As with any rendered site plan, the Gabriel’s Courtyard project began by setting up a base file with the necessary line drawings for the project. This was complicated slightly by there being no CAD or layered PDFs to work from but was overcome by eliminating the original underlying lines once the rendering was set up and adding in edges within the rendering where needed. Once the base line drawing was assembled, the major rendered items such as paving and buildings were placed. Different colors are used for the drives and sidewalks to help separate these from the main drive. Next a green field is applied across the whole drawing and then cut into place using a layer mask. This allows the green field to contain variation and texture and be edited to different levels of transparency. Trees are added to match the landscape plan.
With the addition of shadows and labels, the rendering is nearly complete. To provide context to the site, an image from Google Earth is laid in under the rendering and carefully matched to the drawing. The original drawing lines are then turned off, leaving only the clean rendering.