New West High-Rise comes to Life

Project: Architectural Rendering
Client: City of New Westminster
For: Pinnacle Decision Design Associates
My Role: Architectural Illustrator, Art Director, Graphic Designer

Not too long ago I collaborated with Pinnacle Decision to create a presentation for a new high-rise development to be built in the revitalized core of New Westminster.  HR Hatch, architects of InterUrban, designed this “last waterfront view” located at 125 Columbia Street.  They sought for help from Vancouver based 3D modeling and rendering company Pinnacle Decision whom I worked closely with to create the final presentation to submit to the city.

Composition and Angle of High-rise

Once Pinnacle Decision converted the floor plans  into a comprehensive 3D model,  we sat down to determine the most impressive angles for the layout.  At this point I start to composite the environment for the building out of digital photographs, adjusting colour and lighting to depict the specified times of day for the two renderings.

Background Rendering

Next, the clay-like high-rise renderings were handed off to me to make it pop with realism.  The composition started to come to life as I tediously manipulate textures, colour, lighting, reflections and entourage.  For those who only know of Entourage as a show about Vince and his lavish lifestyle, let me fill you in.  Entouraging is a process of adding people, props, landscaping and other real life objects in a rendering to make it come alive.  At the end, the landscape designer sent us the softscape diagrams so trees and other foliage were added to spec.

Landscape Rendering

Since my computer was just barely hanging on with the massive file sizes, I was forced to strategically  composite details on multiple files and flatten them into one document at the end.

Final Rendering

After all files were complied into one, we ended up with realistic HDR-esque renderings which set the right tone for each shot.  The morning rendering encompassed warm sunrise light with vibrant colour and depth while the night rendering conveyed a calm tranquil evening with the high-rise in the spotlight.

Mac Marketing Solutions has been commissioned to take on the marketing aspects of this high-rise.  They were so impressed with the final product that they wanted to use our renderings in the marketing material.