This Blog Is Retroactive

Arch Viz, or Architectural Visualization, is a boutique industry within Architecture, or within Computer Animation, depending on which way you look at it. Either way, it’s an industry I was a part of for the last eight years, until this past January when I was laid off (again).  You might think this editorial is colored by my bitterness towards the field that rejected me, and you could be right.  However, the truth is I haven’t felt good about the direction Arch Viz has been heading for some time now, and it’s my honest opinion that this industry is on its last leg.

Let me just say, I mean absolutely no disrespect to any of my friends or colleagues still working in the viz biz.  I respect the work you do and appreciate, enjoy and value the renderings and animations you produce.   I’m just not sure anyone else does.

I think one of the main indicators of the demise of this industry is that the only company around that seems to be growing, or at the very least maintaining the status quo, is one that outsources all the real work to China.   I won’t name any names but they are, in my view, the Wal-Mart of Arch Viz.  Their modus operandi is to swoop in, with lots of money and resources, and do the work you used to do faster and cheaper, and frankly, better.  Rest assured, there’s nothing any small studios can do about it, except perhaps adopt their practices.  This is how the downward spiral begins.

I actually interviewed with this company.  They do employ some artists over here, just to put all the final touches on their renderings and movies.  They didn’t offer me a job, thank God, because I just might have been desperate enough to take it.   They expected me to work twice as much as my last job for two-thirds of what I used to be paid.  That’s what this industry has come to.  To stay in it, we’d all have to work for just as long and just as cheap as all those people they outsource to in Asia.

Another problem is that the architects and developers that hire Arch Viz artists don’t take them seriously or value their service as much as I think they should.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Macro-economists say that the market will always adjust accordingly and that the price something sells for is always the right price.  Perhaps that’s the problem.  The “right price” is not nearly enough to justify the amount of work that goes into it, and that doesn’t bother architects or developers in the slightest.

An architect I worked with once said to a group of us, “Let’s face it, 3D visualization is a skill, not a talent”.  I don’t even remember the context of it.  I didn’t take offense.  It’s actually true, and it’s also demonstrative of what architects think of those of us that do this.  We are tools, not artists. We’re not designing, we’re not creating.  He didn’t say that we weren’t talented.   He was just referring to the work we did, not what we are.

We should face it.   Arch Viz is not where we planned on ending up.  No one plans on doing that.  Unless you’re an architect that creates renderings and animations for your own projects, Arch Viz is probably something you just fell into.  We’re all just displaced artists from different backgrounds.  A couple of guys I worked with were fine art majors.  A couple others were architecture majors but they went right into visualization.  Another guy I know is a self taught motion graphics/video editing guru, and a couple more are like me, with a background in computer art and 3D modeling.  I would venture to guess that all of us would rather be drawing, or painting, or modeling characters for video games, or creating visuals for television or film, or designing a website in flash…almost anything besides going through the fourth round of an architect’s design revisions and fighting with weird rendering artifacts at 3:00 in the morning.  If what I’m describing sounds like nonsense to you, that’s probably because it is.

Back in the summer of 2007 I was in San Diego at an Arch Viz conference, and we met a guy who worked for the company that developed RPC (Rich Photorealistic Content), David Silvernell.  He had since started a new company that sells a variety of 3D resources.  He had some interesting insights into the industry and I found it hard to forget when he said to us, “Get out now.  There’s no future in Architectural Visualization for production artists or the studios that employ them, especially now that everyone’s started outsourcing to people in Asia”.  At the time, I thought it was a bunch of paranoid gibberish, but I was still rankled by it.  Mostly, I think, because deep down I feared it might be true.  Looking back and knowing what I know now, I’m surprised I was so incredulous.

Go here to see the Arch Viz work I used to do.

I also posted this article on the CG Architect forums, and I think it stimulated some really good back and forth discussion about the state of the industry.

Go here to read a 5-part series on the 3D Visualization industry by Andy Catterick that is way more thought out and informed than mine.  Kudos Andy!

Well, I was laid off today. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, because I did. Unfortunately, this has happend to me before. I think this will be the last time. I’m getting out of this game.  Architectural visualization was fun for a while, but I think perhaps the thrill is gone. She don’t treat me like she used to.

My friend Daniel, who was also laid off today, told me that this day, January 26th, 2009, was being called “Bloody Monday”. Over 65,400 jobs were eliminated in the USA today. Is that metal? I don’t know.

The picture above is of my dog, Fresno, after I told him the news. That’s what I would look like right now if I were a dog. I tried to tell him it would be okay, that I’ll get a new job soon, but he was inconsolable. See, Fresno can’t work because of his back, so he doesn’t have a job either. I’m the sole provider in our household. I keep telling him we’ll be fine, but he just laid there, mumbling something about shrinking economies and increased unemployment percentages. I need to stop letting him watch so much CNN.