The Right Tool at the Right Time: Designing with Real-Time Rendering

RODERICK BATES: Hello, and welcome to the Enscape Design Story, communicating with real time visualization. I'm Roderick Bates, the head of integrated practice here at Enscape and I'm joined by Kaj Burival to demonstrate the landscape software to all of you.

So what is an Enscape and who are we here at Enscape. Well, we're industry driven. That means that we seek to identify and solve the biggest challenges our customers face. And our customers are those that are directly engaged in the design, delivery, and construction of buildings.

And we're mission critical. For our users, we give them the absolutely unique capability to communicate a complete understanding of design to all the parties that are involved in designing a building. And we do that through the power of real time visualization.

So what exactly do we mean when we say real time visualization. Well, real time visualization is a lot more than a pretty picture and we can absolutely deliver that. But at the end of the day, real time visualization is really about communicating that complete understanding of design.

So what do we mean when we say complete understanding of design and what does that mean in the context of a BIM modeling workflow. Well from our perspective, design is really about understanding all the various pieces of information that go into every decision that is made throughout the entire design process.

And those information, pieces of information, are incredibly diverse. And yet they all have to be weighed, evaluated, balanced, and shared across a broad variety of individuals when making a design decision. And we feel that real time visualization is the key to actually having all of that information available in real time when those decisions are actually being made.

One of the greatest challenges, though, in the context of a visualization workflow and understanding how design actually looks and how those various pieces of information fit into a design decision making framework is that you need to have that information available at the time that the decision is actually being made, and you need to have it available in the same platform where the actual decision is going to be evinced in a design.

So quite simply, one of the challenges that we had prior to the advent of Enscape was the fact that a visualization or a real time visualization was occurring in a completely separate platform than that which was used for the purpose of design authorship. But from our perspective, folding those things into a single platform where the platform that's used for design, BIM, Revit if you will is also the same platform through which you can conduct a real time visualization, enables a single workflow where you can evaluate a decision, and then incorporate into design, yielding incredible opportunities for both collaboration and, of course, efficiency.

All of that's easy to say, but really, what does that look like in practice. When we say we have the ability to deliver to our customers a complete understanding design throughout a project, what does that look like in the context of a traditional project delivery workflow. Taking you from proposal and competition all the way through to post construction.

Well, we're going to walk you through a few examples and then provide an end tool demonstration of what exactly we're talking about. So every project starts, obviously, with a proposal or maybe a competition. And one of the biggest challenges at this phase is that usually fees are fairly modest and time is short. With real time visualization enabled by Enscape, you can rapidly create incredibly compelling visualizations that can communicate really the beauty of your design and excite potential clients.

And because we're integrated into a variety of CAD tools, we can use tools that are incredibly easy to use and fast and then you can use Enscape in that context to produce a compelling visualization like you're seeing here.

And through that you'll be able to win work. And once you have that work, of course, the real design process begins. And in pre-design, you know very little about the project. You need to understand context, you need to understand basic things like masking. Enscape, through its visualization, isn't always about that perfect rendering that you're going to show at the end of the project, but it's also about being able to show the basic forms and masses in what we call the white mode. And in something like this, you're able to really tailor the information that your client sees so that they can focus on the key decisions that are relevant during the pre-design phase.

But as one moves into a little later in design and SD, you need to move out of that very early phase and those very generic decision making processes to one where you start to really think about design authorship. And in that phase, you're maybe moving from a very schematic level software such as Rhino to a software that's used for the purpose of design authorship like Revit.

The great thing about Enscape is that it functions across all of these different software platforms, so it means that with one license you can rapidly transition from one software to another, say from an early design phase software to something that's really used to allow for the documentation of your design.

But as you move to these more sophisticated softwares, obviously there's a lot more power. But at the same time, there's also a lot more complexity. And that complexity means that the people that can really drive that software becomes more limited.

So you need to have a mechanism by which you can take the information that's being created in Revit, say, and then communicate it to a broader audience, including those that may not be savvy in design. The great thing about Enscape is it in real time takes what you've drawn in Revit and then renders it in a way that is, I guess you could say, visually legible really to any audience, enabling all stakeholders to be engaged in the design process even if they don't have an expertise or familiarity within modeling.

And of course, in schematic design, you're making major decisions that'll have implications for that project all the way through. For example, if you're trying to understand the views from a particular building as you orient to forms, choose the type of wind type and location of windows, Enscape provides a mechanism by which you can, through a really immersive environment, understanding what views might look like in a way that's pretty difficult to capture in the context of traditional BIM model.

