BSA Design VIZ - Shedding light on Enscape™

Have you heard of Enscape™? It is an amazing plugin to many of our 3D modeling and BIM modeling software programs. With its hybrid path-tracing render engine, it allows design teams and clients to freely walkthrough in a real-time rendered game-like environment. Right out of the box, it has a high degree of fidelity. With increased intentionality when modeling and some clever post-production, still images created in minutes can rival highly realistic workflows that usually take hours. To fully understand and appreciate what Enscape™ is doing we'll be discussing a brief history of computer graphics, from rasterized G-Buffer renders, ray tracing, and the next generation where Enscape sits in path-tracing.

The topic of lighting is critically important to create compelling design visualizations. We'll cover controlling the appearance of sunlight, artificial lights, luminous materials and how we can use them to establish an appealing lighting hierarchy. A portion of the discussion will be devoted to a hands-on WORKSHOP format, so bring your laptop loaded with Photoshop and a free 14-day download of Enscape™ before you arrive. Onlookers are also welcome and will benefit from seeing some important techniques demonstrated. Our example will be utilizing a Sketchup and Photoshop workflow.

Matt Paquin is a Design Technologist and the Visual Integration Lead at SMMA in Cambridge, MA. He has a background in fine arts, professional architectural visualization, and teaching. Combining the efficiencies of cutting edge digital 3D model geometry with artistic expression makes Matt able to control software for the purpose of communicating design intent without being controlled by the software itself.

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2 LU AIA credits are available.

To learn more about Design Visualization, visit architects.org/knowledge-communities/design-visualization.