Grafx, set up by John O'Toole in 1998 services Eire's advancing architectural industry by providing extremely high-quality visualization of design proposals to architects, planners and developers.

Computer visualization is an essential part of nearly all planning applications in Eire, explains O'Toole. “Irish conservation rules are strict and planners expect a very thorough presentation before they will even consider a proposal.” Grafx's projects include both showpiece developments like the Barrow Street project in Dublin's quayside area, where the iron latticework of a historic gasometer was incorporated into the design for a glass apartment building, and more everyday functional buildings such as car showrooms for Mercedes Benz and Nissan.

Incorporating large-format high-resolution prints, photomontages and videos mixing computer graphics with on-site footage, Grafx's work is also increasingly used by developers to help finance projects before construction begins. “The Dublin Corn Market development is a case in point.” O'Toole continued. “We provided a series of visualizations that showed variations the developers could make in the development. With these, they were able to provide a building tailored to what the tenants wanted and sign them up before starting work on the site. Photorealistic visualizations are much more effective in this kind of negotiation than architect's drawings.”

A veteran of the computer architecture industry, O'Toole has searched long and hard for the technology to bring his clients' projects to life in the most visually persuasive way. “We've tried many software rendering packages and experimented with specialized render farms, but the setup costs and the day-to-day difficulties combined with inconsistent output kept us looking for something better.”

Within a week of installing a RenderDrive RD3000 on trial Grafx decided to buy, and immediately ordered a second RD5000 unit. “The difference between RenderDrive and our previous setup is absolutely incredible. The RenderDrive just crunches everything we throw at it.”

Praising RenderDrive's effectiveness for architectural use, O'Toole singled out the handling of materials and lighting for special mention: “Materials like glass and metals are so accurately portrayed, and it's much much easier to get the lighting looking just right with RenderDrive. That's very important especially when you are montaging computer-generated material into photographs or video.”

Grafx's two RenderDrives are in constant use around the clock on an ever-increasing workload, says O'Toole: “They are unbelievable machines and we are pushing them hard. We always want to go beyond what we did in the last project to maintain our competitive edge, and if you work like that you really appreciate a system that delivers consistent high-quality without failures or unexpected glitches.”