Eli Paddle

MLA degrees are usually intended to be research focused rather than preparing you for entry as a junior LA. If that is your intent then it is a good idea to augment your learning with some CAD, illustration and perhaps GIS learning so that you have the entry level skills that makes you a profitable employee. Generally MLA degrees don’t cover these areas.

With your background, skillset and interest and given that you are in Canada, you should look at the MLA program at the University of Guelph.  Sustainability is a major focus (have a look at the research done by the faculty there for more info) and you do not need a BLA to do an MLA.  Bear in mind that an MLA is a research degree and is inte…[Read more]

Depends on the school and the program.  My students get CAD every semester (and Dynascape and Land F/X).  Most university programs cannot or are discouraged from teaching practical skills in favour of theoretical learning.  We had a…1 CAD class…not a semester, ONE class in my MLA program.

To achieve what you are after you could create marker materials in SketchUp.  I have drawn out the swatches myself with Chartpak markers but never got around to scanning them and making them seamless textures.  I have done it with pencil crayon as well.  Anything that you can take a photo of can be made into a material in SketchUp.
In response to…[Read more]

Definitely looks like Vue to me for the atmospherics and plants. Likely 3DS MAX for hard scape although you it could even start as Sketchup and be exported into Vue. Many ways to skin a cat and end up with a photorealistic render these days!

I too have noticed many job postings asking for 3DS and Rhino and as a professor who teaches this subject area, I respond by adding these to what is taught in my program.  In addition we also teach Vue as a final part of our landscape visualization workflow.  The base of this workflow is SketchUp with IRP programs (i.e. Twilight Render) and many p…[Read more]

That was who I was thinking of actually

I know of one here in London, Ontario…I will look for his contact info if that would be helpful

The reputation of the school is important to an extent…but what some perceive as a good school can be turn off to others.  In some cases programs built their reputation in the past and are no longer as good as they once were.  This is a time of great turn over in academia with many faculty retiring or about to retire and consequently programs a…[Read more]

In the program I teach in, I use SketchUp as a starting point for 3D modelling and from there we use external rendering plug-ins such as Twilight Render or Shaderlight, as well as using Photoshop for layer blending, filters and general post production.  As my students progress to upper years I introduce Vue Infinite (through SketchUp export), 3DS…[Read more]

Interesting discussion and I agree with your premise.  As a professor how teaches both traditional and digital illustration technique (as well as the best of both worlds…hybrid techniques), I “walk and talk” what I teach.  I demonstrate every technique for my students be it traditional or digital.  Not everyone does, there are certainly many wh…[Read more]

You might also want to be sure that you are exporting good quality image right out of SketchUp. When you export your 2D graphic use the “Options” to adjust your resolution and the size of the image.  Make the dimensions of the image larger than what you intend to print the image at, bump the resolution up to a tleast 300dpi and save the image as…[Read more]

sounds like a great idea…I would love to have my students enter.

I read your original article in LAM and while I understand how you have viewed your experience as an MLA student, I my opinion, had you researched MLA programs as thoroughly prior to enrolling as you did after becoming disenchanted with your experience, you could have avoided this experience altogether.  I do not think many MLA programs market…[Read more]

Thank you for your responses…I will head to the library to look those sources now.

As a landscape architect who teaches both landscape design and landscape architecture, I can say its not an easy task to differentiate between the two. Scale is usually the biggest difference…generally LA’s work on larger scale sites at a coarser level of detail whereas LD’s generally work on smaller sites at a much more resolved level of…[Read more]