Building Visions

3D Animation, Interactive Media, Architectural Visualization, Virtual Reality, Web Design

Building Visions attended the VRAY event in London Hilton at Hyde Park today as we are always keen to here about new technology that may help speed up our work flow even further. The Chaos Software team gave us demonstration of their new real-time rendering engine for 3dsMax which will be officially be released on 1st June 2009 (Maya users will have to wait until the end of the year), and also gave advice on how to get the most out of their newly released V-Ray 1.50SP3 (1.50 Service Pack 3). In addition they showed off a new product called pdplayer - the professional tool (similar to virtualdub but offers much more) for multi-layered sequences preview, basic compositing and color corrections in real time, which supports multi-layers, 3D LUTs, HTTP communication for collaborate work and so on.

It certainly looks like the The Chaos Software team are on track with their realtime rendering solution, and we wish them continued success.

Swan Housing Association recently commissioned us to create a promotional animation movie for Cranes Court, a flagship new development of 31 new properties in Basildon, Essex.

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Cranes Court is the first zero carbon development in the Thames Gateway.

We also created a photomontage of a view through the new development with the surrounding landscape in the background. See image below:

Building Visions have been involved in the initial phase of the Carpenters Estate’s urban regeneration in The London Borough of Newham. This 3D model will be used as a tool for a public consultation presentation with residents on the housing estate in Stratford, which will form part of the London 2012 Olympics regeneration.  The existing 3D model has been created and imported into our games engine (which can be seen in the above screenshot and slideshow below).  The development proposals from Newham Council will be updated in June 2008, at which point we will release the final version of the Interactive 3D solution showing residents the “before” and “after” on the housing estate in a virtual environment. We will also provide an update on the results of the consultation with residents and the use of gaming technology.

Thames Valley Housing Association are one of the largest housing associations in West London. Building Visions have recently created microsites for 3 new housing developments that are managed by Thames Valley Housing Association. The microsites include a mix of multimedia designed to promote each new development by using real footage of local areas and facilities, virtual tours of show homes, interactive 3D maps and photography slide shows. The microsites are a feature rich way of promoting new developments by providing visual and detailed information that potential buyers look for when choosing a new home. Visit Park25 microsite.

The London Borough of Haringey has several public parks in London, these include Finsbury Park, Bruce Castle Park and Priory Park. To increase the online presence and highlight these park’s facilities, a microsite was created with virtual tours of each park. Building Visions designed and developed a microsite that was based on Haringey’s corporate dress and linked from the parks section on the Haringey website. We also created virtual tours of each park, taken during the summer months to capture the parks in all their glory. Why not visit the seeharingeyparks.org microsite and you can take virtual tours of the parks from there.

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A unique solution for a unique problem.

The London Borough of Camden is actively tackling the problem of overcrowding in homes provided to tenants in Camden. Building Visions produced an Interactive 3D model for presentation use at London Borough of Camden’s events on overcrowding in homes. We created a typical 2 bedroom apartment in 3D and implemented interactive features for changing the room spaces to improve furniture layout and storage options. This has been useful for tenant consultations to demonstrate how smaller spaces can be used more efficiently to reduce this problem. The video above shows some of the features of the interactive technology we used for providing this solution. Feedback from the usage of this tool with tenants and at the events will be provided in early 2008.

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King Edward Place, the striking new building in Elm Road is the setting for some stunning new apartments with breathtaking views over London, some overlooking the new Wembley Stadium. Building Visions were commissioned by Octavia Housing & Care to create a microsite incorporating a visualisation movie (click on player above to view) and high quality still images of views along Elm Road. The 3D animated movie also included interior animations of the private and shared ownership apartments. See the slideshow below for the high quality stills.

Testimonial

“Building Visions provided a professional and responsive service to Octavia Housing & Care. Our requirements were clearly and quickly understood and the animation movie has been well received by staff, our partners and potential buyers.”

Building Visions were asked to create a DVD for Shared Horizons to promote Pelican House, South London. Pelican House contains 31 one and two-bedroom apartments, built around the features of an original 1930′s structure. Using elevation drawings and working with an interior designer, Building Visions created 2 high quality 3D animations of the apartments, one for shared ownership and the other being private sale. You can take a look at some of the high quality stills by clicking on the slideshow below.

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Building Visions created an interactive 3d model of a rural town for Rhondda Cynon Taff Council in South Wales. The model was used in a public consultation exercise and showed two scenarios, an existing view and a proposed view. We used our gaming technology to allow people to view Ferndale’s existing town centre and then click on bookmarked views of the area to see the proposed changes to the local shops and road system. This gave the Ferndale community a chance to clearly understand the Council’s proposals for planning and regeneration and for the council to capture the resident’s feedback. Building Visions attended the open day for consultation with members of the community and supported the interactive 3D model. The video below shows the features of the interactive 3D model. Building Visions also received feedback on the use of their interactive 3D model (see below video)

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One Ferndale residents feedback was: “The best way to view proposals I have seen so far.”