For anyone who wonder about our career, what are 3D visualization services do exactly? Are they like some kind of draftsman for architect? To follow order and do what they have been told to do? We’ll admit that some parts are right about us. The first thing we know about this career is that it is a brutally hard working job for us. Although we didn’t get to design and develop the work, but to make things look like exactly what client assigned is also the tough job to be done. Let’s put it this way, the art of 3D visualization is like how the painter do the hyper-realistic portrait painting, to find out the exact proportion and deliver the exact features of the subject through the painting. It is a delicate skill that takes years to accomplish the professional level.
Anyone who want to take path in this career seriously, be prepared. Here’s the time we want to tell you what we have learned in the past years as 3D rendering team.
1. Be patience, take your time in learning CAD program.
In our good old days as the architecture students, CAD is the most frustrating things to overcome. It was like we were learning a new language. Microsoft Excel was enough trouble for us. 3D program? That is a nightmare! But let’s stop whining here, when you start to learn 3D program, the obvious problem that you would face is their complex interface and control command which are abundant. You may find those are too many to learn at first, but don’t worry too much, try to find the example or tutorial to practice. Once you do a lot of exercises, at some point you’ll grab the pattern of the order in making the 3D object. When we started to learn this, we spent 4-8 hours a day for learning them. So practice constantly and you’ll be proficient at them eventually.
2. Do it better, do it faster.
At some point, you will begin to get use to 3D program, but there will be time that you would find yourself clumsy when you try to find the specific command from the menu bar or when you move the cursor to the command button. For most of the beginners, it may takes 5 second instead 1 second to do this simple task and you may feel bad for yourself how slow you can finish the project. Here’s the solution to avoid these frustrate moments, try to use shortcuts in your process. Once you know how this works, there will be no trouble for you and you will work smoother than before.
3. Render time consumption; the wall that everyone must cross.
At the present day, every professional 3D renderers who started their career 8 years ago must pass the age of Pentium 4 processor. The old generation processor affect 3D rendering process to be the desperate moment for every renderers because of its time consumption. The reason behind this problem is; Pentium 4 processor only had 1 thread core to process the rendering task which is too slow to work with. Nowadays, technology has developed 8 thread processor to contain the multi-task and large memory processing task like rendering to be faster and larger in resolution in result. To put it simple, in the old day you would risk 8 hours of fine result or nothing. There was no tolerant because there were no preview function like present, but today you can work the same project within 2 hours.
4. Surprises!
There were times that we were forced to face a surprise; one of our computer was overheat. We were so frustrate about that, and that was when we learned “a file management lesson” in a hard way. Everything can happen when you work on your project, so backup your file constantly. Or even better solution, if you can, purchase the high-end gears for a job.
5. Quality rendering.
This is where every professional renderers are different. We spend time in the project, focus on the details, find your render style, your favorite setting, etc. After all that, post production is where the paradise is created. Try to learn image enhanced program to improve the outcome, and be realistic about it.
6. Practice make perfect.
Like we said before, spend hours to practice your skill set is essential. Do not hesitate to learn the other program to enhance your work. You can do this.
We have told most of the essential things for you. If you find yourself not good enough, try to learn from the other renderers. Sometimes learning means sharing knowledge, so work with them, learn from them, and you will be expertise in no time.