Please can you introduce yourself to the community?
Hi guys, I’m Jack Dicker, founder of both Archilime Visualisation and Archilime Academy. Our visualisation team offer innovative marketing solutions for property developers internationally, to assist them in selling off-plan by providing a variety of visualisation services from CGI, interactive site maps, app selectors, photo-montages, brochure design, company and site development branding, film, photography, website design, Interior Design, social media and marketing all to be produced in-house in our lovely office on the River Dart in Buckfastleigh, Devon.
Our Academy teaches other creative professionals how to do what we do in regards to our visualisation output. Our Academy delegates range from Architects, landscape Architects, Interior Designers, Set Designers, Craftspeople and hobbyists who are all seeking to advance and develop their 3D techniques, learning more efficient & better optimised processes to allow them to reach a higher potential of quality.
Great thanks! How did you get started with PNY and NVIDIA products and why?
We have been in communications with CHAOS now for a few years, as far back as when I remember trying to build ‘fur’ manually with each being 3D modelled geometric grass blades back on V-ray 2.0. We had one of the most helpful contacts who worked on the development team called Ted Vitale.
I’d go as far to say that my direction and knowledge for this industry has come mostly from him in the early stages. As the relationship built up, we started to produce work for CHAOS and moved into being part of the testing team for the new versions along with producing their promo film for vray 5.
The latest partnership we now have is working on their V-ray 6 promo film and project of whom we have also partnered up with KOTO on. Essentially, Archilime is collaborating with KOTO and we are working together to build a fully utilised 3D environment of a project designed by KOTO and built by us, in Palm Springs, California. This environment will then be a shareable project for V-ray 6 buyers. Because of this new partnership, we were also introduced to NVIDIA who are now supporting us in the development of the Archilime Academy and have gifted us some beautiful A6000 RTX cards – We will be at 3D basecamp in Vancoover at the end of September for anyone that wants to come over and say hello!
Do you use graphics cards when rendering, if so why and what graphics card?
Yes! We absolutely do. We are currently using a mixture of 3090’s, A6000’s & 1080Ti’s for different processes. We vary the use of the cards because we build all our equipment ourselves so try to custom design builds that work for each artist.
Someone looking to offer Real-Time Vantage workshops and material option sessions would be equipped with one of the A6000’s as we can host these over Zoom without issues. For our 3D modelers, the 1080Ti’s are absolutely perfect and can be used with no issues at all. All of our artists have access to our 400core CPU farm here at Archilime but the beauty of the A6000’s is that they can render pretty much at the same speed if not faster.
The A6000’s are a game changer for us and we are now contemplating whether we move into fully operational GPU based rendering based on this positive experience.
How important are these products to your workflow?
As mentioned above, the A6000’s in particular have completely revolutionised our workflow, not just in terms of internal speed and efficiency, but also the level of client interaction and value these new processes can offer. With real time workshops enabled by the A6000’s, we can be offering our clients fully immersive design control over their projects as well as saving us operational time in going back and forth on amendments.
What does your typical design workflow look like?
Our workflow is quite unique in the sense that we have an Interior Designer, Interior CGI artist, Exterior CGI artist, Account manager and Design team who all work together in each project. We found that the key part of this is the Interior Designer because we can then control the full creative brief with the client as early as thinking about how to design a space whilst also ensuring that our CGI output is to the highest quality we can.
Any artist will know, it doesn’t matter how good we are at realism, the styling is what will ultimately sell the idea to the client. Because we work with property developers we then have full access to specifications and can tie in our Interior Design process with this. The process starts with the Interior Designer having a workshop with the client right through to the Design team building the marketing materials with all the branded visualisation to ensure consistency.
During that process, we have a very thorough QC process where each artist would have a senior sponsor to check and control the technical aspects of the imagery.
Is there a particular job or piece of work you’re most proud of?
There’s many pieces of work that myself and the team are proud of, particularly over the last year. Every single artist we work with has developed their skills and is producing work that is stronger and better than their last.
For me personally, a project that shows off this evolution the best is a project we completed for a hotel in Salcombe for the Harbour Hotels Group. We worked closely with their interior design team to fully understand and encapsulate their interior vision throughout our CGI’s and are really proud of both the technical skill and marketing potential evident in the final images.
We did over 400 CGI’s over 60 projects in the year 2021-2022 and 2022-23 is set to be even stronger due to these new advances in our workflow and processes.
