Hi Stephen-

I wanted to shoot you a quick note thanking you for the excellent work you did for us with our recent product changeover. You consistently beat the tight deadlines, and provided a great product that helped to make our new rollout a success. We look forward to doing more work with you in the future.

Thank you!

Todd Johnston
Product Development Manager
D.R. Horton, Inc. – Portland

Well, just to add to that, our minds play tricks on ourselves with color and brightness constancies (or the lack thereof).  Perceptual constancies are sources of illusions.  According to wikipedia, “color constancy and brightness constancy are responsible for the fact that a familiar object will appear the same color regardless of the amount of or color of light reflecting from it. An illusion of color or contrast difference can be created when the luminosity or color of the area surrounding an unfamiliar object is changed. The contrast of the object will appear darker against a black field which reflects less light compared to a white field even though the object itself did not change in color. Similarly, the eye will compensate for colour contrast depending on the color cast of the surrounding area.”

Example 1. Simultaneous Contrast Illusion:  The horizontal gray bar is the same shade throughout

Example 2: Color constancy – In this illusion, the second card from the left seems to be a stronger shade of pink in the top picture. In fact they are the same color, but the brain changes its assumption about color due to the color cast of the surrounding photo.

You can read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion

With your guidance or design plans, we can dress-up the building with our huge library of plants, skies, and building materials. We can even computer model some un-built or renovated architectural features. Photo-editing is a great way to spruce-up your property for its glamour shot or it can be an excellent design tool for existing-home makeovers.

Our new 360 tools (360 interior and 360 exterior) not only help you communicate your project from every angle, but it lets your audience explore your designs in their own way and at their own pace. The more they are engaged, the more likely that they get your message, and the more likely that they want to hear more. And that’s a true measure of effective communication.

Congratulations to our client Imagine Homes, who has recently been selected as The Single-Family Production Home of the Year in the 2008 National Association of Homebuilders Green Building Awards.  Imagine Homes builds all its homes to meet Energy Star and Build San Antonio Green certification without dramatically increasing its home prices.   For them, they are able to do this for only about 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent extra in comparison to a standard code home.  Check out all their interactive features, listen to an interview with Imagine Homes President John Friesenhahn on Texas Public Radio, and look them up when you are in San Antonio!

]]> http://blog.renderinghouse.com/2008/08/07/going-green-with-imagine-homes/feed/ 0 http://blog.renderinghouse.com/2008/07/30/parade-of-homes-2008/ http://blog.renderinghouse.com/2008/07/30/parade-of-homes-2008/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:50:14 +0000 Stephen http://blog.renderinghouse.com/?p=50 Over the past couple of weeks, we had been busy with this project of creating renderings and floor plans for 55 houses for the Home Builders Association of Fayatteville 2008 Parade of Homes.  These homes range from condo units and town homes to starter homes and large luxury homes.  Although we had only two weeks to complete the entire project to meet the deadline, we actually were able to complete the whole thing two days ahead of schedule.

We typically prefer CAD files as they are the cleanest and offers the most flexibility.  But with this project, we primarily worked from photocopies of plans.  In addition, we accepted large D size (24 x 36) print, which we scanned ourselves.   To avoid the risk of “garbage in, garbage out”, we had to clean up many files and sometimes start from scratch.  Here are some examples:

Before:

After:

Over the years, we have worked with many clients, especially national and modular home builders, who wanted to create a new look for all their house plans to help differentiate them from their competitors. These opportunities give us the chance to show our ability to provide many different illustration styles, all completed in-house, with the same quality and quick turnaround time – often with volume discounts. Once complete, it’s nice to see consistent art work throughout the printed brochures and website.

• Camp Lejeune (North Carolina)
• Fort Huachuca (Arizona)
• West Point Academy (New York)
• Fort Wainwright (Alaska)
• Army Hawaii Family Housing (Hawaii)
• Fort Knox (Kentucky)
• Beaufort (South Carolina)

For these projects, we provided aerials, streetscapes, clubhouses, entrances, interiors, and floor plans.  Here are some examples showing the various regions of our beautiful country:

Hawaii

Camp LeJeune

Fort Huachuca

Fort Knox

Fort Wainwright

West Point

Since establishing our price estimation page, we have received a lot of positive feedback from our visitors. Our price quotes for single family home renderings was such a hit that people were asking for price information for multi-unit townhomes. Soon enough, floor plans price quotes was created as that was the next most requested feature. We are currently developing price quotes for site plans.

Thank you for the feedback and positive response (and ultimately new projects!) We are always looking for new ways to create better value and serve you all better.