Architectural Competitions and Enscaping

Just coming up for air here, after frantically entering into lots of competitions on Freelancer.

Not a lot of luck as yet, as it seems more talented persons enter into these

I am hoping that some of them might get too busy to enter or they will judge that the amount of effort is not worth it.  This seems to be the case for a currently offered mall design. There were several calls to the contest holder to increase the prize, as he wanted multiple rendered views, along with about 20 shops that were supposed to be stocked with goods.

Well, good luck trying to stock 20 shops. Obvious work-arounds were to get pics of shop walls and use them as materials on the walls, which is what I did.  I just ran out of pics to use (most pics of merchandising are never straight on, always perspective). Not to mention patience.

I did a check render using Revit and 3dsMax on really low settings and watched the result dribble onto the screen. While the lighting came out not too bad, the amount of time to get a good looking render, probably in the region of 2 hours minimum,  which was just not competitive with Enscape, where I found that if you set capture output to 4K, you get a very sharp image in around 1 minute per shot. Then there is the ease of navigating to your next shot.  Magical.

Finding the right materials is always a trick, I downloaded a pic of the Texas flag and used it on the columns, maybe a bit garish. The floor was a download as well.

Here is the front of the mall, this shot shrunk down from 11.5Mb to 89kb:

 This competition is still running, and sealed.  I guess sealed is so people do not copy each other.
Speaking of which, it appears this site gets around 50 page views per month. What is deceptive about this figure is that it covers all the posts, and does not say if they read it or not.  So to the two persons reading this, "Hello!"

The next one entered was a pair of townhouses in Australia.  Given the brief, I found it almost uncanny how the creation of the floor plan generated on it's own the "architecture".  Which is to say that very little "architectural" design was involved.  Maybe that is why it did not win.

Here it is, all 3 stories:

Long Weekend....so enter a contest!

First, a man who wants some spikes for the top of a swimming pool wall:

 

Next, a house in the Netherlands, I made two options as my daughter gave one of them the thumbs down:

The other option:

In this last one I put in the lighting.
Finally, a tiny apartment:

All of the above used Revit with the Enscape add-on (except for the plan view).
Many more pics were done, you can find them on Contests, at
https://www.freelancer.co.nz/ 

As usual, Revit city is a good place to go to get components, but as time is short, things like nice beds, chairs and radiators seem hard to find.  Just need more time?

More Video Card fun Not!....maybe slightly stressed....

Well, after getting my GTX1060 home,  I started on my quest to upgrade my power supply on my aging HP Z230.  Hmm. It appears no such animal can be found in NZ!

Further checking on the web site reveals that the requirement for a GTX1060  is 400W not 500W!  On the box it said 500W so ????   Oh joy, I can just slam this baby in and all things will be fine.

But wait, there's more! On checking what is needed it appears it needs a 6 pin extra power supply.

A quick look inside reveals no such plug available.  Eek!

Oh boy. Another trek back to Pbtech and another $200 to belong to the P2000 club, a certified but lesser card than the GTX1060.

Whoopee! Get this baby home and suddenly realise it was the ADAPTOR all along that was the problem.  (Simple, just plug it in and see if it works on the other one).

So a lesson here guys....don't ASSUME as it usually makes an ASS out of you and ME!

Having said all that it seems my logic was not all that bad, I mean, who would have thought a simple adaptor would go bad?

Humble grovelling apologies to Nvidia and all the cards who sail in her.

Enscape, crippled demo, runs nice now.  Bring on the work.

Video Card Fun....NOT!

This is an unrequested render done today: (we have a 2D version at work)

Not my design, but interesting in a quirky fashion?  Not being a paid item, I feel free to have things not quite as perfect as they might be!


There I was, Reviting away, when my left hand monitor died.  Turns out, it did not die, just the video card decided it had had it's Display Port connection removed once too many times, apparently.
The first few times it started again if the plug was wiggled.  Then nothing.

This part that follows is written the day after: I am definitely in the red faced department, with sincere apologies to Nvidia.  It appears that it is the adaptor that is the fault.  So see the next post to find out what happened in the end!

This part that follows is the original post:

This might be a good thing, as I was thinking that my old HP Workstation Z230 with a K2000 Quadro card was not able to even run a demo copy of Lumion, and the trial copy of Enscape I had been using was only able to run real time rendering with complexity set on Draft, so a new computer might be the thing to have.

Oops, retiring in 4 weeks, so money seems to be an object after all.  No problem looking on the net and finding out a brand new HP Z440 workstation with a P4000 video card and 32 GB of ram will set you back around NZ$6000.

That is what I would like.

What I might end up with is this:

HP Z440 E5-1620v4 3.5Ghz 16GB RAM 1TB HDD P2000 Tower Workstation with Windows 7 Pro & 10 Pro  for about NZ$3440.

Even that looks out of reach assuming I have no work in 4 weeks time. If I can find work, maybe.
My Catch22 is that I am not skilled enough to produce fantastic quality, so feel I cannot charge enough to make it all worth while!

In the meantime, I thought it would be a good idea to just upgrade my present video card  as a stop gap measure, with the hopes that if I get work. If I do, then a copy of Enscape on a monthly cost of US66 could be the plan.

For replacing my card , I narrowed things down to either a Quadro P2000 for NZ$803, or a GTX1060 for NZ$605. The P2000 was the sensible option, being Autodesk certified.  The other one was cheaper though and VR ready, which is something I might get into so I went Mister cheap and got the GTX1060.


On getting my card home, I looked at the box which said Power Supply needed is 500W.
Surely my workstation would have that? Off comes the cover and it seems it is 400W, and has little wires for Africa coming out of it.  So it looks like having to upgrade my power supply.

Just for fun, I downloaded the latest preview of Enscape, which requested I update my video driver, which I did.  On trying to run Enscape it said "Sorry, your driver is not up to date enough!"

What does Enscape offer that 3Dstudio cannot?  Seems like you do not have to mess around with setting up HDRI skies, and waiting 5 minutes for a low quality render (see the pics above). Not to mention interior scenes seem to be easier to do.  Couple that with easy to produce movies and you could make a valid case for buying it.

Back to dear old Revit to find that if I hit render, I get a black screen. Change the renderer to the Autodesk one and it runs OK.  Into 3DStudio and it runs the Nvidia one fine so who knows?