How Halifax's Luminous Labs Replaced Model Suites with 3D Virtual Tours (and Saves Developers Thousands)

0:15All right, welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Our guest today is Luminous Labs, with co-founders Nick LeBlanc and Greg Miles with us today. Luminous Labs provides architectural renderings, pre-construction virtual 3D animation, and all kinds of things like that. Thanks for being here, guys. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us on — we're looking forward to it. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about all the neat things that you guys provide and some of the

0:46technology and yeah, all kinds of topics to touch on. But maybe just to start — which is typical for a podcast — we'd just start a little bit about your personal story and then maybe the origins of how you started Luminous Labs. So maybe you could start with you, Nick, and your Dal grad background. Yeah, so my dad's an architect, so that's kind of how I got into the space of 3D. He was kind of always having me fiddle around on computers and

1:14stuff since I was pretty young. But in the last two or three years it's really picked up in terms of the hardware that's available and the software itself. So Greg and I have actually known each other since — what — peewee hockey? Yeah, I think it was, yeah. Yeah, I think it was peewee. