From the February issue: The crash of the commercial and residential real estate markets has brought its own kind of turmoil to companies that do renderings and model making: They are closing or thinning their ranks to skeleton crews. And the downturn may not just be changing the way they do business now. It could have permanent repercussions to both their workloads and the way they prepare property visuals for consumers in the future — after the economic recovery. Indeed, there’s already at least one company that’s trying to capitalize on the new emphasis that developers have put on cost-cutting with do-it-yourself rendering software. Marc Lamoureux — president and CEO of Alpha Vision Group and Pure, two sister companies based in Miami that create renderings for many New York real estate developers — said developers are increasingly making do with renderings from architects as opposed to using the more elaborate images from a professional renderer. [more]
