3-D plan rendering, the stuff of science fiction movies, is here. But this accelerated form of plan rendering, besides expanding the 2-D page of depicted dimensions to 3 actual dimensions with virtual light, sound, movement, moving sound, moving light, has also exceeded the SF films where the monster looks pasted, or where the people look fragmented, or where the staggered fractals of the flying saucer make it look more like cup and saucer than a UFO.
Advancements in applied computer technology have made a plan rendering of a layout look more like a layout than a plan looks.
Such advancements have realized plan rendering by enabling the depiction and display of an object (in the case of architectural rendering, a floor plan, a building, the landscape) as that object really is…or will really be. Architects, designers, and real estate developers, engineers, advertisers, property owners and investors, builders and contractors, and many other organizations, agencies, and firms are able to “turn quantified data into a 3-dimensional representation,” (as describes Lev Manovich) and to in turn enable computer users to view that real time object from “an arbitrary viewpoint in order to understand the object’s structure. By this act, too, the user/consumer is visually and aurally encouraged to “emotionally experience” the object on display in 3-D.
Such plan rendering technology has interactive capabilities, animation properties, and the tools for providing marketing take-aways—tools such as Flash animation, Javascript, mp3 interface, avi and mpeg formats, PowerPoint integration, VRML (virtual reality modeling language), and RealNetwork, QuickTime, and Windows Media. So in other words, the customer can experience home-buying, for example, from a remote distance—even another country—as if he/she were on the actual property, can get what would be the equivalent of a walk-through (or fly-by), can point and click to look more closely or look from a different vantage point, and then can get the “brochure” or print rendering of yore on a CD…in the equivalent of a tour video tape he/she might have taken in person, to share the same experience with friends and family members who can load/play the virtual tour on their own computers.
Without snubbing the traditions of en plein air architectural rendering and still image artistry, innovators have exponentially enhanced plan rendering, giving us a 3-D computer graphics technology that allows us the detail and virtual navigation of an actual or planned building that can often seem more real than the actual building is. Architects, interior designers, real estate developers, home buyers, home sellers have benefited greatly: they can now more comprehensively and accurately show structure, materials, colors, details; they can present options, influence and simulate ideas, and provide visual dimensions that prospective buyers will be able to “emotionally experience.”
