Revit in the Film Industry

Right up front, you should know that Revit has not widely established a technical presence in the set design industry. Instead, this space is dominated by 3D and SketchUp, Rhino, 3ds Max, and Maya. But Revit has begun making inroads in recent years.

One reason for the recent interest in using Revit in the film industry is Bryan Sutton and his initial posts in the Autodesk User Group International (AUGI) forums in fall 2004. When he posted a few renderings of the airlock door from the first Fantastic Four movie, he immediately grabbed the attention of the growing Revit community.

From that time, there has been a growing interest in using Revit in film and stage production. But of all the designers in that industry, Bryan is considered one of the most talented Revit users not only in his industry but in the world. He has developed a style and approach to Revit that has moved beyond technical proficiency to a masterful art form. That's why we'll share his experiences using Revit with you in this chapter.

Bryan first began toying with computers primarily as a production tool but then quickly began to focus on parametric design technologies. All this was happening while he was working as a carpenter building sets for commercial productions. Some of the first tools he used were AutoCAD, 3ds Max, and Strata. Very soon he started doing production drawings and found he had an advantage in understanding both the set design and the accompanying construction processes.

In Bryan's industry, it's not enough to be technically or architecturally trained. What's important is that you understand how to design scenically. The design and documentation needs to be suggestive—and what lies beyond the façade should be taken into account.

Bryan's understanding of the importance of designing scenically quickly led him to look beyond the traditional 2D CAD tools. So, after starting with AutoCAD, Bryan began to experiment with other 3D tools such as Rhino and IronCAD. It was IronCAD that opened his eyes to the realm of parametrics—the ability to build relationships and effect many changes at once. But the workflow was still lacking an integrated process: What was being designed in 3D was being exported for documentation. And design changes discovered during documentation required editing elsewhere: back to the 3D file, export, and so on.

Fortunately, Bryan discovered Revit from the same friend who had introduced him to IronCAD. He immediately realized that here was an integrated environment for doing architectural work that didn't care where you made the change: 3D, 2D, documents, and even schedules. Bryan was hooked. And he began using Revit 1.0 (just before version 2.0) on set designs for commercials.

In spite of his extraordinary and exceptionally aesthetic approach to using Revit, Bryan is the first to admit that unfortunately he can't draw himself out of a paper bag. His advice? Hand-sketching is critical for the early design process. You need to be able to draw quickly and elegantly—and according to Bryan, sketching is the language of communicating design ideas.

You can find more information on Bryan at www.imdb.com/name/nm1340613/.