Suppose you are given by your Boss only 5 hours to finish an architectural visualization on a 5 storey commercial building with an area of about a 100 square meters. It seems impossible to finish such presentation in a very short period of time. It is "Possible."I, an architecture student and working part time as an architectural visualizer can do this with sofware suited for the work.

This image made using 4 software. Plans are made using Autodesk's Autocad 2009. The 3d model is modelled using Googles Sketchup 7. Texturing and Lighting made using Autodesk's 3dsmax 2009 with Vray sp2 as its rendering engine. Post Processing is made using Photoshop CS4.

My boss gave me the drawing file about 1:00PM. The file includes the plans and its front elevation. The making of the plans is not included in the time frame. I opened the drawing file and deleted the unecessary lines which is not needed in making the 3d models. This would make the file lighter.

Next stop, 3d modeling. 3d modeling would take more time than the others depending on the scale of the model. In this model I spent only about 2hours making the 3d model. Using Google Sketchup, I imported the drawing file made in Autocad. I made It as a quick reference in making the 3d model. (I will make a tutorial about this work flow later, just wait for the updates).

Next stop, Texturing and Lighting. This is the most complicated part in architectural visualization. But when mastered, it would be easy as a pie.

Saving past render preset is very important when making an architectural visualization to save time. I just loaded some of my past render settings in making this image. Because it is a night scene, i didn't need to put a sun on the scene instead, just vraylightmtl on objects which emits light(tutorials soon). Saving past made materials in the material library would also help save time. It took also 2 hours in setting up the scene.

and the Last stop, Post Processing. When I saw the result of my rendered image, It still lack lights and glows. Using Photoshop CS4 i created this glows and also adjusted brightness, contrasts, etc.

Achieving a good rendered image could take less time, depending on the mastery of the user.