certainly isn't a service many architects would ever use.
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@ross macintosh said:
Maybe his 60,000 euros fee represents his hiring a big team & farming out processing to a big render farm.
That's a very good point Ross- I didn't even consider it, although I can't imagine how a guy who normally works on his own could switch to managing an outsourced team of pros. I suppose it is possible he rents a render farm for big jobs, but I've never heard of this practice. It sounds to me like he's deliberately pricing himself out of work that would be impractical to attempt- something I've had to do (although never by THAT much
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Interesting topic, does anyone have an idea of what a market based acceptable price for such a work would be?
And how much a render farm costs for such project?one more...
Who would commission an animated project like this?
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@solo said:
Interesting topic, does anyone have an idea of what a market based acceptable price for such a work would be?
I'm guessing very roughly somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 depending on output quality (I'm converting Pounds to Dollars at 1:2, I've no idea what the actual US going rate would be). I know I'd need a couple of months to attempt something like that (plus 2 weeks learning the software!)... ehm and about another month to render it on my sole laptop
.@solo said:
And how much a render farm costs for such project?
I don't even know if anyone does rent out render farms- it'd be insanely expensive to keep enough render programs (and all their nodes) installed and up-to-date enough to serve multiple clients using different progs.
@solo said:
Who would commission an animated project like this?
Museums, charitable conservation foundations, tv, can't really think of anyone else- a tiny market.
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There are actually quite a few render farm services, here are just a coulpe that have online price "quotes", I guess if you're getting that kind of money you can afford these services, http://www.rebusfarm.com/ http://www.rendercore.com/rendercoreweb/index.do
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Has this guy modelled Falling Water for anything in particular, or is it just a portfolio piece; I'm suspecting it's the latter. I'm thinking perhaps he is angling his services more at reconstruction for heritage reasons, maybe a museum display or the History Channel.
Does he actually have architectural or design based clients? I would love his skills, but are there any significant commercial benefit for an architectural client (unless we are talking something on the scale of a new Olympic arena) to spend that much money on presentation? Where I live, developers are very tight with there money. The money goes on the development. Visualisation is kept to a minimum.
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Alpro,
Thanks for the links- very interesting reading.
I entered some details for a quote:
1800 Frames (based on a 1 minute animation @ 30 fps)
Render time per frame- 120 mins
3GHz processor @ 0.29 Euros per GHz hourCost- 9630.9 Euros, 13194.30 USD
Yikes! Imagine if the render didn't turn out the way you wanted.
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Eric- it looks like your link has used up all his bandwidth- he's had to take the movie off his site. He must be amazed at the stats he's suddenly getting.
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Well that blows. At least I got to see the whole thing on my home computer.
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