Santa Barbara News Press Article

Most people building a new home never know exactly how it's going to look until it's finished: Ken Doud doesn't think they should have to wait that long.
    Sure, they have a rough idea from the architectural plans and drawings, and as the project takes shape, but Mr. Doud can show them exact shapes and sizes, colors, materials, textures - even the views from the windows.
    Mr. Doud runs Videoscapes, a computer simulation and animation company that he started in 1995 and ran from an office on Coast Village Road until he moved his family, his home and the business to Los Olivos in 2002.
    "It's and extremely effective tool for visualization," he said. "A picture tells a thousand words, and in a pretty unambiguous way.
    "When I first started using computer graphics in the early '90s it was received with incredible enthusiasm by clients. I created videos where they could travel into and through their house and see everything from different angles."   It wasn't long before not just the owners wanted to see how things were going to look - so too, did neighbors, other interested citizens, architects, and planning department staff.
    Soon that side of the business, closely allied to Santa Barbara's strict building codes and the widespread reliance upon environmental impact reports, overtook demand from private home builders. Clients include The Towbes Group, Marborg, the Entrada de Santa Barbara timeshare venture on lower State Street, Cottage Health System, the City of Santa Barbara's Granada parking garage, the Music Academy of the West, UCSB and the county Housing Authority. The Towbes Group has used Videoscapes in connection with its plans to develop a visually sensitive site near the junction of Foothill

Road and San Marcos Pass Road (Highway 154) which may be used for an office building or mixed-use office and residential development.
       "Ken (Doud) plotted an outline of the building from 154, going up and coming down. He even had to stand in the middle of the highway to take some of the photos," said Courtney Seeple, project manager for The Towbes Group. "He was very responsive and easy to work with, especially considering he has to operate under tight time lines."
    Mr. Seeple said Videoscapes' highly accurate results can be shown to architects, the regulatory authorities and the public. They can also be used to illustrate the effects of changes such as building dimensions or tree planting. He said the likely next step is to create a video to show how the site, regarded as a gateway to the city, would appear once developed to those driving towards Santa Barbara on the 154.
    Mr. Doud, 55, mostly works between San Francisco and Mexico, handling 25 to 30 projects each year on his own though occasionally calling on free-lance technical help from contacts in Canada and New York.
    He estimates 90 percent of clients are in California (75 percent of them in Santa Barbara County) though he has worked out of state and is currently looking at a project involving England's historic Durham Cathedral. After graduating with a degree in fine arts from UCSB, Mr. Doud ran his own landscape design business from Montecito. As part of the service he started using computer-generated plans but it was clear that people had trouble fully grasping what they were seeing. Once he began combining computer programs (Photoshop and 3ds Max, the one movie makers use to create fake crowds or whole cities) with files, plans, elevations, and sketches, and then adding digital photos taken on the site, the results were electrifying.

    People can open the doors of their still unbuilt homes, step inside and take virtual tours. Mr. Doud can spin them around the room, changing colors, wall coverings, fixtures and fittings as they go.
    They can admire the views from each window and see, for example, exactly what a particular tree would look like planted outside - and then how it would look in several different places around the garden.
    Armed with the dimensions (or a blueprint and a ruler), Mr. Doud can "build" his virtual house in as little as a day. He starts with a cube, adds the roof, cuts out windows and interior spaces; sometimes he can speed the process by using an architect's or designer's 3-D computer models.
    Including digital photos can add another three to six days. Much of that extra time is spent measuring precisely where the photos are taken from - both inside and outside the building - and sometimes scrambling up and down ladders to get required height and angles.
    The costs of photo simulations vary. Houses can run between $2,000 and $5,000 depending on size, while commercial projects could start around $5,000 and go up to $10,000.
    Today he estimates only 20 percent of his work is for individual home builders; the rest involves commercial projects or ones with a public interest component when he is often employed as a subcontractor for those producing environmental impact studies.
    "Any community project in this area falls under heavy scrutiny from the city and concerned citizens generally," he said. "The owners and the neighbors all want to know what something is going to look like and what its likely impact will be, before it's built, altered or added to.

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