A School in Rainy Autumn

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This is a personal project that I used to test the capability of Enscape and create a portfolio piece. I work as an Architect and usually have very limited time for any architectural visualisations so I often have to make this part of designing the building in Revit. Enscape works well as I can constantly refine the scene and see the updates in real-time. I try to achieve everything in scene as there’s nothing worse than spending a lot of time in Photoshop and the client changing the angle last minute (guaranteed to happen).

Concept

I was inspired by the image MIT Day Versus Night by Alex Hogrefe that can be found here:
https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvisualizingarchitecture.com%2Fmit-day-versus-night%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cadam.brennan%40bdp.com%7C9287e2fc39014939021408db16a7ca7f%7C40f4096c6d404821a38016520cde7af3%7C0%7C0%7C638128682134053943%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=u%2BqfpSw6w%2BdtVsa6%2Fc5BzNDwZaYXn%2BT3th5mpjzx1QI%3D&reserved=0

I created a quick concept image to test ideas and framing for the scene. I quite liked the image, but without a theme pulling it together it still felt quite empty and aimless.

Enscape Assets

I try to use Enscape’s base library of assets to generate scenes as much as I can, I find they’re of a great quality especially at a distance from the camera and it allows me to keep my workflow in Revit checking the results in the real-time renderer. Creating a narrative by making the assets interact with each other or the architecture is key. In my company most architects will just scatter these everywhere and it actually takes you out of the scene when the people look unnatural.

Texture Generation

Rain, puddles and good fog aren’t really available in Enscape like in Lumion. This article called “Cyberpunk in Enscape by Lasse Herbo Madsen” on the Enscape blog inspired me to try something new and try to create that wet weather look we often have in the UK. A link is provided here: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.enscape3d.com%2Fenscape-users-render-cyberpunk-2077&data=05%7C01%7Cadam.brennan%40bdp.com%7C9287e2fc39014939021408db16a7ca7f%7C40f4096c6d404821a38016520cde7af3%7C0%7C0%7C638128682134210180%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2FRDTp%2BvxVmGvjyyrhF9UNOCt5IuUO54pjw1%2Fkao3AFo%3D&reserved=0

I edited and combined some assets to create my own seamless textures for raindrops splashing on the ground and fog. These were then applied to multiple planes in front of the camera and staggered to achieve an equivalent to the volumetric effect possible in other software.

Another great discovery from Herbo Madsen was using Quixel Mixer to generate a seamless texture that reduces the usual repetition that often makes the CGI obvious. I’ve since experimented with this more and it’s a really useful tool and free to use! I used it to generate a large scale texture for the playground without obvious repetitions and a reflection mask for the puddles.

I used Rhino & Grasshopper to generate the perforated texture of forest scene for the facade from an image. It’s quite a simple process that can be found on YouTube. A short piece of code uses an image sampler on a monochrome image to set the radius of the circles from the pixel’s brightness value. Ideally I like to use this as modelled geometry, but it can generate a high poly count, so I opted to create a transparency (cut-out) mask instead.

Lighting

I tried a number of different lighting setups on a white material override, it’s a good way to test the colour cast of the lighting and really focus on the shadows in the scene. I opted for an early morning autumn light with part cloudy skies to soften the light, it made sense for the school scene.

Post-Production

I was really pleased with the image straight out of Enscape, putting the work into the model pays off. The only photoshopping I ended up doing was the autumn leaves framing the scene. Enscape does a bad job of a shallow depth of field look and so the bokeh of the leaves in the foreground came out quite poor quality. I always try to minimise photoshop work.

Conclusions

There was a lot more I could have done to this image. I was still learning Quixel Mixer and would have liked to apply it to the bricks specifically as I find they often look like “brick wallpaper”. Chamfering some of the edges would have reduced that sharp edged look that doesn’t really happen in reality and gives away the CGI. The interior could have done with more work to add details behind the glass, it was a bit rushed. On the note of glass Enscape is lacking a reflection pass so it would have been good to render the camera view 180 degrees to get the reflection and photoshop it in. I often make a alternative glass material to use as a Material ID when photoshopping (it doesn’t render glass).

I hope this was interesting and helpful. Thank you for reading if you got to this point, I’m glad I could contribute something back to this blog. Please let me know if you have any questions!

New Institutional Building Norther California

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Usually, I can’t post much of our work because they are primarily private competitions, but this one is already done and under construction. It is a new Institutional building for Sierra College Rocklin Campus.
As usual, with very tight deadlines, Architect sends us their REVIT model, and we transfer them into 3D Max to fix, adjust and enhance details. This project maintains the existing traditional architecture of the original campus, but it also adds new elements and high-performance building design.