And at the same time, you can begin to layer on analysis information. So you're not just thinking about view sheds, but maybe you're thinking about shading, radiation, exposure, and other things that are fairly diffuse to understand outside of the context of an actual model.

But with Enscape, you can see this information exactly where that data is relevant. In this case, you're not only looking at a view, but you're also looking at the solar exposure that's occurring through that view.

So now we're a little bit later in design and we're in design development. And at this point, you're starting to understand that the overall form and the basic decisions have been made.

But maybe you've been carrying a few details. Perhaps different facade options. And creating these A, B comparisons, if you will, say facade A versus facade B can be pretty challenging. But with real time visualizations you can share with your team and your client, comparisons of the side. So if you want to choose the facade you see here or this one, you can rapidly view the two of them together and begin to decide which one you want to carry forward in the design.

This enables decisions to be made faster and the design project to move rapidly through the various phases. So now we're getting a bit later into construction documents and the real issue here is coordination. How do you get all the various disciplines to make sure that their designs and what they've drawn in their various modeling platforms actually interact and are avoiding the types of clashes that can make for, essentially, big challenges when you get to construction.

The great thing about real time visualization is that you're seeing these types of issues, in this case a beam going right down into a stair, in a way that can be challenging to understand in the context of the BIM model.

And even if you have a clash detection software, you're not seeing with the actual issue is in that visually legible manner. But in the context of Enscape, you can go right to the location where there's an issue, identify it, see it, make annotations, and resolve the issue through that collaborative environment that Enscape enables.

The other thing I think that all of us that have involved in construction administration know is that there's oftentimes last minute changes. There might be something that's very subtle, but it's still going to require client approval before you move forward. In this case, the brickwork or the tiling that you see on the floor wasn't actually available.

So a slightly different color that you see here was available. Well how do you get this approved by the client in short order so you don't actually delay the project. With real time visualization, you can show both options to the client, have them sign off on the changes, and the project can stay on schedule.

And during construction when you have that fence up, the public is always going to be curious about what's actually going to happen and what's going to be built. The great thing about Enscape is, with a QR code, it can be scanned just like the one you're seeing here with a phone and take you to a panoramic view so you can actually see what the completed project will look like once construction is complete.

And after construction, the work doesn't end. Say it's a developer project that's going to be going out for lease, well how do you get a potential leasee excited about this space. How do you get them to think about the way the space can be adapted for their particular use. A blank environment, a blank space isn't going to do it, but with Enscape you can start fitting out that space in different ways to start to entice clients and let them see what the space will look like once they actually make it theirs.

And that'll take your design all the way through to that sales process. So that's some examples of an Enscape can really be used throughout the entirety of the design process. And real time visualization adds real value at each one of those phases. But seeing that in action, I think, will provide a lot of information about what the reality of real time visualization looks like in the context within workflow.

So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Kaj. He's going to show you what Enscape looks like in Revit.

KAJ BURIVAL: Thank you so much Roderick. That was an amazing presentation. Yes, thank you everyone for attending our talk here, and I'm going to provide a little bit of practical examples for what Roderick explained to us earlier.

So exactly as he said, Enscape is all about communicating the understanding of a design and drafting together or drawing together, pulling together all of those strands in this entire process that each individually for themselves is very, very complicated. And Enscape responds to this particular issue over and over with simplicity. And that is what I'm going to present here.

So I have one of our sample projects open here in Revit and I have already opened it in Enscape as well. And if any one of you ever had a look at our sample projects before, you probably realize that most of them don't look as simple as this one. That is by design because, of course, I wanted to start into this Enscape story, into the landscape design story, with the beginning. So the Revit design.

So first of all, I'm just going to align Enscape here on the right and Revit on the left and we'll just have a look at in what of those or how in all of those phases of design and development of such a project Enscape can be a really, really valuable companion. So at first, of course, as you see here, we have a really, really simple drafts.

We don't have any materials in here. This is really not visualization in its traditional term that we are doing here. This is more design exploration. But still, at this point already Enscape can be really, really valuable. Then you might notice that we don't have a ceiling at this point.

That was just for me to help me to, of course, work on this project a little better. I'm just going to draw to pull my section box here in Revit a little bit up and you'll see our ceiling appears. So we can imagine this situation as communicating with our potential customer, for example, the very, very first stages of a potential design.

And there again, Enscape is helpful throughout the entire journey through its simplicity. So it's perfectly up to us where we want to go from here. But let me just show you how it can be useful for you.

