The 7th Architectural Visualization Challenge I’m running in partnership with Quixel as the marquee sponsor. The book CABINS by Philip Jodidio and the fantastic illustrations by Marie-Laure Cruschi served as the principal inspiration for this year’s challenge theme. That, and my love for prefab architecture design.

CABINS entry by Ronen Bekerman

I decided to use Lumion as my main tool and had to figure out how I jump start my terrain based on a real location height-map.

I tuned out to be very easy. Just import a grey-scale image representing the height-map into Lumion and then keep sculpting it with the built-in tools.

I am describing this process in my Making of CABINS Part ONE and will expand on it in Part TWO.

CABINS entry by Ronen Bekerman

While still in SketchUp and aiming at using V-Ray for SketchUp as my main tools for this entry, I made a fast lighting mood test.

In this one I leveraged V-Ray for SketchUp’s Volumetric Environment feature using the Aerial Perspective option, with a few lights located below the cliff and pointing up…

This is the result I got!

CABINS entry by Ronen Bekerman

It took the 3d model for a spin and picked the HERO view. Saved it to Photoshop and further developed the concept with my Wacom, adding hints for the background and some foreground details as well.

This is the last sketch I make before advancing to the 3d platform of choice and starting to test render as well.

CABINS entry by Ronen Bekerman

Developing my concept further, I took the sketch into SketchUp and translated it to a very basic 3d model that I can further play with and develop my concept with.

This stage allowed me to look at my CABINS from various angles.

CABINS entry by Ronen Bekerman

For challenge No. 7 I wanted to create a concept from start to finish as an example for the challengers and so I can use the resulted visuals to promote the challenge.

This sketch is the first one I was happy with and the starting point for the process. Good old pen & paper for this stage.