Binhdinh Museum.

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Binhdinh Museum.

Architecture by Lequang Architects
Landscape by LJ-Group
Facade/Technical by SCA
Images illustrated by Duy Phan

We won Architecture Masterprize 2022 for the proposal of the Binhdinh Museum.

Aiming for a truly ‘living museum’ that creates an ecosystem around it, in this project, we tried to provide a proposal from urban planning to programming solutions for museums. To create a blend of landscape and display area that not only caters to museum-goers but also a public space that engages people in the city.

The project, named the best concept project, will be on display at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain during the AMP 2022 awards ceremony program.

Whiskey distillery

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This is the first Brandy Distillery in Russia and it is going to be equipped with a high-technology line. That is why the majority of processes will take place in “laboratory cleanliness” and we are going to show the visitors of this manufacture the full extent of what constitutes the alchemical process of obtaining this drink.
The second thing that needs to be said is that the building of the Brandy Distillery expands the architectural ensemble of “Alliance-1892” in the city of Chernyakhovsk, which beginning was marked with the Cognac Museum & Warehouse; also, this building is not the last element in the development of this ensemble.
Now, about the project itself. In the search for the form, we referred to the spirit of this drink and discovered that this is a strong “masculine” drink, that was born in Scotland and, accordingly, its spirit is akin to the Celtic one.
Thus, we concluded, that “HE” should be soldierlike and redoubtable but not without ornament, obviously masculine and in its character. We used these ornaments – ethnic marks on the substrate – the ground on which the building is located, also referring to the drink’s place of origin by the use of black stone – the signature of the Scottish land.
Since the major part of the building is occupied by the technological process, which is not very interesting for viewing and almost does not require human intervention, it is housed in a long solid box – the light well in the roof provides illumination to this part of the building. The central “spectacle” of the production is the distillation process, and it takes place in copper “cubes” which are presented not only to the visitors of the building, but also visible from the side of the Cognac Museum & Warehouse. This space along with the laboratory and the tasting room constitute the head part of the building.

Continues Vineyard

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Facing the empty land and the surrounding vineyards were the beginning of our work. Because of the project’s location, we have a good view of mountains and surrounding vineyards. We choose linear movement design for visitors; in this way, we can use all the potential of our land and also force the people to go through the different points of the land and experience the new field of view from the beauty of nature and mountains. When visitors arrive, they can use Chinese boats to go to the hurt of the project which is the museum or they can after their long trip, take a little walk and enjoy the vineyards and then go to the museum.
In the list of functional spaces from the project’s brief, we have several public spaces and a private space (hotel) Which were combined with linear motion so that we do not have a straight direction in this way we respect the beliefs of the Chinese people about straight movement.
In China, they use introverted architecture plans, with three sides of the volume and one side of the wall that detached the building from the outside. We followed this form and pattern to shape our building and placed the lake in a way that acts like a Chinese wall that detached our buildings from each other.
To be able to use the maximum angle of view, bridges and ramps were coming to our design and destroyed the uniformity of linear motion. On the other hand, it seems that our structure has grown from the heart of the land, like a grape tree.
After the form is finalized, the vineyards covered our land, roofs, and structure and also didn’t destroy the pattern of vineyards otherwise our building was shaped from the nearby lands. In this concept, we tried to respect the aerial land, culture, and architecture of ancient China from a new perspective. Our goal was to create a wine museum in China that at first look they can understand is a Chinese wine museum.

Objects garden

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The purpose of the contest was to recreate the accessibility of the garden to have more path readability for the entrance of the garden.
But are people problems with the garden path readability and entrance or is the program in the garden?
Our solution for this garden is to create a new layer on the existing site to unhide the other land uses. The new layer has formed from architectural elements which have been inspired by Isfahan’s ancient architecture. In these objects will happen many deferent events.
Reviewing the ancient architectural forms and elements, help us to create new architectural forms and objects, also reveal hidden aesthetic features for us. founded objects detached from their previous position, deconstructed, and finally recreated in a new situation. This project is formed from the synthetic of the founded objects and placed in the new context.
After redefining the purpose of the contest and unhide the other land uses, In the proposal of the project, the site has expanded and the problem with the entrance extended to the whole site and garden’s program. In this way, the project has expanded to a new layer in redefining architecture and turning it into objects to be seen.
* Honorable mention in “from the garden city to the garden of the city”​ competition
* Top 10 digital made model in architecture model competition 2021 by Mango Architecture and Archivoice