Paying by Czech

Written by Stephen Holmes

Published Tue 12 Jan 2010

These highly detailed visualisations from Bristol-based firm Architecture in Motion were built to display the proposed build at its busiest, with bustling public areas being utilised.

The team were required to model the entire interior of the project, across all three levels, so it could be viewed from any angle. Working on the project over the space of one month, the process was made easier due to a good relationship with the architects and trips to nearby shopping malls.

“A technique we developed for the images was to visit a local new shopping complex to gather photos of people from the correct heights and brightness, to eliminate the usual perspective problems associated with using cut out people,” explains Architecture in Motion director Christian Jackson, adding that for their first interior project the scale and complexity was different to their usual exterior visualisations.

A realistic shopping environment and lighting were what the team set out to achieve, and avoiding repetition of shops throughout the entire three floors, while balancing light levels were the biggest issues they had to overcome. Evening out the sunlight and the copious amounts of natural lighting against bright shop interiors proved to be a tricky task to get right.

“Liasing with the architects we would take basic plans and sketches then create complex and varied 3D elements such as shop interiors, escalators and canopy structure using a mixture of reference material from photos to basic sketches and 3D elements created by the architects in SketchUp,” says Christian, adding that the final renders were created using 3ds Max, and utilising the V-Ray rendering engine as well as its proxy elements.

All that can be hoped is that the final building is as busy as these lively scenes of shoppers with bags brimming with new purchases.
www.architectureinmotion.com