Take your V-ray and Rhino it up your Render

There are several things disturbing me right now. 

First, there is the fact that it is 11:15 at night, and frankly, I'd rather be getting ready for bed. Which brings me to the fact that I'm at campus, which is expected, given that we have a review monday. What really irritates me is this pissant v-ray rendering workshop which is technically mandatory for us studio 419 students.

This workshop is essentially how to use a very sophisticated and difficult to use rendering engine, V-Ray, to create photorealistic images of computer models created in Rhino. First of all, it's childish and ridiculous to make this kind of digital masturbation mandatory. If people want to learn this kind of thing, fantastic, knock your lights out. I'm curious about it myself, honestly, but its an insult to graduate students to jam V-ray down our throats. 

Secondly, I just don't like photorealistic renderings. What is the point of representation? To convey a quality of a space, especially where perspectives are concerned, especially to non-architectural people who will have difficulty understanding the drier standard forms of architectural representation. However, the 'reality' of 'photorealism' is bullshit. You can bounce light a thousand times, and spend years rendering a single scene, but when that space is finally built, it will be nothing like the rendering. Buildings aren't built like the computer model, its always different, especially as the built environment is a mediated and negotiated thing, evolving in its own construction. 

Additionally, what is the point? If you are attempting to sell a design to a client, showing everything down to the style of the doorknob closes more doors than it opens. Either the client will love it and then blame you when it doesn't come out exactly like the rendering, or more likely, the client will fixate on the tiny details that are required in photorealistic renderings, and nitpick it apart before you can even get to the discussion of the spaces and the quality of the spaces created. You'll be trying to get a buy off on the atrium stairs, and it will get rejected because the client doesn't like the color of the drapes. A photorealistic rendering is a yes or no proposition, with no potential for negotiation or change. 

Third, this workshop takes place on a weekend, which I'm assuming because they don't want to interfere with studio or other classes. Why do students need weekends, anyway? St.Louis is dead right? We all are here to study 24/7 right? The other sad bit is that I've got a saturday workshop, and Saori has sunday workshops, so between us, we never get a weekend daytrip.

(Pauses to wipe foam off of computer screen)

Anyway, monday is a big day for presentations. I have a midterm review monday at noon, and before that, I have to give a 20 minute presentation for my Metabolic City class. Saturday, I elected to do a workshop in the middle of the day with Juhani Pallasmaa, the Finnish author and architect, instead of this pathetic, useless class, but I still need to turn in the homework, which is to take a scene and render it.