CABINS
Architecture Visualization Challenge VII
15 January 2018 – 30 April 2018
WINNERS ANNOUNCED / 08 June 2018
Welcome to CABINS, The 7th Architectural Visualization Challenge I’m running in partnership with Quixel as the marquee sponsor. The book CABINS by Philip Jodidio and the fantastic illustrations by Marie-Laure Cruschi served as the principal inspiration for this year’s challenge theme. That, and my love for prefab architecture design.
The Finalists & Winners!
The challenge is closed for new entries and here are the 24 finalists. Use the filter buttons to see just the Winners!
You can also explore ALL entries made during the challenge…
Megascans enables uncompromising quality and efficiency. It has helped studios speed up the creation of realistic scenery, such as MPC and its Megascans-based The Jungle Book environments, which won the 2017 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
CABINS is also sponsored by three category sponsors and many more prize sponsors, to whom I owe a lot of thanks for joining in offering support and great prizes for the winners.
The fast technological advancements in VR/AR/MR and adoption by content creators, calls for a re-evaluation of our workflows. In CABINS, I propose taking the “World Building” approach to the next level with photogrammetry by Quixel’s Megascans to help you achieve reality in the render.
I encourage all followers of the blog, as well as newcomers to take part in this Challenge. This is an amazing opportunity to explore new territory and push our limits.
Jump start your imagination and create something inspiring!
Recent Posts
Check out some of the posts made on the CABINS blog during the challenge.
Making of Australian Forest
Hi all. I’m really grateful to be on the list of winners. A lot of competitors did such a fantastic job, very detailed and with great concepts. Congrats to all winners and participants!
I would like to give you a short vision of how I prepared the Australian forest entry.
The Concept
Few weeks after the announcement of the challenge, I came up with the idea of a glass cabin in a forest. Of course, it’s not new, but I had a specific idea about an Australian forest.
I remembered our first trips around Sydney, nights were full of sounds, a forest full of creatures. So I imagined the short story and drew a sketch in photoshop. It took an hour to get the atmosphere that I liked.
Making of Inside Out
I have been doing arch viz for many years now, and over that time I have found that I enjoy the nature part of any project the most. I like the challenge to mimic nature and create a believable environment in which architecture occupies. So, this was an exciting prospect to me, not only to create an environment for a cabin but to visualize it in VR and get access to trial the Megascan assets.
I am going to break my entry into three parts.
Nature
Cliffs
Trees/planting
Beach
Nature underwater
Water
Sealife
Coral
Shipwreck
Cabin
Design
Modeling
Texturing
Lighting/Rendering
Post Production
Making of Northern Wisps
I placed my cabin in Icelandic Thorsmork. It is a diversified valley with a beautiful color palette and striking rock formations.
Although it’s pretty close to the booming tourist routes, it remains relatively tranquil due to the more dominant river crossing on the way. That place gave me the possibility to create some plausible scenes which evoke serenity with chilling hints of the raw, untamed and besieging nature.
The project turned out to be pretty complex in the end, including many scenes in various lighting scenarios. It wasn’t however planned in this form and thus never felt really overwhelming.
In the beginning, I thought about only one scene with 2-4 points of views. The rules of the competition required preparing spherical images so I organized this environment so as it would be interesting all around. It’s a common pain with spherical panoramas that they include only 10-20% of the absorbing content, and the rest is merely a filler. I tried to avoid it, at least in first renderings.
Don’t worry, we’ll provide you with Megascans assets, and Yulio is free to start with.
CABINS offers you lots of freedom regarding your concept. I’m not providing you with a specific model as I did with the GH HOUSE and THE MUSEUM, but there is a (very loose) program you need to keep to.
Don’t panic! There are no wrong answers to this.
“Your cabin (or group of cabins) serves as a shelter or vacation destination for someone specific or the general public be it in paid or free form. You are also in charge of recreating the surroundings of your cabin, so be sure the two work nicely together.”
Good luck!
Terms, rules and more!
