‍

Taking the creation process of your 3D visualization projects to a whole new level is the future of 3D visualization. However, you should never sacrifice your level of quality for the sake of speed. Both have to go hand in hand. You know time is money in the world of architecture and 3D visualization.

Fortunately, 3D artists can significantly accelerate the design stage and implement their ideas through state-of-the-art, cutting-edge CGI tools, along with high-tech equipment. These tools help them make changes to projects, even during construction.

We can already see how the most advanced CGI tools impact the world of 3D visualization, leaving their mark on the architectural industry. Most of the high-tech technologies currently focus on making both construction and design more effective, timely, and faster.

Advanced 3D visualization plays an immensely important, almost crucial role in modern construction and architecture. Minimization of errors, rapid manufacturing of building elements, collaborative digital engineering, the ability to make changes with unprecedented efficiency; all this is now possible thanks to the most enhanced 3D visualization technology.

Moreover, presenting and approving projects is now much more comfortable than ever before thanks to amazingly photorealistic visuals that do such an excellent job of persuading all parties involved in a project.

As a 3D artist, you’re well aware of the importance of staying at the very forefront of innovation. If you’re wondering how to speed up your 3D visualization projects and become more efficient, the answer is straightforward – innovation. Staying on top of things is the only way to ensure more efficiency.

Besides keeping an eye on the latest trends of the 3D industry, you should also improve the more practical side of your artistic approach. With that in mind, the following tips should help you make better use of your time.

Keep and Build on Older Project Files

Regardless of when you did your last project file, never delete your old projects, as they can be instrumental later on. It doesn’t matter if you’re a client, team leader, or 3D artist; keeping your older project files allows you to save time significantly.

You can use render presets, materials, and objects taken from these older files in your next 3D visualization project instead of starting from scratch. This will help to speed up your work. If you’re worried about free space on your HDD, there are a couple of ways to take care of that too:

●        Use either cloud storage or external HDD;

●        Use archive apps such as WinRAR to archive your old projects;

Some Plugins and Scripts Can Help

This tip is especially useful for team leaders and 3D artists, as they are most commonly in charge of controlling the use of plugins and scripts when making 3D visualizations. Both scripts and plugins allow 3D artists to speed up 3D rendering cycles, as well as:

●        Save time on operations;

●        Add additional functionalities to the software tools to boost processing power;

●        Increase the level of convenience while working on a project;

Symmetrical Approach

A lot of real-world things, such as electronics, furniture, and buildings, have symmetry. In other words, 3D artists can base their work on 3D models of these objects and model a third, a quarter, and a half of an object with ease. After that, they can simply use symmetry to get the rest of it.

Instead of modeling the whole building, they can do half of it and use the mirror function to get the rest. This can help save tremendous amounts of time while still getting top-quality results. To make your 3D visualization complete, simply add parts that aren’t symmetrical.

Stock Models and Textures

There is no need to make all of your textures and 3D models from scratch. You can use stock models and textures made by various well-established and reputable 3D artists from all over the world.

There are samples available that include:

●        Bathroom fixtures and accessories

●        Interior and exterior flowers, trees, and plants

●        Interior and exterior furniture

●        Light fixtures

●        Cars

You can either choose to buy your samples or download them. There are many online platforms you can browse for stock 3D models, but the most popular ones include:

●        TurboSquid

●        Evermotion

●        3DSky.org

It's essential to keep in mind that you can use these platforms as long as their offer matches your exact needs and project requirements. In case you need some specific accessories, furniture, or anything else, you’ll need to create those objects, as you won’t be able to find those exact 3D models on 3D stock platforms.

Using these platforms is one of the best, timely, and cost-efficient ways to purchase or download 3D models and textures. If you need to download free textures or buy textures for your projects, consider the following platforms:

●        Textures.com

●        Wild textures

●        Freestocktextures.com

●        Texture Haven

●        Architextures

●        Cc0textures

●        Texturelib

●        Sharetextures

●        Textures One

●        Tony textures

Seamless textures can be extremely helpful to 3D artists as they can tile them to have a seam effect almost effortlessly. Creating textures requires the use of image editing software, as well as investing both effort and time. Fortunately, there is a way around all that.

Simply choose one of the texture stock platforms from our list and enjoy seamless textures of a wide range of materials that require no additional editing.

