From Order to Decay

Coming from a traditional art background, CG and visualisation can seem very technical and linear once you decide to en-devour on this "steepest" of learning curves.
Once you reach a point where you are comfortable enough that you can see past all the technical stuff and can start creating and expressing yourself in an artistic manner, one universal principal seems to dominate.

To my surprise, this one unifying principle applies to all mediums and forms of art, not just traditional art.

In order to achieve realism, photo-realism and the like, you need to simulate and incorporate, to an extent, imperfections and a dash of decay into your art.

In airbrushing a portrait, I would look for the texture of the skin, a scar, a few out-of-place hairs...all these seemingly insignificant elements contribute to achieving realism.
In Architectural visualisation, where every element has a specific dimension and needs to be technically accurate, the final product often looks very sterile and linear.
For this reason so many CG artists and visualizers purposefully create imperfections in their art to make it more believable. They take their perfect image or animation, and create elements that make it less perfect, and at the same time this creates a more realistic render.
Lens flares, depth-of-field blur and colour "blow-outs" are some of the most common.
Overcast skies, mist, fog, rain, wind and dust, all create atmosphere. The best Archviz images, photographs etc (the ones that win awards and accolades), are more-often-than-not shot at dusk, dawn or at night.
Funny enough, these are exactly the type of things traditional artists and photographers try to avoid.
In traditional art it is extremely difficult to produce something that is "perfect", and the opposite seems to be true for CG. Although it has it's own set of rules and dynamics, the one unifying truth is that nature, and even man made structures, all have imperfections. There are no infinitely square angles, there are no infinitely straight lines..there is always, no matter how minute, a transition area between one surface and texture to the next.

When looking at some of the amasing artists out there, I often scrutinize the overall visual appeal of it and always come to the same conclusion. You may be able to create better 3d models, or whatever..but the difference between myself and these truly great artists is their ability to incorporate their artistic ability into their renders. They  fuse architecture with nature, and the subtle imperfections is what creates such jaw-dropping visuals.

So of you, like me, feel that there is room for improvement in your work (and I believe one should always be striving to bettering your work, and never be complacent) take some time to visit some of the most incredible artists in the biz. If you Google, "best Archviz" the first million page results should suffice.

Draw inspiration and suck-up the info, spend more time on post-production and editing, and never let tight deadlines cramp your artistic style.

Good luck.

Sid Swan
www.sidswan.co.za