Stay tuned for more information about more sponsors, awards, prizes, rules, terms, and how to upload your progress milestones. Start your creative process, and for any question you may have, use the form below.
Just check the FAQ first!
This is a skill-based competition
Eligibility
Organiser
Sponsors
Agreement to Official Rules
Join by clicking the button on this page header
Create your Passport
Post progress milestones
Submit your final entry
Stills
You’ll need to provide at least three still images :
- Exterior Long Distance View
- Exterior Cabin View
- Interior Towards Landscape View
Feel free to add more but make sure to mark the main three as such. I will provide more infromation about how to do that towards delivery time.
VR
You’ll need to provide at least two 360 VR renders via Yulio as a hotspot tour. An account on Yulio is free to open and you’ll add the URL for your VR to the final submit.
Feel free to add more hotspots to your tour.
You must clearly mark your final entry upload as such. You will see an option for it in the uploader.
Offer feedback to fellow challengers
This is a very important aspect of the challenge. Helping others before getting help for yourself. I suggest that before any milestone update you make for your own entry, offer feedback for someone else. That would be the minimal expected engagement level. Do aim for more!
You must use Megascans Assets + Terms
Once you submit your Concept Progress Milestone, Quixel will send you access to a temporary account loaded with 160 valid until April 30th, 2018.
Terms of use :
- This temporary access contains 160 points under the Megascans Freelancer (4K resolution) license, and is to be used specifically for Architecture Visualization Challenge VII.
- When the contest ends, and your temporary access to the library has expired, you will still have access to the assets you have downloaded using the 160 points.
- If at some point in the future, you wish to use these same assets in a project commercially, you will be required to pay for the 160 points (depending upon the use-case; Freelance, Indie, Studio) before you do so.
- If you do not pay for the assets at that point in time, it will be considered a breach of the terms of service.
Access options :
- If you are new to Megascans, we will give you a temporary account using the email you have contacted us with.
- If you already have a Megascans account which is active, we can add the points to your existing account.
You must deliver a Yulio VR Tour
More on that soon! Don’t worry about this too much as there is no rush at the early stages of the challenge regarding the use of Yulio. This comes later as you start rendering 360’s of your nearly complete entry.
Single artist personal entry
Winners are required to write a MAKING OF
No explicit content
No plagiarism
Grand Prize Winner (est. value €15,500)
- Quixel – One Megascans Indie License with 1-year access (unlimited points)
- Yulio – Subscription TBD
- Laubwerk – 9 Plants Kit of choice
- Ranch Computing – Rendering Credits
- Lumion – PRO License
- iToo Software – TBD
- AXYZ Design – ANIMA License + Assets TBD
- Corona Renderer – 2 year Corona FairSaaS License (1 workstation + 3 nodes)
- Polyget – Complete Foliage Collection
- VIZPARK – VP Complete
- MAXTREE – 6 Vol of choice
- MORE TBD
1st Runner Up (est. value €9,000)
- Quixel – One Megascans Indie License with 6-month access (unlimited points)
- Yulio – Subscription TBD
- Laubwerk – 6 Plants Kit of choice
- Ranch Computing – Rendering Credits
- Lumion – Standard License
- iToo Software – TBD
- AXYZ Design – ANIMA License + Assets TBD
- Corona Renderer – 1 year Corona FairSaaS License (1 workstation + 3 nodes)
- Polyget – Complete Foliage Collection
- VIZPARK – PLANTS Complete
- MAXTREE – 4 Vol of choice
- MORE TBD
2nd Runner Up (est. value €6,200)
- Quixel – One Megascans Indie License with 6-month access (unlimited points)
- Yulio – Subscription TBD
- Laubwerk – 3 Plants Kit of choice
- Ranch Computing – Rendering Credits
- iToo Software – TBD
- AXYZ Design – Assets TBD
- Corona Renderer – 6 months Corona FairSaaS License (1 workstation + 3 nodes)
- Polyget – Complete Foliage Collection
- VIZPARK – HDRI Complete
- MAXTREE – 2 Vol of choice
- MORE TBD