Set 3D Applications to Low-Priority Before Rendering

Before you start a new rendering session of the scene, change the priority settings for the 3D application to low. 3D rendering requires a huge amount of CPU power; in some cases, even up to 100%.

This can slow down your performance and prevent you from doing other important things, such as using your workstations to go about your other tasks, work with other 3D scenes, and so on. By setting 3D applications to the low-priority setting before rendering, you can significantly speed up your 3D visualization project.

Setting to the low priority will allow you to focus on other important tasks on your laptop or PC while ensuring that your scene is rendered simultaneously in the background. Use Windows task manager to set the low priority.

Simply go to the task manager, locate the process of your 3D rendering application in the process tab, right-click on it to get a dropping menu, and hit the Set Priority setting. Before you do this, make sure that your application is optimized to work correctly in such a mode.

While this can help you save some time and processing power, it is only useful during scene rendering. If you use a 3D rendering program for editing or creating your project, the low setting won’t suffice; you’ll need to change it to Normal.

Hide Unused Objects

If there are objects that you don’t work with at the moment, you can additionally speed things up by hiding those unused objects. Since rendering scenes usually have many objects, you can hide most of them and keep only those you need at the moment.

This will allow your GPU to work faster with fewer data. Simply do all the usual operations with the objects you’re currently using. Many great rendering programs like 3DS Max allow you to keep the objects you want to work with by selecting them and then hiding all other objects you don’t need at the moment.

There is also a handy feature called “hide by category” you can also use to hide entire categories of objects you don’t currently need or use.

Use Off-Time for Long Rendering

Instead of wasting your precious working hours on long rendering sessions, it’s better to use your off-time to take care of it. If you have a holiday coming up, free weekends, etc., use this spare time to go about your rendering.

Sometimes, rendering can take many hours, even days. Since you won’t always be in a position to spare such a long time to do it, the best way to handle this time-sensitive issue is to use your off-time to take care of those long renders.

Simply run your rendering program, set all the necessary parameters, and leave it to do the rendering for you. You can do something different while your machine is handling rendering for you.

What’s even better about letting your rendering work in the background is that you can control the 3D rendering process at all times via remote desktop control applications, such as Radmin, Team Viewer, etc. This will help you finish your project faster.

Make Sure Your Machine Is Capable

Let’s clear one thing here – you can’t expect to save time on such a complex and power-demanding process such as 3D rendering if your machine cannot handle such a task. Therefore, you need to make sure your workstation is powerful enough to support your actions.

Follow these steps to make sure your workstation has the necessary processing and computing power to support your rendering efforts:

●        Your PC needs to have a powerful GPU (graphics) and CPU (processing power).

●        You’ll need enough RAM to avoid using virtual memory on your HDD, which can slow down your rendering as it works slower than RAM. Make sure you match your RAM according to your GPU and CPU.

●        With such a powerful CPU, you’ll need an adequate cooling system to ensure your workstation works stable. Keep monitoring both motherboard and CPU temperature regularly.

●        If you’re short on budget and can’t afford a more powerful workstation at the moment, there are overclocking techniques that allow you to turn your existing laptop or PC into a real beast. You can also consider upgrading your laptop or PC by researching the hardware updates released by manufacturers.

●        Consider buying used components, such as GPU, RAM, and CPU, as you can use them to upgrade your machine at the most affordable prices according to your budget.

We recommend using more than one machine if you need to perform complex rendering tasks like rendering animations. You can either use multiple computers or a render farm to handle such overwhelming functions that require extra processing power.

The last advice we can give you is to consider optimizing memory usage, as this can speed things up when you’re working with very complicated scenes. Such scenes usually require vast amounts of RAM, which can cause delays when rendering. Do some research on how to optimize memory usage as each of the rendering tools offer such options. You just need to learn how to use them.

Conclusion

In the internet-driven world of digital transformation, clients and consumers demand the highest quality products and services. Whether you’re selling cars or creating 3D visualizations, your customers want nothing but the best of the best.

Since time is of the essence in the business realm today, those who respect deadlines have the biggest chance to succeed. With all that in mind, it doesn’t take much to speed up your workflows enough to become more efficient in what you do.

3D rendering requires a lot of time, and there is no way around it. However, you can significantly improve the way you use the time you have by additionally organizing yourself and your workflows. We sincerely hope that this article was helpful enough to allow you to make better use of your time and become more efficient with your 3D visualization projects.