At Canopy, our Garden Homes are well underway and very soon, you’ll get to see what it looks and feels like to live in these—thanks to an epic architectural and design animation from our partner, MOLT.
This 90-second fly-through, a two-dimensional virtual reality animation, will be released early next month.
Co-founder Chris Hoxie said obsessive design coordination and attention to detail is what makes MOLT animations and renderings unique; because just about everybody at the company is trained as an architect, designer, or digital media artist, animations are significantly more detailed than most renderings in the industry. This, in turn, creates a much more intimate viewing experience for prospective homeowners.
“Our animations have an ability to put you right in the space,” he said. “You don’t get that often.”
MOLT came to Mill District through Olson Kundig, the internationally renowned architecture firm that has partnered with Replay Destinations to design our Canopy residences. MOLT and Olson Kundig have collaborated on dozens of projects over the past decade.
Hoxie himself has been involved in most of those projects. He noted that each rendering is subtly different, and that MOLT has created nearly 36 renderings for Mill District so far.
With the Garden Homes renderings, for instance, MOLT tried to provide homeowners with perspective of how homes might look at different times of day. Hoxie noted that the digital animations for Mill District also aim to provide viewers with different scales—a way to provide different perspectives on the same space.
“It’s interesting how film works as media,” he said. “It’s rhetorical. It shows an establishing shot, then builds from there. You understand unique scale and place. Then you successively dive into more detail as you go along.”
As Hoxie suggests, MOLT’s renderings are never really finished. He said he and his team are constantly refining renderings, especially as they spend more time working with developers and they gain new appreciation for the spirit of each project.
This means MOLT’s team of six designers is always working, always improving.
“As we go along, our renderings get more and more specific to the design intent,” said Hoxie, who noted MOLT would re-issue a collection of previous Mill District renderings this month which have been color corrected to enhance details. “We see all of this as an ongoing exercise in refinement.”
