Brian Cassil

1. How much pre-modeled work can we use? In other words can I take something that I had done for an actual project (with permission of course) and use it in the scene for this challenge? I know that the bulk of the scene neeeds to be modeled by myself but what about entourage (like lamp posts, etc.) or surrounding buildings even.

2. Can it be based on existing architecture, or does it need to be an original design?

evanmoses

Hi Brian,

I'm pretty sure that the answer to question 2 is in the rules. I'm too lazy to fetch and quote them but I believe they say that it can be your design or existing architecture. So, pretty free reign.

Jeff Mottle

From the rules: "You may use any techniques or methods that would be used to create a commercial illustration."

To expand upon this though, yes models like lamp posts, benches, cars, etc are fine. Making a downtown scene from all of the office towers you modelled in the past is not ok.

My feelings about this challenge and all of the remaining ones are they you are open to work just as you would for a commercial rendering job, with just a few restrictions. The remaining challenges are meant to reflect as close as possible to a real-world situation, less the restrictive demands of client, which you can now finally replace with your imaginations and how YOU would want to do it.

From the rules: "The style and architectual design can can reflect the entrants own architectural designs or be based on existing buildings or architecture."

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Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com

Chad Warner

It seems to me that having the competitor come up with the design for the architecture presents a problem in judging the competition objectively. I always think that great architecture makes for great renderings, while bad architecture does the reverse. Granted, it is our job to make whatever architecture we are given to look as good as possible.

In a competition setting though, I think that someone who is a good designer will be able to come up a better rendering than someone who has no design skills and designs a box with a window or two. My point is, I think if you do this next year, a better solution for this and the following challenges would be to provide a base model that the challengers have to make look good. That would be the way to test someone's rendering skills.

evanmoses

Hi Chad

I think the fact that you can use other buildings not designed by you means that individual design skills don't really matter, so no one is really at a disadvantage. That said, all of the people still in the competition are excellent designers of images and really have all of the visual tools that they need to make wonderful images, whether or not they are architects or 'designers' in the stricter sense. I think that these two factors combined really means the competition can be won by anyone who is a good visualizer, period.

Brian Cassil

I must be blind because I did go through the rules before posting. Thanks for the clarification on the idea of creating city of buildings I've already done. Not that it would have looked very good anyway. Just imagine 15 hospitals in a downtown setting

Jeff Mottle

Well put, this is exactly why the rule exists that you can use designs of existing buildings. If a competitor wanted they could go and photpgraphy a scene or take one out of a book and replicate that themselves with their own artistic flare and design changes. The rules are pretty clear that you do not need to be a designer to do well. Even the last challenge, which was more of a design challenge than any of the others, had only about 5-10% of the total score allocated to design. But Evan is also correct in that many of these competitors, if not all, could easily come up with their own designs and have a great chance.

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Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com

Chad Warner

Believe me, I agree with Evan when he says the competitors could EASILY come up with great designs, and then great renderings. I just thought that it might be a way to level the playing field if everybody has to work with the same base to start with.