Archviz industry - a few questions

[Jpjapers]

Ive been an in house visualiser at a retail company for a few years. Straight out of University it was my first job and the job has evolved into more interior design responsibility too. My team is tiny and we dont really operate how id imagine an archviz agency operates like. So i have a few questions about the real archviz industry.

How much of your time is spent modelling assets?
Im not a particularly strong modeller. I enjoy lighting, materials and camera work and im good with buildings but organic and curved meshes just dont make sense to me. When youre putting together a pack of renders do you purchase assets or model them yourself? Is it more a case of building the architecture and then 'set dressing' with prebuilt assets?

What sort of stuff would you like to see from a job applicant?  Specialised style shots, a broad range of skills, wireframes? Does the latter even matter if the render itself is good?

Do you do much interior design style work for clients or is everything specified down to what furniture should be in the image?

Do you make your own textures? Where do people find really nice shaders for things they would use alot like polished concrete, wood flooring and counters, wall tiles etc

Thats it for now. Im trying to understand what to expect if i try to move into the agency side of things

Thanks :)

[mferster]

I work in an architecture firm that has a very heavy high-end interior design component. Having good modelling skills is crucial in our office, since we deal in a lot of custom furniture pieces and millwork.

I can't quantify the number of hours I spend modelling every week since it changes depending on the project.
The ability to iterate and react quickly to the interior designers ideas or the whims of clients  is really crucial. The important skills that I would look for are: diverse modelling skills, good eye for composition, being able to analyze a physical sample and accurately replicate it as a material, general problem solving skills.

This is my process If an interior designer wants to use a specific furniture piece in a render.

1. I spend 5 min looking to see if there is a model available somewhere online either free or paid.
2. If a free model isn't available, I judge how long it would take for me to make the model... If i think it would take me more than an hour then we usually go ahead and purchase a model, since it doesn't make economic sense to pay me to make the model.
3. If there isn't an exact model I'll try and find a similar looking model  and make the changes myself, like taking cushions from another couch and co-opting them in my new model.
4. I would say 50% of the time we can't find a specific model online and I end up make it myself.
5. That being said... I never model plants. It usually takes way to long, and there already quite a good selection online.

I usually do a first pass in regards to interior design. I work quiet closely with the interior designers and am usually part of the initial meetings with the principals of the office, so I have a good idea of the direction of the space before we officially start.  I put in furniture, lights, accessories, and finishes based on what was discussed in the initial meeting. It is either adapted and iterated on, or completely scrapped and I start again.

I make my own textures; Either by scanning the samples that we have here in the office or by finding similar textures and finishes online. We have subscriptions to megascans and textures.com

Hope this gives you an idea. Let me know if you have any more questions!

[Monkeybrother]

When I started, we modeled everything, from buildings (from DWG:s) and furniture. I started in the games industry and have no problem modeling stuff, but I'm becoming more and more lazy. DesignConnected, Turbosquid, 3dsky etc often have what I need and why spend the time on a chair when I can buy it for a few $ and be able to reuse it later? That said, if a client have a list of specific models/makes that you can't buy, you will have to model it. If you find yourself in that situation and can't model, you're stuck.
I second a lot of what mferster said, I'd say I buy at least 50% of the furniture (and all plants and humans).

[Jpjapers]

Thanks guys. I can certainly model basic stuff. But complex curves really kills me. I need to better understand edge loop modelling, marvellous, Zbrush etc. At university i mostly did the rendering, lighting and materials side or group projects so im more technical in that sense. For the last 4 years ive worked in house at a major global retailer and not really had to push myself or had anyone to learn from or better my skills so ive kind of fallen stagnant. Im really trying to figure some good resources to help me learn modelling for visualisation. Probably need to look at UE4 too because it seems like that is the future of archviz especially with the new Volta GPUs like the new 32gb titan Nvidia released.

[Monkeybrother]

I've been archvizing for almost 9 years now and I've never had to use zbrush or care about edge loops, even though I have the knowledge. Marvelous is good to know, but for curtains, blankets, cushions, pillows etc, you can stay in the shallow end of the pool - just follow a few simple tutorials and you're good to go. If you're looking into Unreal you will have to clean up models and make optimized UV's, so that's something to learn.

[Kalopsia]

Very interesting stuff has already been said. I do agree with most of it. I have friends working at companies that only do archviz and they usually have some highly skilled people dedicated to modeling the more complex stuff.
So the basics get covered with purchased assets and from the existing library. Everything else gets assigned based upon modeling skills.

Plants are all bought. Although I have to say, I'm not happy at all with the models nor the shaders. If you do exterior shots, than you might consider special software to model vegetation. This is only a must if your client needs to see the exact vegetation he plans on using latter on.

Textures? I usually don't do textures, which is kind of surprising to be honest. Most of the textures are directly from clients or purchased and get refined. We do a lot of work for the ceramic industry and they hand over the textures for the tiles. These are huge textures but come with a printer profile in CMYK so they need adjusting. Everything else that needs textures I already have something similar in my library.

Lately we do more product shots, rather than archviz. In this case you get assigned an art director which can be someone working at the same company that orders the images or it's a creative agency or a design studio working for them.
They give you directions about colors and the decorative assets they want. The also tell you about the mood you should aim for. This is very relevant for your lighting setup.

As for job applicants, pleas no wireframe shots. They don't really tell me anything I want to know. We could certainly make a whole post just about what you should put on your application.
I would say that it depends on what you are applying for basically it all comes down to the job description.
Meaning, what the job description is.