To the consternation of buyers anxious to envision what an unbuilt home will look and feel like, two-dimensional floor plans tend to fall flat.
Computer technology, however, is leaving less and less to the imagination by way of three-dimensional floor plans, video home tours and animated walk-throughs of houses awaiting construction.
Among the first to harness the technological advances are floor-plan design services, which for years have sold $4 to $8 catalogs of floor-plan sketches and renderings. The companies make their real money when repeat customers purchase the $400 stock blueprints for a particular home. More than 100,000 stock plans are sold a year that way, according to industry estimates.
Larry W. Garnett, head of a Pasadena, Texas, residential design firm bearing his name, has transformed 13 of his stock floor plans to three-dimensional representations captured on 3.5-inch floppy diskettes. He calls the software Visualizing the Unbuilt.
Over the years, Garnett says, house plan buyers consistently have asked where they could visit a built version of a prospective home, with some of them ready to jump on a plane to see the real thing.
“A 12-foot gambrel ceiling in a master bedroom is really hard to visualize and there is no way (for many people) to really imagine what a plant ledge recessed in a master bath looks like,” Garnett says.
After loading the diskette into a personal computer, a viewer can move from the two-dimensional floor plan on the screen to a three-dimensional perspective of the home’s exterior or selected rooms within. The computer-generated room animations, complete with furnishings scanned into the system from photos, are far from cartoonish. The outside scenes also are based on actual photos.
“We are trying to bring buyers a sense of realism,” Garnett says. “Frankly, it is that fine detail that gets very expensive to do-the books, the cups, the saucers on the kitchen table.”
The software costs $5,000 to produce such an image of a house plan. But that compares with $50,000 or $60,000 two years ago, Garnett says.
A right-angle view of the front of a farmhouse-style home from Garnett’s collection shows the house in a bucolic setting of green grass, daffodils and young trees in leaf against a blue sky with billowy white clouds, all scanned from actual photos. Shrubs line the foundation and baskets of flowers hang from the wraparound veranda. The scenery shifts correspondingly as the viewer chooses a left front view, back left and right views and a close-up of the front door.
Inside, the computer visitor can start with the foyer, click over to the dining room with contrasting white crown molding and grey walls, and then take in three views of the kitchen detailed down to the pot holders and dishes on the simulated stone countertops.
Upstairs, a four-poster bed is illuminated by the halo of light from lamps atop two doily-covered nightstands.
Consumer and builder demand is strong enough for the interactive floor plans that Garnett plans to open up a retail outlet in a Houston shopping center this summer, he says. Meanwhile, his office is working on setting up a mail-order system. (Tentative plans call for the software to sell for $49.95 for each home, or $7.95 for a demonstration diskette; Garnett’s phone is 713-487-5182.)
HomeStyles Publishing and Marketing of Minneapolis has taken a more comprehensive but less lifelike approach to home-plan hunting with its recent introduction of a CD-ROM, the HomeDesigns Encyclopedia, capturing 1,001 of its best-selling designs, the equivalent of 10 of its catalogs ($49.95; phone: 800-547-5570).
“What would have taken hours and days to cover with 10 of our magazines now can be done in one sitting,” says Daniel Brown, a market associate with the company.
The program, which includes advice on lifestyle factors that might influence the choice of plans, allows users to search by a number of criteria including square footage, style and number of bedrooms.
More than half the entries include a color photograph in addition to the exterior rendering, floor-plan diagram and written description. Five of the designs include abbreviated versions of interactive floor plans from Garnett’s collection.
HomeStyles viewers can tour 100 of the homes via fly-through, animated video clips. A narrator talks the viewer through the quick 10-second tour unfolding on a small-scale screen insert. The three-dimensional graphics are less sophisticated than Garnett’s, largely because they were developed with two-year-old technology, Brown says.
Professional Builder magazine plans to put 2,500 floor plans that otherwise sell through its publication on CD-ROM, the Home Plan Database ($89.95; phone: 800-323-7379), this summer, associate publisher Roy Diez says.
Some particularly useful home search characteristics on the CD-ROM include home width, home depth and the suitability of the plan for a narrow lot, zero-lot line, hillside or wide-and-shallow configuration.
Plans also call for computer simulation of floor plans and separate sales of videotaped tours, Diez says.
Taking a different slant, Builder magazine is selling an interactive building product catalog on CD-ROM, covering more than 5,200 offerings from 1,750 companies.
This program is organized by 26 product categories, including appliances, cabinets, countertops, fixtures, roofing and windows.
It also includes useful information by product category, such as the top-selling brands or life expectancy of various selections.
Although the Electronic Buyer’s Guide ($29.95; phone: 800-241-2537) was developed for builders and remodelers, Builder magazine is conducting a major direct-mail campaign to people who recently purchased mail-order floor plans and is running ads in consumer magazines, according to publisher Michael Tucker.
“There are more than 50,000 product pieces that go into a typical new home,” he said. “Many of those decisions are made by the builder, but the consumer is increasingly becoming involved in the visual type of specifications that create the feeling and ambiance of the home.”
The next version, which is scheduled to come out in September will incorporate interactive product selection, Tucker says.
For example, choosing a fireplace becomes easier when, while seated at a computer, the owner can play around with different firebox, surround and mantel components and change the floor coverings and wall colors, as well.
“This is how products will be specified in the future,” Tucker said.
BUILDERS LIKE IT, TOO
Model homes, built to show off a construction firm’s wares, cost too much and take too long to build when a perfectly serviceable computer program can simulate the same results, some builders are deciding.
Among the companies helping builders rethink their approach to model homes-to supplement if not replace them-is Aareas By Design. The Toronto electronics technology company creates compelling computer-animated video tours of furnished homes that builders, including several in the United States, want to sell before starting construction.
The three-dimensional visits are accurate down to the simulated shadows, reflections, flickering fireplaces and revolving ceiling fans.
The tool lets potential buyers “understand the flow of the house and what is aesthetically beautiful about this home, as well as letting builders better show off their products,” Aareas president Frank Guido said.
One building firm in South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island resort area is sending videotapes of its vacation home offerings to prospective buyers across the country. Likewise, a modular home manufacturer is providing its dealers with video tours of the more than 100 model homes that roll off its assembly line to help clinch sales.
The videos run without interruption, but in January the firm unveiled a computer program giving the viewer the ability to control the tour with a computer mouse. The program, dubbed Virtual Realty, also gives users the ability to make room alterations on the screen and scope out the actual view from an as-yet-unbuilt window.
