Adding animations to an architectural presentation used to be time-consuming and highly technical. Now, with Envision 1.0, you can transform 3D models into immersive cinematic experiences quickly, easily, and in real time.
Envision allows you to tell a more impactful story and deliver stunning presentations that win projects. It effortlessly handles detail-heavy scenes, assembles complex projects, and supports dynamic animation and lifelike characters without compromising on performance or quality.
There are various types of animation available in Envision, and in this article, we'll cover how you can add moving people, vehicles, vegetation, and storytelling animations to your architectural presentation.
How does immersive visualization help architecture firms?
Adding animation to your presentation has many benefits, including, but not limited to, better client understanding, increased engagement, and clearer communication. It makes communicating projects easier as it helps translate technical data and provide spatial awareness. With Envision, you'll be able to:
- Win more competitions with clear and compelling visualization, animation, and storytelling.
- Grow your business by convincing potential clients to hire you with a persuasive presentation.
- Save time by getting design proposals approved faster with clear communication of the design intent.
- Maintain and enhance your firm's brand by elevating your visualization to cinematic storytelling.
Adding a crowd of animated people
By adding animated people, you'll be able to convey authentic context with realistic movement and human interaction. This will make the space feel more engaging and enhance your visual narrative. Envision is powered by the deep integration of Anima software, which is recognized for its character models quality, lifelike animation and realistic crowd behavior.
To add a crowd of animated people to your model, click on the Anima Crowd icon on the toolbar, select a surface, and draw a path where the people will walk. Adjust the length and curvature if needed. Add people via the Cosmos library—use the filter option to make things easier—and drag and drop them into your scene.
If you want to quickly create a crowd without specifying any characters, you can set the desired number with 'Actor Count' and click 'Generate' to add them to the path. You can adjust the path and regenerate the crowd anytime.
If you would like to use 4D characters, you can do so by individually drag-dropping the asset in the viewport. While this works great for characters with idle animation, walking 4D characters need to be manually bound to an existing path, which can be done with a dedicated button in the actor's details.
To see a preview, go to full-screen mode. This mode enables you to explore the scene while having the people walk. You'll notice the characters don't walk through each other but subtly sidestep when they get in front of each other. This Envision function conveys realistic crowd behavior—fully motion-captured people moving with natural actions.
Adding animated vehicles
Including animated vehicles, such as cars, in your architectural presentation illustrates the flow of traffic, enabling clients to better understand movement and functionality within the design.
You can animate vehicles along paths, just like the people models. Select a surface, draw a path where you want the vehicles to move, and adjust if needed. Then, add vehicles from the Cosmos library by dragging and dropping them into your scene, and use the 'Move along path' option.
The next Envision update will include a revolutionary new traffic simulation system which is another extension to the Anima integration. This feature will automate and further simplify traffic simulations. Realism will be significantly boosted with lifelike motion such as spinning wheels, chassis roll, and terrain adaptation.
Go to full-screen mode to see a preview, where you’ll be able to explore the scene while having the vehicles move.
Creating moving vegetation with wind animation
Adding animated vegetation brings natural movement and life to your architectural presentation, making the environment more dynamic and immersive. In the next update, enhanced water materials will also respond to Envision’s wind system, adding an extra layer of environmental realism.
In Envision, enable the animated filter to make the vegetation models appear. To avoid duplicating a model manually, you can place it in a scatter object.
To make the vegetation models move, enable the wind animation feature. You can do this by going to the 'Environment settings' and activating 'Wind animation.' Use the intensity slider to adjust the animation—whether you want chaotic or gentle movements. This setting controls all animated vegetation in your project.
Use the full-screen mode to see a preview. This mode lets you explore the scene while watching the vegetation move.
Using animation to tell your design story
With Envision, you can tell the story of your final design through multiple layers of animation. Guide your audience by animating cameras along paths to create smooth transitions and cinematic shots, complete with audio for added impact.
You can enhance the atmosphere by animating environmental elements like the sky, clouds and sunlight to show different times of day or moods. You can also animate variations to present design options such as alternative layouts or material choices. They all coordinate seamlessly in the timeline, demonstrating accurately how various aspects change over time.
To animate your cameras, drag a camera into the timeline editor. Advance the timeline to another place of the clip and position the camera at your desired endpoint, you'll see it smoothly animate between points. Repeat to animate the camera in the current shot. To continue the sequence with another camera shot, add another clip and repeat the process, moving the camera to the next location for a seamless, dynamic animation.
This way Envision allows you to create your cinematic edit directly on the timeline. Instead of rendering out multiple clips and then combining those in a third-party tool like Adobe Premier, you can combine all the cameras inside of Envision.
Another way to animate cameras is to draw a path and assign a camera to it. Simply click and drag where you want the path to be. Bring the path up a little, and then use the 'Move along path' option. You can utilize the transformations and manipulate your camera in all different axes and orientations to get nice creative effects.
You can then set the speed. Drag the camera to your timeline to see a preview of how the camera will move along the path. If you need longer animation, you can extend the length of the clip.
You can add sound to your presentation for an added punch. Hearing rattling plates, people humming, and street traffic will allow you to not only see your architectural project, but also hear it. To do this, select 'My soundtrack' and load a soundtrack you want, then click 'Preview' to hear the sound playing while you explore the animated scene.
Conclusion
With Envision, creating high-quality animated architectural presentations has never been more accessible. From dynamic camera paths to lifelike animated people, vehicles, and vegetation, all the elements work together to present a captivating and immersive experience.
Envision is part of the newly launched ArchDesign Collection, which also includes Enscape, Veras, and Enscape Impact. Together, they provide the complete immersive design toolkit for architects and teams.
