• TechNotes
• Creating a Rendering that looks like Water Color

Winning Techtip of June, 2007

Creating Renderings that look like Water Color - by b.trenga, Charleston, USA

b.trenga shared a very quick and simple method on ArchiCADTalk that allows to create renderings that have an impression very similar to a Water Color painting, in a quick and easy manner.

Some example pictures are uploaded to ArchiCAD-Talk, the link to the thread can be found at the bottom of this article.

Here is a simple step-by-step guide to his method:

• Take your lightworks rendering (make sure it originates from a saved view so you can use it again in the next step) and bring it to Photoshop (or another software with similar capabilities).
• Then back in ArchiCAD, use the sketch rendering engine with the pen and ink setting however you like it, with a white background.
• Paste the sketch rendering's result into Photoshop and make sure the sketch image is on the bottom layer so it looks more artistic and faded.
• Then add the light works image on top of that, set to about 50% opacity.
• Finally, fill in your background with the actual site images also set to 50% opacity so it all matches.

The result can be really stunning and impressive - take some time to elaborate all settings to get to an end result that suits your design/requirements/taste best.

Hint: you may want to try using AlignView in ArchiCAD to get the view that corresponds to the images taken on site.

The original thread, and the pictures can be accessed by clicking on the below link:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=17210&start=10&sid=d2e230bf3b91d91b4773db9ff868745a