First of all, we see, of course, the sun is shining into the building. And we, for example, want to make sure that we have our sun settings in Revit set up correctly to be able to anticipate what the ambient and what the illumination of that building will be in the future once it's built. So just to demonstrate that this is true to action, we can just jump through multiple locations on Earth and Enscape will adapt not just the sun position, but the entire angle and the trajectory depending on where our project is located.

So this already can, of course, be a tremendous help in communicating and not just communicating a design, but also preventing misunderstandings here. And here already, we could also take some of the features that landscape provides, actually for a visualization purpose. Very, very roughly for a communication purpose. So if I wanted to, for example, create a video from here, I can just press the key here and escape. Let me actually put Enscape into a full screen, just place a couple of key frames just to really share this idea.

And of course, you could have someone sitting right next to you and looking over your shoulder, but especially in times like these, oftentimes that's not the case. So maybe you want to have something that is easier to share. I could go with a simple screenshot or rendering. In this case, I just want to go with the actual videos.

So let's see, I've just placed a couple of key frames and already have a look at what that video might look like. And if anyone has ever rendered a video before, maybe even with Revit, you know that this used to take quite a bit of time.

However, with Enscape, luckily those times are over. This 17 second video in full HD, by the way, is rendered almost before I am able to finish this sentence. And we're receiving an MP4 file wherever, I just saved it. We can put it into an email or in teams meeting and share it with anybody immediately and they can respond with some additional feedback. And the communication can get going.

And this is just one of the many, many ways to share your ideas with Enscape easily. We're just getting started. So you've also realized before that Enscape immediately followed whenever I put up this or what I changed here about that section box.

I think it goes probably without saying that Enscape does this with everything it can wherever it can grab this data or these changes from Revit. So I have a couple 3D views set up here and I can access these 3D views in Enscape as well. Those are the same ones on the left side in Revit as what I have in Enscape as well.

And we can switch to a different 3D view. And before starting this talk, I, of course, adapted this sample project a little bit and hid a couple of our assets to really emphasize this initial stage of the project that it was in. However, I just switched to a different view now that has some of our 3D assets.

By the way, we provide these just as well. Let me see just to show you that these are included in the Enscape feature set and subscription. Everything is included with every Enscape license. And I've just placed a couple of assets before here.

This can be used to make the project more tangible and maybe give some ideas for the viewer how it can be used in the future. You also noticed that it is still, everything is white here. That is because I have the white mode still enabled.

We could switch to regular view, and you'll see that there are materials applied to this project here and it has already been set up quite nicely. If we wanted to make it really beautiful already, we can also go and add a background here. And we have sort of the full quality of the project.

But once again, if I wanted to change anything, this is looking into the settings that are set for each and every view. So I'm currently in this lobby view, let's switch there. And if we wanted to hide maybe the ceiling here, we could just do that through Revit as well.

I think I just hit the single element. I actually wanted to hide the entire category. So let's see what happens if we do that.

And Enscape responds to that and it didn't just hide the ceiling but the floor as well in this case. I'm probably just going to Control Z and revert this to its previous state. And I could just reset the section box as I had it before to prop off the ceiling.

Same thing here, we have a very, very makeshift kitchen. And obviously we are very, very far advanced in the design decisions here already. I'll probably return in a couple of seconds. But I have set up a design option before just to highlight that that is also being respected. The same thing as phases and all the other view settings that you can access in Revit.

And if we switch to, for example, a different design option here, we see that we have a different kitchen prepared already that can also help. Well, in all cases whenever you want to communicate freely and have a couple of your ideas stashed up front, and that way you can cycle through individual designs, ideas, and even link them to your Revit views, for example, and access them automatically.

Or let's say we want to return to our initial early design view here where our room is way more empty and get a real feel for the depth and the scale of everything. Well, I can also just enable virtual reality with my Oculus Rift here that I have here, put it on, and really perceive the dimension of the space. And also, of course, recognize issues with the model that maybe on a two dimensional display, as Roderick mentioned earlier, somehow suddenly there is something intruding into a different object or something like that.

And all of that is really, really obvious as soon as you put on a VR headset and go with that. So let's continue with some of those highlights or with some of the use cases that you can use with Enscape. Let's say we wanted to share the model in some other ways. Roderick has earlier mentioned a QR code. I would like to show you how you can generate these quickly and easily for that. However, I'll switch into one of the other views where we have our models placed in the design again.

And I'm just going to create a 360 degree panorama up here. I can choose between a mono and a stereo panorama. With a stereo panorama, you can review it using a Google Cardboard device, for example, or a VR headset. And again, perceive the actual depth and the dimensions. And the only downside is it takes just twice as long, however, with Enscape, simplicity equals speed, equals better understanding.

