Recent Project

Phil Rader AIA

Here is a link to a recent project of mine. A complete remodel and addition to a single family home.

http://www.philrader.com/projects/parkway/index.html

Any thoughts about the project and Sketchup illustrations would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Phil Rader, AIA

tomsdesk

Phil...really nice design and looks to be a sweet model too!

The image compositions work quite well for me, but IMHO (since you asked :`) the straight SU output always has a hazy quality. I fussed with the first image a bit: first softened the whole thing to take down the textures a bit; punched up the color intensity across the image a bit by adding a couple of side-merged overlay layers (stronger colors fading to no change across the image corner to corner); then burned in a slight dot pattern texture overall to punch up the areas of flat color. If I had had your edges layer, I would have burned or multiplied that over the top to bring back some of the hard edges. Whadaya think?

Phil Rader AIA

Yes that pops better. I am just such a lazy old fart I just hit export>>jpg from SU and that's it. I suppose I could create Photoshop actions and batch process a bunch of images but to individually open and alter each exported image would be too much time.

I do agree that the punched up contrast and saturated colors are jazzier.

Hey I wonder if this is possible with Ruby?

well anyway thanks for the comments. Your opinion is quite valuable.

Dave R

Phil, I have also found that the straight output from SU seems a bit flat. Since I'm also a lazy old fart, I run the output through Picasa. All I do is open the image there and hit Auto Contrast. that seems to do the trick most of the time. Ctrl+S saves the correction and I'm finished.

I like this house. Is it going to be built locally? If so, what does it take to deal with snow loads? I ask because my S-I-L is looking to replace her house which overlooks Medicine Lake and I've been trying to convince her that she needs to do something along the lines of what you've drawn.

marked001

very cool design, phil... i like.

dylan

It is a nice looking house and the sort of thing I really like.

One thing concerning the image. The barrel to the right, is it the correct scale? It seems quite large to me.

Phil Rader AIA

Dylan that was taking a smaller barrel component either from Form Fonts or 3dwarehouse and scaling it up. I agree it looks too large but when your are modeling at 90 miles per hour sometimes you miss things.

I gather I could do some research on rain water cisterns and find something appropiate, but alas I'm to lazy.

Dave M

That's a beautiful house, and I particularly like the way the elevations turned out. One question: where does the overflow for the rain barrel go? Or is that a "for later" detail, once you're past the conceptual phase?

Phil Rader AIA

I guess it will have an overflow drain at the top.

I have not fully developed the concept since it's most likely a project that will not be built as conceived.

http://www.rain-barrel.net/rain-catcher-water-barrels.html

That's what I had in mind but I guess I could think bigger and design an underground cisstern

dylan

I used the same component for the exact same thing recently on a job