"Every time we deliver a project, clients are amazed at how fast we work and the quality of the visuals. This builds their confidence and often brings us more work."
—Buck Knitt, RINKA's Svp Architect and Senior Design Director
Key Takeaways:
Studio Overview
RINKA, a Milwaukee-based architecture and design firm with an additional office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is known for its innovative approach to architecture, interior design, and urban planning. With a team of 50 professionals, RINKA delivers a comprehensive suite of services, including in-house branding and marketing. By integrating D5 Render into its workflow, RINKA has redefined its design process, achieving unprecedented efficiency and visual quality.
The RINKA Approach: Practicality Meets Aspiration
RINKA's design philosophy blends practicality with aspiration. The firm's goal is to find opportunities through critical and analytical processes, avoiding designs that prioritize form over function. Internally, RINKA fosters a "dream phase," encouraging big ideas that are grounded in efficiency and practicality. This approach ensures designs are both visionary and easy to communicate, gaining client buy-in.
The Need for Enhanced Visualization Tools
As a young office with a team of designers demanding cutting-edge tools, RINKA sought to streamline its visualization process. Creating visuals in-house is essential for RINKA to align branding and design while maintaining control over storytelling. However, previous tools like Lumion posed challenges, including high resource demands and subpar rendering quality. The firm needed a solution that would:
- Reduce hardware dependency
- Improve visual quality
- Enhance organizational capabilities.
- Support collaborative workflows
Switching to D5 Render
Even a quick test run of D5 showed us that it was the better choice. The rendering quality and asset library immediately surpassed what we had with Lumion.
D5 Render proved to be the perfect solution for RINKA's needs. The firm's transition to D5 brought several key benefits:
- Efficiency on Older Machines: Unlike Lumion, D5's lighter software footprint allowed RINKA to utilize older machines for large-scale models, avoiding constant hardware upgrades.
- Superior Rendering Quality: D5's rendering capabilities and extensive asset library immediately surpassed Lumion, delivering visuals that met RINKA's high standards.
- Streamlined Organization: The intuitive asset organization feature enabled designers to toggle and track assets effortlessly, aligning with RINKA's analytical workflow.
Enhancing Workflow and Productivity
D5 allows us to give better feedback internally as a design tool, not just a rendering tool. It lets us see our projects in context—whether it's perspectives, time of day, or lighting—so we can respond faster to design challenges.
D5 Render transformed RINKA's workflow into a seamless process:
- Concept to Reality: RINKA begins projects in SketchUp for conceptual design before transitioning to Revit for detailed development. D5 integrates effortlessly into this process, enabling live syncing in Revit and faster transitions between design stages.
- Contextual Feedback: D5's tools allow the team to evaluate projects in lifelike context, adjusting perspectives, lighting, and time of day for better internal feedback and client presentations.
- Post-Production Savings: With D5, Rinka has eliminated the need for extensive post-processing in Photoshop. D5 delivers visuals that meet professional standards right out of the box, allowing the team to focus more on creativity and design rather than fine-tuning in post-production.
Empowering Small Teams
RINKA's Florida office handles large-scale multifamily workforce housing projects with tight deadlines. "We have to move really fast," Knitt shared. "D5's ability to copy and paste assets, use its library, and populate buildings quickly has been invaluable."
The efficiency of D5 was especially evident during a client animation project. "We created an animation for a publicity event within four hours," Knitt said. "That kind of speed and efficiency is worth celebrating."
AI Features and Award-Winning Projects
RINKA leveraged D5's AI upgrades to deliver standout visuals. For a competition involving a defunct mall redevelopment, RINKA's team used AI style transfers to create compelling images, securing the win. These tools enabled the team to deliver high-quality results within tight timeframes.
Collaboration with D5 Teams
D5 Teams facilitated efficient collaboration on marquee projects. For example, a complex project requiring interior design, site planning, and animation was completed within five weeks. The work-sharing functionality ensured seamless coordination among team members, demonstrating D5's capacity to handle demanding timelines. "Without D5, we couldn't have maintained the workflow needed to support large teams working efficiently."
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