So everything is very, very available at all times. And you can use any of the mentioned tools for every of those design and development phases of the model. So let's see once our panorama is finished. I want to show you how easily and how quickly it can be made accessible.

So I'm just going to go to my manage uploads window up here. And of course, you can use it as an offline file and use it as a regular image file, put it on your website. If you want to. But you can also decide to upload this to our cloud and once again, all of this, of course, is always included in any Enscape subscription. And already we have it on our servers.

Only you have access to this link and as soon as you don't share it. And you can either open it directly in the browser, or you can get a QR code as you see here. Scan it with your mobile phone. If anyone, by the way, in the audience, is quick with their phones, you can scan it right away and review this panorama immediately on your phone or I can just open it in my browser, share the link immediately with anybody.

Apart from that, one more thing that I wanted our show is we don't have just a white mode. We also have the light view, for example. Roderick mentioned that earlier as well. You can get a really good feel for the radiation, the lighting that is coming into the building.

And as you see at the top, we have a dynamic lux scale showing us the strength of the sunlight on each part of our model. And as I mentioned earlier, the sun angle is also correct.

It's also correct depending on where the model is on the planet. Also, if I wanted to compare this with anything that I've mentioned before, if I wanted to have a VR light review, for example, I just need to enable it. If I wanted to create a video in this style, it is just the same as I did it before.

So once again, simplicity allows for connectivity for communication in between all different parts of the model, of the design, and of the workflow surrounding it. Let's close down this mode again and let's have a look at some high end rendering quality, so to say.

So if you really want to go with the money shot, or if you really want to create some emotional reaction in the viewers, you can even drive things a little further and enable some depth of fields to have this beautiful blur effect and blur out things that you might maybe don't want to focus the viewer's attention onto.

Or focus the things that are interests or that you want to express in that particular shot. So for example, in this case, I have slightly blurred the foreground. We could even go further and we can just render this, not just in full HD, in 4k in this case and just click here. Save this as an image. And once again, Enscape is over and over just incredibly fast when doing that.

So to render it 4k image, we take about 10, 12 seconds, maybe even less. And we are done. And to top things really off, you can actually also, and once again throughout every single stage of the design of your model, you can also just copy this entire Enscape experience that you have here. You can copy it into a standalone, either EXE file or a web standalone file.

You can even, if you want to, you can even customize it up front. So if you don't want to share the Enscape logo, the Enscape name with your customers. If you do, of course, we'd appreciate it. If you don't want to do that, well, you can just add in your own customization, your own custom loading screen watermark and standalone file icon.

And that will be even translated into that standalone file, for example. And once again, to create a standalone file, all I have to do is click that button that you've seen up there. Let me return to Enscape as soon as possible. There we are, this button up here and Enscape doesn't even ask you anything else other than where to save that file. And it will just create a perfect copy of what you're having.

You can still travel around, change the daytime, and even enable virtual reality in that standalone file. So if your customers do have a VR headset, you can create tiny little experiences for them, if you want to, on a weekly basis. And trust me, they will be a lot more emotionally involved with you than just looking at schematic drawings, for example.

So really, the possibilities here are limitless. And since it is so quick, adaptive, and easy, you can literally use all of the features that Enscape provides throughout all stages of the design, development, and the general development of the project and the building.

And you might notice that it is, we are just scratching the surface here a little bit of what is really possible with Enscape. It is meant to be a tool that is simple to use like a hammer, like a screwdriver. But the most beautiful art pieces are being made with very simple tools like pencils and all that.

And that's exactly what Enscape aims to be and what we so often hear from our customers. We, at least for them, manage to mean as a help for their actual work and to allow them to really focus on the design and their creative work without having to think about visualization and communication misunderstandings, et cetera, further down the road.

So I hope this has given you a tiny bit of insight of the possibilities that are there with Enscape, how it really responds to your existing workflows, to your existing software, and doesn't try to add additional workflows. It doesn't try to, or it tries not to, be in the way of your creativity. It tries to really support you in that and act as a dynamic window wherever and whenever possible.

And also, we, as Roderick said in the beginning, we are industry driven. We are a very dynamic team. So if you ever feel like we could support your workflows even more, we're always happy for any feedback, for any contributions.

And also to answer and respond to any questions you might be having. And so that's why we will go into a Q&A shortly and we'll be happy, both me and Roderick will be happy to respond to your questions. And with that, thank you very much for attending the session so far and see you in a second.