Computer Graphic Images (Rendering) are together the best and the worse part of the design project in China.
The ability of Chinese rendering suppliers is incredible, they create astonishing images, hyper realistic details, amazingly glossy materials and surprisingly thin structures with unbelievably small recessed lights that make more than one beam each, all photographed with incredible angles.
Chinese render experts simply see things in the image that we don’t see, they spend incredible effort trimming the proportions, the colors, the shapes of the objects represented with a sort of ability in the balance, a non written Feng Shui philosophy of the rendering that none of us can even try to understand.
There are things that pop out from these renderings like flip flops under beds, dirty towels in a hotel room or perfuming pills in orinals (why do we need a render with a view of the orinals?).
The rendering is not only part of the presentation, but it is consider itself a reference for the supplier that sometimes doesn’t even needs technical drawings but he goes by sentiment from the picture. In this last case the disaster is round the corner.
The machine is not an instrument for the design, verify proportions, shapes, materials, on the contrary it’s a way to present, to hyper represent.
Clients are amazed by these renderings, they dream of spaces and products that will never exist, they buy a dream, actually the literally buy renderings because every view has a cost and the typical question is not how are you going to design my space, my product, but he many renderings will you give me.
The client’s surprise and delusion seeing reality but remembering the renderings is often translated in lack of credibility toward the design company, payment delays and fail of trust.
Chinese renderings are so true that they often become lies. If you take the comparison to a beautiful woman it is way more than make up, it’s definitely plastic surgery. There are some exceptions, companies that actually do design: lights are based on real math models, pillars are the exact dimensions, wood doesn’t reflect like mirror. These winning companies use the computer as a way to verify a thought, not as a way to represent a quotation.
The focus must be shifted from artists to professionals and give to the client also representations of the problems as an excuse to solve them. Finding the balance between the western way to present and idea and the Asian technique of representation is the win win situation. What we see must be what you get (at least enough close?).
I was raised with a presumed Chinese proverb basically saying “if you give an idea the rest is not important”. My father must have misunderstood something or things turned around for that time because nowadays I would say “if you want to sell an idea in China, is the rest that is important”.
