I spent some time this weekend developing some Photoshopped interior elevations in hopes of extracting a tutorial out of them for next week. We often create these types of elevations at the office for many of our clients, and the clients can’t seem to get enough of them. I can understand why, they very easy to read and give a great since of scale and understanding to the space. We often use scanned images of the exact materials we intend to use or images of furniture planned for the space.

The best part about this illustration is that the workflow begins with just a simple linework drawing of the elevation. This can be done in CAD or generated from a 3D model with the perspective off. At the office, we typically have many CAD elevations in flux that we then take and apply this technique too for quick presentations. The CAD elevations make use of line weights which yield cleaner results.

From there, it is all Photoshop. No rendering engines required keeping things simple and fast.

 

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The above image was used as the base for the illustration and was an export from a Sketchup model (I didn’t have any CAD elevations for this personal project). You can see that the linework is very rough, however all of the imperfections were easily masked in Photoshop.

The secret to developing this type of illustration is focusing on the sequence of applying the materials, shadows, and lighting. I hope to have a tutorial next week detailing the step-by-step process of creating this type of illustration.

 

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