VIDEOS IN ARCHITECTURE AND REAL ESTATE MARKETING

 

In recent years, videos have become one of the most used communication tools in the world. Architects, interior designers, and real estate agents use it to better communicate with their clients and eventually sell their products.

One of the recent fields that videos have widely influenced is architecture and real estate. Known as a forever evolving profession, architecture has always been adapting to social and technological progress. The traditional method of creating architectural drawings has been by hand but the rise of technology in the last decade has brought in a more efficient manner of creating and editing these drawings as CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) and BIM (Building Information Modeling). The tools for designing and representing spaces have evolved enormously and are now able to provide us with realistic 3D videos of projects that are still in their design phase. This tool represents a huge step forward for the architecture and construction industry and therefore is widely used by architectural design firms and professionals.

The creation of 3D architectural videos involves a process of creating and animating a three-dimensional model of a physical object, a scene or building using a digital 3d software. Thanks to this innovative technology, it’s now possible to virtually visit and have a greater understanding of the size, shape, and texture of a real or imaginary architectural project. Video animation of 3D models is a complex field exploited by the gaming, film, architecture and engineering industries. 3D architectural videos are entirely made from computer-generated images and can also be called virtual tours or real estate films. These videos are excellent tools for project developers to allow future buyers or decision-makers to visit the interior and exterior parts of buildings, houses, shopping malls or company buildings before the construction of the building is started.

The use of video makes it possible to understand the architectural project as a whole. Unlike 3D still images, which are limited to representing a specific part of the project, videos use the skill of storytelling to express the path that a user is likely to use from the outside of the project to its interior spaces, passing through specific points carefully chosen for a better understanding of the project. Videos highlight salient features of the project in a simple and targeted manner and hence is a great tool to market to potential investors. The simple representation in a 3D image of certain parts of the architectural project encourages the architect to give more importance to the most relevant parts of the plan that he would have to visualize while neglecting other parts that might not seem important enough to be visualized. Videos exclude this possibility and allow for visualization of most parts of the project, therefore facilitating the architect to meticulously take care of all the details of the design.

3D architectural videos, therefore, makes it possible to go beyond the simple still image towards a more realistic experience of the modeled and rendered space. Architecture only makes sense if experienced and using the architectural animation video makes it possible to watch the actual movement of the different components that should take place in the imagined space. The representation of interacting characters, moving cars, flying birds, as well as other components of the scene in motion gives us a clear preview of the same scene in real life. Videos can be used to communicate design ideas over a duration of time – one can experience a day time scene continuing on to an evening scene and then dusk.  Some videos can be extended to create time-lapse, shadow studies, or even lighting studies to see how buildings may look transitioning from day to night. Some of this technology can be used to even create scene sets in different weather conditions to portray a certain mood in the marketing narrative for the project. Integration of video rendering in the world of architectural visualization has truly been a game changer for most architecture practitioners. The world of videos for architectural projects opens a wide avenue that integrates the field of film technology with the architectural design which can strongly influence the future of construction and design.