Northeastern University - Institutional Master Plan

shmessy said:
It is just super that it will look nice in one of theose coffee table picture books. i agree, it will photograph quite beautifully.

But I'm sorry, cca, the Ferdinand a pretty bad analogy.

The Ferdinand actively ENGAGES Dudley Square at street level. It makes its area better.

So far, this project shows no inkling of doing anything close to what the Ferdinand does.

If it engaged the pedestrian and helped make Boston a more livable city, THEN it can be put in the Ferdinand category. Right now, this is just a "look at me" style fortress. But, obviously, the book isn't fully written yet and I hope it develops more towards its environs.

Boston is hot as a pistol right now. There is no reason why the Mayor and BRA simply don't condition approvals based on ground floor engagement/retail.

Would that all the NIMBYs worry as much about the GROUND FLOOR as they do about the TOP FLOOR.
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I think the same problem exists with the nice new academic buildings along Huntington--with no ground activation some of the best new buildings in Boston fail to have the impact they could on their neighboring community.
 
Tombstoner said:
I think the same problem exists with the nice new academic buildings along Huntington--with no ground activation some of the best new buildings in Boston fail to have the impact they could on their neighboring community.
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Agreed.

In THIS real estate environment, the Mayor and BRA have leverage on this kind of thing and can positively affect the street level quality of life for the citizens.

It ain't rocket science. Make it a condition to approval. The developers/schools aren't going to fold up their tents over that. This truly is one of those serendipitous "everything to win, and nothing to lose" situations. Walsh is being lazy here in not taking it up.

After all, isn't quality of life for the people who live there one of the main report card issues for a Mayor? (ok, ok, insert joke here.....)
 
shmessy said:
It's 2016, they couldn't do better with the animation than that?
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That animation is very nice & detailed actually. It's quite involved.

Architects don't have weeks upon weeks to make renders & videos like everyone seems to think on this board. There's always people commenting "why isn't x rendered" or "why are these xyz buildings missing." The reality is that architects typically get a lump fee for the project (T&M projects are typically smaller jobs) and they have to budget time accordingly across SD (when renders are produced), DD, CD & CA. Within that budget for each phase you have to break down tasks. In SD for example, you have to budget admin, project meetings, programming, plans, sections, elevations, model-making, rendering etc. You can't spend all your hours on rendering the entire city & every proposed development, nor can you spend it on fully CGI rendering people moving & walking around like a Pixar movie. Architects are selling a building, not a movie.

Also, this animation was produced in 2014. It appears to be a SketchUp fly-thru with possibly some add-on plugins.
 
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datadyne007 said:
You can't spend all your hours on rendering the entire city & every proposed development.......
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I don't where you're trying to move the subject.....but we're talking about ONE building here, not "rendering the entire city".

We're going to have to just agree to disagree on this. I feel that it is very hard to get a good picture of this development from that animation.
 
shmessy said:
I don't where you're trying to move the subject.....but we're talking about ONE building here, not "rendering the entire city".

We're going to have to just agree to disagree on this. I feel that it is very hard to get a good picture of this development from that animation.
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It was more of a general comment with my own frustrations of the comments about renderings on this board. I know how this works behind the scenes and typically renders get shoved out the door last minute or dumbed down by the higher-ups.
 
What people have to realize is that realistic animations or even somewhat basic ones take hundreds of hours to complete usually and to get realism with a fly through like that you are talking about making tons of frames. Usually animation uses around 24 frames per second so that is 1440 frames per minute for a grand total of 8,352 frames for a 5 min 48 second video like the one linked above. Even with computer animation handling a lot of the motion that is hundreds of hours of programming and design for a small promo video. The costs would be ridiculous. And regardless of cost they don't have the time to produce a better animation than the one above. There is a reason hundreds of people work on pixar films for several years before they are released and it is because animation takes a lot of time.
 
Redirecting this thread back on track....

It will be important to see what Phase II of the Columbus lot will be.
 
citylover94 said:
What people have to realize is that realistic animations or even somewhat basic ones take hundreds of hours to complete usually and to get realism with a fly through like that you are talking about making tons of frames. Usually animation uses around 24 frames per second so that is 1440 frames per minute for a grand total of 8,352 frames for a 5 min 48 second video like the one linked above. Even with computer animation handling a lot of the motion that is hundreds of hours of programming and design for a small promo video. The costs would be ridiculous. And regardless of cost they don't have the time to produce a better animation than the one above. There is a reason hundreds of people work on pixar films for several years before they are released and it is because animation takes a lot of time.
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Creating a 3d model is not the same as hand drawn animation. No one is drawing individual frames. In fact, this video isn't animated at all. It's just a virtual camera moving around a 3d environment. It's more like building something with popsicle sticks and then taking out a video camera.

