Augmented reality and architectural visualization
The augmented reality can boost up the experiences provided in visualization in a way that was only a matter of science fiction a few years ago. I do believe that this is a technology that we will be using to create architectural visualization in the near future, even if this is still a subject that doesn't fit on the workflow of many independent artists and small offices. If you want to see a great example of an augmented reality demonstration for architectural visualization, I recommend a works created by an architecture student from the Valle Giulia faculty of Architecture in Italy.
The artist is called Sorin Voicu and this was his thesis project. You can watch the Augmented Reality for Architecture video in Vimeo in HD, and if you are a registered user, the source file of the video is available to download.
In the video we will see the most of the work to create the Augmented reality is related with 2d/3d composition from live footage and 3d animations created in a 3d software. Much of that is possible, because a camera tracking software was used to align the views from the real camera and the 3d camera. If you want to check out a small VFX breakdown of the project, there is a short video showing a lot of the composition work and color correction created for the video.
Can we do that In Blender 3D? Both softwares used for the camera tracking and 3d animation can be replaced by Blender 3d and Voodoo Camera tracking for a similar project.
It's quite nice to see architecture students using such technologies to make presentations of their projects! I still remember that I didn't have such resources to present my graduation project almost ten years ago. My project was a planetarium and all presentation had to be done in printed panels. Things would be much different today!
Since augmented reality is one of the subjects that I will be working on with my students in this next semester, I can promise a few articles about the use of these techniques to make presentations for architecture, with Blender 3D.