Picturing the future: entrepreneur 'realizes' renderings.

• Author: Tobenkin, David

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Last spring when architectural project manager and laboratory designer Robert Meyer showed Alaska state officials renderings of what their Department of Health and Social Services state virology laboratory at the University of Fairbanks would look like, he said they were pleased but a bit perplexed at the sleek, white, multi-story structure nestled in a winter snow.

"We received lots of nice compliments when we showed the building to them, but people asked how we could take photos of a building that wasn't built yet," said Meyer, of Anchorage-based architectural firm Livingston Slone Inc. "We told them we used our time machine."

This time machine, Meyer said, is actually Anchorage-based 3-D graphics firm Resolution-3D LLC (Res3D), and its owner, Dov Margalit. Res3D uses powerful computers to combine digital outlines of structures with photographic samples to create jaw-dropping, photo-realistic images of projects not yet built.

A sampling of Margalit's work: A tropical condo bungalow at night is illuminated in seeming time-lapse photography by evening lights, then sunrise with the rising sun. A nondescript, two-story office building rests under the Arctic sky with a pickup truck parked out back, distorted images of cars in a parking light reflected in the building's windows, seemingly waiting for the end of the workday. A moving view, such as one would have from a video camera, seems to glide through realistic, furnished rooms, much as a prospective buyer would. A super clasp of a leaf captures a water drop's roll in mid-motion. (These and many other images can be accessed on the Res3D Web site at http://www.Res3d.com/.)

CONVINCING THE ARCHITECTS

Margalit's wizardry is winning over a growing contingent of architects, product- and interior designers and developers by using renderings and modeling to show them what their buildings and products will look like.

"He did such a good job and generated the depictions with very little guidance, which is exceptional," Meyer said, referring to Res3D's work on the virology laboratory. "We talked about a winter or a summer scene, but this is Fairbanks, where there is snow on the ground more often than grass. So Dov produced depictions he said were in the morning at 10 a.m. in March. He was able to factor the sun in at that time of the year so that it looked realistic."

That willingness to push the edge sets him apart from many who use off-the-shelf graphics programs to generate renderings, said Brian Meissner, an...