Serenity - Conrad Allan

Fact File Name Conrad Allan Product Vue Infinite, SketchUp "...the ease with which new species of trees can be created in Vue was a life saver!"

Conrad Allan was contracted by a major Australian real estate developer, Springfield Land Corporation to produce three concept images of their park in Brisbane, Queensland.

Vue for Visualization

The project has been 90% done in Vue 8 Infinite with basic terrain modeling being done in Google SketchUp. The images are still to be rendered at the finished quality and will be printed at around 8m x 4m and placed on billboards around the park for the public to see. The purpose of the billboards is to show the public what the park will look like in a few years as the planting is not yet mature.

The specific features of Vue that helped most with the project have been the flora and spectral radiosity atmospheric rendering.

In particular, the ease with which new species of trees can be created in Vue was a life saver. The project required custom species of trees to be created that were specific to the area. Vue's solid growth technology helped immensely not only to modify but also to create hundreds of variations with ease and avoid making the images look generic.

Vue's EcoSystem and proxy handling is second to none. The project required thousands of shrubs, trees, grasses and rocks in each image which meant billions of polygons. The software handled the load with ease and was able to represent the scene in real-time which was imperative for this project.

Lastly, the Global Radiosity lighting and the clear and concise descriptions of atmospheric settings provided complete power over the atmospheric lighting and overall mood of the images. When asked to add more depth in the lighting with softer shadows or an overall warmer feel, Vue's atmosphere editor was remarkably adaptable and made these changes a breeze and a pleasure to play with.

About the Artist

Conrad Allan is a 22 year old freelancer living in Brisbane, Australia. He has been using e-on's Vue software for 12 months and has thoroughly enjoyed the package. Conrad has been doing Archvis since 2005 working mainly to produce quick 3D concept models for architects until recently being contracted to product images for Springfield.

"One day I just woke up and realised the world isn't flat. That's when I realised 3D is my passion. I started out in good ol' SketchUp and those of you who have used it will know how easy and what fun it is."

"Then just lately (August 2008) I began a Bachelor of Interactive Entertainment (Majoring in Animation) and I've since tamed the reins of Vue, 3Ds Max, Zbrush/Mudbox, WorldMachine 2, OnyxTree... the list goes on."

"My passion definitely lies in the creation of 3D environments of all kinds and I am definitely walking down a cool path"