(Not commenting on the quality models in this video.)
 
Justin7 said:
Creating a 3d model is not the same as hand drawn animation. No one is drawing individual frames. In fact, this video isn't animated at all. It's just a virtual camera moving around a 3d environment. It's more like building something with popsicle sticks and then taking out a video camera.

(Not commenting on the quality models in this video.)
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Each frame of that video still has to individually render, plus the good quality frames with shadows, materials, and color have to render seperatly.

A full, good quality render with shadows, raycast light, bumpmapped materials, etc takes 2-4 hours on my rig for a small 1024x800 px image. On a brand new CAD workstation it would probably be 1-3. Send it out to a render farm, 20mins to an hour. Per image. And that's not counting the time it takes to build and assign mateirals, place and adjust lighting (which takes a long! time), and double check it. Plus the three false starts where you get the full render done and it looks like shit so you have to do it again. And the Photoshop touch up you have to do afterwards. Those scalies aren't easy to add, they have to look somewhat natural and each has to have its levels adjusted to it appears to be in the same lighting as the render.

The video itself is probably exported from revit's walkthrough function. But you still have to assign a path for the camera to take, and adjust it a bunch of times so it doesn't do weird stuff like go through walls. And actually exporting it takes a long freaking time too.

Then editing it in a video editor to put those still renders in, plus create the soundscape, which is pretty complex in this video. Those quick graphics where it rains and arrows are moving, the skateboarder, and the orange line were probably done in a whole other program like after effects, and was basically hand drawn animation, and takes a bit too.

I wouldnt be surprised if that took a week at least. There's a reason you don't often see walkthroughs like this: it takes for ever to make. And based off the reactions here to it, probably wasn't worth the effort. This was probably some interns entire job, because I can't imagine a paid employee being used, it would be a waste of resources.
 
davem said:
And based off the reactions here to it, probably wasn't worth the effort. This was probably some interns entire job, because I can't imagine a paid employee being used, it would be a waste of resources.
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Remember the motto of ArchBoston posters "Nothing is ever good enough!"
 
I made a point of not commenting on the quality of the video, but to be clear, I think it was fine for what it is (I only see one person complaining). I was only pointing out that no one is creating individual frames. The vast majority of the work was creating the environment. Once that is done the length of the video doesn't greatly affect man hours (which is in direct contrast to actual animation). Apologies for keeping the thread off track.

Really like the glass/wood portion. Not sure the back end will age well.
 
True using frames wasn't a good way to describe what was done and I should have thought more before posting that.
 
Who cares about how many megapixels the video is? The building is great, but the surrounding landscaping and out-door space is fantastic, especially connecting the main campus with the Columbus Ave side. It looks very High Line-esque. My only concern is that unless people use that space, it could become eerie and desolate at night.
 
Can anyone help me with this? City Councilor Jackson seems a bit miffed that there is going to be a dormitory tower built at Columbus Ave and Burke Street (which is the parking lot location, I think?), saying:

"I sat through meetings for 16 months and the location of this dorm was not nailed down, it was one of 3 locations."

Is there any validity to that statement? There were other locations proposed?

I don't understand his concern that the dorm tower will be "too tall" for the neighborhood, considering the neighborhood is made up mostly of Northeastern-owned properties, a couple of apartment buildings, and, across Tremont Street, a public housing project.

Does he have a legitimate beef? I haven't been following this very closely.
 
JohnAKeith said:
Can anyone help me with this? City Councilor Jackson seems a bit miffed that there is going to be a dormitory tower built at Columbus Ave and Burke Street (which is the parking lot location, I think?), saying:

"I sat through meetings for 16 months and the location of this dorm was not nailed down, it was one of 3 locations."

Is there any validity to that statement? There were other locations proposed?

I don't understand his concern that the dorm tower will be "too tall" for the neighborhood, considering the neighborhood is made up mostly of Northeastern-owned properties, a couple of apartment buildings, and, across Tremont Street, a public housing project.

Does he have a legitimate beef? I haven't been following this very closely.
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Tito Jackson is not very intelligent and on the whole a rather middling and a times downright negative force in local politics around here..

I know that doesnt answer your question, but it's the truth nonetheless.
 
The beef is, and always has been, that Northeastern is slowly creeping into Roxbury. It isn't an illegitimate complaint; the train tracks and then Columbus Avenue used to be barriers but now Northeastern is creeping towards Tremont Street and that affects the neighborhood.
 
Proposition Joe said:
The beef is, and always has been, that Northeastern is slowly creeping into Roxbury. It isn't an illegitimate complaint; the train tracks and then Columbus Avenue used to be barriers but now Northeastern is creeping towards Tremont Street and that affects the neighborhood.
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So they would prefer that Roxbury remain a low income black ghetto, walled off from the rest of the city?
 
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