Hello, my name is Jacinto Monteiro, I graduated as an architect, back in 2001, in Portugal, and started working in this profession for 6 years. In the peak of 2007/8 crisis, with my girlfriend pregnant of my only child, I decided to quit my architectural job and had a fresh start as a digital artist. High risk and drastic decision that changed my life completely, luckily for better.

Our names are Hugo Ferreira and Pedro Teixeira, we are an architect and product designer managing the Okdraw Studio in Portugal. We always knew each other since the young age, and when in 2012 we realized that we were both working in the 3D area but in different ways, we decided to merge our knowledge and work towards architectural and product visualization.

For every new project, we try to understand the clients’ needs and to offer him a feedback of solutions and artistic guidelines adapted to the project.

I started working with CG in the 1980's when the TV station I worked at upgraded to a digital Grass Valley video switcher and Chryon Chroma-key system, we used POV-RAY and Caligari True Space.

For me the creation of a project or a render is not just a work with a computer and drawings. The most important for me is to bring satisfaction and happiness to my customers, because the art is a symbiosis of thinking and creating with love.

Our workflow is really straight forward: after our first meeting with the client we create a storyboard in order to have the necessary feedback, we do this roughly 3 times until everyone is satisfied with the camera angle, materials, the mood and - the most important thing - with the feeling we want to depict.

As you already know, the last days of October animago Awards has announced the winners of this year. Today we would like to introduce you Stefan Larsson from Japan. His CG animation "Spatial bodies" was chosen by animago expert jury as the best Architecture Film of 2016.

One of the most important thing is to look at the details in the real world and work on it. More you work on the details, more the scene will be realistic.

I dropped out of school when I was obsessed enough with Max and render engines, spending 12-14 hours a day just testing every area. After some time I started getting contacts via the forums where I had posted my renderings to share with others.

You need to really enjoy what you do. ArchViz is a brilliant career but with many obstacles along the way.

My "secret" tool is Vray2SidedMtl. It's a cool way to create realistic leaves for vegetation and, in my opinion, it's better and also faster for rendering than using translucence map.

For achieving photorealistic results general taste in design is far more important than just a technical knowledge of the software.