South London Islamic Centre

Eye-kon produced three verified views at AVR Level 3, the level at which a representation shows not only where a building sits and how large it is but what it is made of. All three formed part of the planning submission and provided the visual evidence base for the Townscape, Heritage and Visual Impact Assessment.

Production Process

1 | Photography and survey

The survey came first. On 6 December 2024 the three camera positions were recorded in three dimensions and marked on site, and between 18 and 20 control points were surveyed for each view using a Leica Total Station and GNSS equipment, referenced to the Ordnance Survey National Grid and Ordnance Datum. The points were chosen to spread parallax as widely as possible: near and far, high and low, road markings and kerb lines at one end of the range and ridge tiles and chimney bands at the other.

The marked positions were photographed three days later, on 9 December, in clear weather with good visibility. All three frames were shot on a Canon EOS 5DS with a TS-E 24 mm tilt shift lens, tripod levelled at 1.6 metres above surveyed ground level, giving a horizontal field of view of 74 degrees. Camera position, height, direction, aperture, shutter speed and time of day were recorded for every frame.

2 | 3D modelling and camera matching

The building was supplied by jmarchitects as a Revit model with DWG drawings. These were brought into 3ds Max and set into a scene built on the survey data, so the model sits in real coordinates rather than being eyeballed into place.

The virtual cameras were then matched to the real ones using the surveyed points and a mathematical analysis of parallax. Each view used between 18 and 20 match points, drawn from foreground and background and from high and low in the frame, which is what makes the alignment hold across the whole image rather than only in the middle of it. Rendered at the same resolution as the original photograph, the model registers against the real elements in the scene.

3 | Material and lighting calibration

Lighting was rebuilt in V-Ray with a sun model set to the site's latitude and longitude and to the time each photograph was taken, so the shadows in the render fall where the shadows in the photograph fall. Materials were developed from jmarchitects' specification, including the red brickwork, the precast stone and the glazing, and light intensity and bounce were adjusted until the render sat inside the daylight of the baseline rather than on top of it.

4 | Verified view production

The images were composited in Adobe Photoshop, following Landscape Institute Technical Guidance Note 06/19 and Appendix C of the London View Management Framework. Trees, street furniture and people in the foreground were worked back over the render so the building sits behind what is genuinely in front of it.

Each of the three finished views carries an annotated graticule border: field of view, optical axis, lens characteristics and any adjustment such as vertical rise or cropping, with lines at 10 degree increments and intermediate lines at one degree. Anyone who wants to check the work has what they need to do it.