I'm not sure what your having problems with. You have a few options. You can do an abstract rendering by filling in appropriate colors, or you can actually apply materials using a tiling method. Its not much different than in the computer except here you have to manually apply the textures to all surfaces. You could experiment with filters to create a watercolor effect, but be careful filters can be tricky. I find that pulling textures from other pictures is easier and better looking than simply filling in with color.

Most will probably tell you its easier to manipulate CAD drawings in Illustrator, but I haven’t got of the Illustrator learning curve yet, so I prefer Photoshop.

I too would be interested in any websites with examples of 2D renderings.

Unless you have a large material library of images, I have found this extremely time consuming and often does not produce the desired effect. Tiling images oftentimes will produce noticable seams or odd scales to your images. You can fix this problem, but as I said before, it can take a long time.

The abstract option will be faster and probably produce a better result, but it's not going to give you a photo-realistic rendering.

I don't know of any sites with examples because I don't think many people do this.

If your boss likes the idea of watercolor renderings, you can always print out a cad drawing on bond, have it mounted to a sheet of foam core or gator board and watercolor over it. We've done this in offices I've worked in before, and it produces a nice loose rendering. The paper doesn't buckle because it's glued down, and you can see the hard lines of the cad through the watercolor rendering. You do need someone who can do watercolors though. You don't have to be a great watercolorist to get a satisfactory result however.

i used to be part of a team doing a lot of photoshop rendering for competitions in my last office (a large commercial practice in europe).

our method was to put a reference frame around the autocad drawing we wanted to render, print an eps file, and bring that eps into photoshop (150dpi was generally enough, but you might want 300 - file size will be an issue, 100mb photoshop files were common for this type of render). cut the image file in photoshop to the size of the original reference frame drawn in autocad.

put the eps layer on top, lock it, put a white layer on the bottom, and colour in between the two. name layers and put them into folders as you go along, because you will end up with 30 or 40 layers, and when they're all called 'layer 1' etc, it's very frustrating.

when finished, turn off the top layer eps in the photoshop file (which removes the print of the cad drawing) and save the image as a jpeg (to reduce file size). then reopen the cad drawing, insert the image behind, using the reference frame to get the size correct.

then you print from the cad file as standard, getting crisp cad lines, with the rendered image behind.

this method also means you can be somewhat 'loose' with your rendering, since the cad drawing will have line thicknesses that print ontop of the image.

as pencrush pointed out, we needed to have a pretty large material library, and were usually rendering site plans or masterplans with a lot of landscaping, sections with a lot of shadow rendering, or elevation treatments.

we rarely tiled images. using solid colour blocks and running them through filters usually gave a better result. the noise filter is particularily useful for this work, giving a grain and a hint of 3d to an otherwise flat colour. blending modes and opacity levels are really important for shading.

i'd say the style we used was pretty photorealistic, rather than an abstract watercolour type render. i can't image that using illustrator or freehand for rendering would give a satisfactory result, simply because they're both vector programs (unless you're looking for an extremely abstract drawing with lots of solid colours).

a few years back, when i was just starting to colour with photoshop, i found these tutorials by julie dillon here, which are a really useful guide to the kind of thing you can do. i know they're for colouring comics, but the principles are exactly the same, except you're colouring an eps file rather than a scanned drawing.

mark, do you have any links to see the results? that european practice's official site or something like that?

Using the crosshatch or colored pencil filter can really help with the materials. It will break them down to where the perspective is not as important. I do that with the people in the renderings as well. I just grab pics off the net, do a quick and dirty lasso, and then apply the filter.

Are these 3d models you are working off of? If so, the trick I use for shadows is to turn every layer white, then render to file. I then select all of the white and delete it, leaving only the shadows. Adjust transparency, and voila, shadows to work with that don't mess with the colors as much.

Also, I just took a workshop form a guy name Jim Legitt at the Texas Conference. He advocates what he calls Tradigital Imaging, or the combining of hand and computer drawings. There were some images he showed that were exclusively computer generated as well. His website is drawingshortcuts.com. I don't think there are many images though.

I think the best thing is to get started in photoshop, and then do some hand coloring. Doesn't take a long time, and it really helps. I just started doing this, and have only done a couple of images for one project this way, since taking the workshop. I will post those pics later if you like. I also have a completely computer drawn elevation that you could look at too. I hope this helps.

Here is the link.

Oh, here is the handout we got at the seminar, as well.

medit,

there's a couple of masterplan examples worth looking at here, here, and here.

there's very few examples of either elevations or sections floating around on the site. most of the images used to illustrate projects are perspectives rendered in a combination of max and photoshop, and done by a dedicated 3d team in the office.

there are two examples of sections here and here, but they're a few years old and not the same kind of standard as those that would have been submitted for competitions.

cool.. thanks! .. I like how the masterplans look like, I've seen people using Microstation to do things like that, no Photoshop, no Illustrator... architects that work in city councils or other administration offices here, they all use Microstation and zero AutoCAD, I've heard MS has a larger color palette...
did you worked at Architecture Studio in Paris? i've heard they have a giant office up there...

yeah, i was at architecture studio for a couple of years. i left in february.

it's a big enough office, numbers change but usually there was over 100 people. it's a pretty difficult place to work, with angry associates, students working for free (more or less), low pay for qualified architects, short term contracts, and very long hours.

i spent about 6 months on short term contracts doing competitions, then got a permanent position and worked on just one project for the next 18 months.

the team i was on probably had the best situation in there with normal hours, decent length contracts, and a definite project going on site. it was a good experience for me (mostly because i really enjoyed working with the other people on the team).

the problem with the office is that there isn't any attempt made to determine where peoples skills are. it just becomes a numbers game. when there's a deadline, they throw bodies at it, and then get annoyed when confusion sets in about who's doing what.

unlike most offices that size, there's no layer of architects with 10-15 years of experience as a buffer between the associates and everyone else. even project architects tended to be relatively inexperienced, because they don't pay well enough to attract anyone with that level of knowledge.

the end result is that while they're very good at competitions and presentations, the built work is completely incoherent (and that's being nice).

anyway...i think we've drifted off topic somewhat ;)

so awesome thanks. i will experiment with some things this weekend on my own stuff, additions to my parents house and my uncle's lake cabin.

i am mostly using solid color and gradients as shading to the homes. They have nice deep front porches. I have to fight with the printer to get the color right though. Some freind suggested indesign and illustrator but my boss refuses to pay for things right now. so i have to use my own personal copies...which i abhor. the links are great. i will post something as soon as i have it to show ya'll.

thanks again!!