How to improve your architectural project with Real-Time Rendering

Real-Time Rendering for Architectural Visualization: browse your model as if it were already built and present your design ideas with photorealistic renders

Looking for an effective way to present your project ideas to your client and explore your model as if it were already built? Have you ever thought that visualizing a project before it’s built, giving you a spatial overview, can help you eliminate possible design errors?

In this focus article, I will give you an overview of Real-Time Rendering for Architecture, the technology used to create advanced 3D graphics and communicate fine details, ideas and qualities of an architectural project.

With Real-Time Rendering you can powerfully convey the character of a project and showcase the experience of living certain spaces without having to wait for long rendering times.

Before starting, I’ll show you a short video presentation that I’ve created in just a few minutes using the Real-Time Rendering environment in Edificius, the BIM software for architectural design.

If you would like to produce a similar video, I suggest you keep followings my tips.

What is Real-Time Rendering?

Let me first clarify what Real-Time Rendering is all about, starting off with the rendering concept.

In short, the term rendering is used to define the process that allows you to obtain, starting from a three-dimensional computer model, a very realistic static image based on project data. The photorealistic rendering is fundamental in the activity of architectural design having the objective to illustrate an idea, a project, a model that does not yet exist.

With the latest advances in hardware, you can now achieve the highest possible degree of photorealism at an acceptable minimum rendering speed and also render the entire 3D model in real time so as to be able to explore it as it was already built.

Real-Time Rendering for architecture consists of images and animations rendered with such speed that the time taken by the computer to calculate them is imperceptible to the end user.

All this is extraordinary because it is no longer a simple static and two-dimensional image of the project but a complete dynamic and rendered in real time 3D model.

In this way you can move freely within the spaces that you have created, verify your design choices in detail and make, if necessary, changes in real time to the model. Moreover, from the rendered 3D model you can obtain with a simple click the model drawings to be used when presenting your project:

real-time professional renders
Arch-viz presentations
360° pano photos.

Render produced with the Edificius Real-Time Rendering

The quality of videos and images is very satisfactory, especially in relation to the time and resources used. Moreover, the advantages for the designer are many, both during project elaboration and verification phases or when presenting it.

However, in order to create a great rendering, do you need to be an expert and is the process time consuming and expensive?

Let’s find out together.

Advantages for the designer

With Real-Time Rendering for Architecture you can get amazing results even if you’re not an expert and don’t have a lot of time.

In fact, starting from the 3D model of the project, from the Real-Time Rendering view, you are automatically ready to navigate the model and to:

view your project as it were already built, verifying each detail and making changes in real time
present your design ideas to your client in a clear and effective manner
obtain project graphical resources (renders, arch-viz presentations, etc.).

With the Real-Time Rendering environment in Edificius you will bring your way of designing to a whole new different level.

If you’re used to drawing in 2D or with CAD, working with Edificius makes modeling faster and easier and gives you more control over your choices. Nothing is left to chance or imagination.

In fact, you can model in 2D and see directly in Real-Time Rendering your project taking shape in real time and verify the result at every stage of the design. Or you can modify your model in plan view and visualize the changes in real time also in the 3D view and in Real-Time Rendering.

Real-Time Rendering also completely changes the concept of architectural rendering: the renders are not simple images to embellish the project but everything is perfectly and dynamically integrated according to the true BIM philosophy.

If you modify your project, the graphics and videos you have processed are automatically updated as well.

A rendered image of the project is obtained over time with a simple click and a high definition video in a few minutes, instead of many days of processing.

In summary, the advantages that you can get by using Real-Time Rendering technology for architectural visualization are:

better approach to materials, lights and spaces management
design errors reduction
greater control of choices and of the entire model details
rendered model browsing
reduction of misunderstandings and misinterpretations with clients and companies with regards to architectural choices
possibility of verifying your project during each modeling phase
editing your model in real time
processing speed of professional renderings and arch-viz presentations
photorealistic materials library integrated to the software
simplicity of software use
possibility to select many realistic and artistic effects to render your model.

How to create professional renders thanks to Real-Time Rendering

Generally speaking, static photorealistic renders have an extraordinary quality and impress with realistic light and texture effects. However, the process to generate a quality render can be tedious and time consuming.

I suggest a much simpler way to get renders that enhance the quality of your project but in a very short time: Edificius Real-Time Rendering.

Thanks to the Real-Time Rendering environment of Edificius, you can get highly professional renders without waiting a single minute for the rendering process.

The renders below have been produced with Edificius directly in the Real-Time Rendering view.

Images produced with the Real-Time Rendering in Edificius

If you want to produce renders with similar results, you need to:

download Edificius immediately
access the Real-Time Rendering environment
choose the scene set up when browsing in your 3D model
use the add Interior/Exterior photocommand
set up the environmental, direct and ambient occlusion parameters
add or personalize other effects, such as bloom effect, intensity, lens flare dimension, light exposure, by accessing the specific settings editor
edit the view if necessary by taking advantage of the camera movements such as come move (up, down, right and left), walk (forwards and backwards), rotate (up, down, right and left) and lens
click on PLAY Animation
save your render.

These settings can be saved, so you don’t set them up again if you make changes to the project.

To optimize the quality of your render I recommend you to always choose high resolution textures, modeled objects in detail and select the lighting suitable for your scene to avoid overexposed or underexposed areas.