Will Computer graphic rendering replace and make obsolete traditional architectural illustration» Not necessarily. 3-D rendering has more flexibility and versatility as a rendering tool, but it has a different character than traditional rendering has.
As one digital rendering professional admitted, “the uniqueness of the traditional rendering is in no way to be duplicated 100%.” This is a given. At the same time, what digital rendering does for, say, a new home, an interior, a landscape—for architecture, products, outdoor environs, indoor spaces--that the pre-computer technology traditional architectural illustration does not do is represent in a different way, a way that goes beyond duplication to replication. That is, 3-D rendering gives computer generated “objects” a virtue of realness that make them at times appear more real than the object they are depicting.
For instance, on one site featuring architectural and design plan rendering, the home page introduces services therein by using a digital rendering of one small part of a dining area. The over head light, a series of light panels, is in the foreground (upper right corner), while the glass table and three postmodern chairs are in the left center background—or set back a bid. The light dominates the frame: it creates an obelisk-shaped line of glass and light that warms the whole frame. But more stunning is the use of light and animation: one tight, hypnotic bead of bright light travels, in five different points, the edge of the light’s rim/shape in a thread-thin orbit that pops ever so subtly at exact intervals of time. At the same time that one light point pops and disburses, another of the four remaining points appears, pops, and dissolves at the end of that point’s trail. Simultaneously, it one additional beam, very short and subtle, travels the rim of the glass table—appearing bright where the light (fixture) hits, then fading out as it travels out of sight.
What’s so beyond realism here is not the table, the light, or the reflection(s). These elements—with perspectives, curves, shadows, and textures--are sufficiently captured by traditional architectural illustration. It’s the movement of the light. As if we the viewers had shrunk and the light had expanded to a great enough size that we could see light in it’s actual state—that light has properties that dance and travel in ways outside of digital rendering we cannot normally observe with a naked eye. Or that we don’t take time to observe.
If we can meld the two rendering types as parts of a whole (without having the tail wag the dog’s body) we will find that traditional architectural illustration will bring to a project what 3-D does not, and 3-D rendering will bring what traditional illustration cannot: it brings a light that cannot be encapsulated by 2-D paper and drawing implements alone: 3-D digital rendering brings a motion contained and replicated. It combines the two to move beyond representation of the real in such a way that the real is surpassed, is fantastic, is 3-D pushing the edges into 4-D…while traditional illustration brings—as predecessor of computerized rendering—a unique, original personalization that will seal the deal.
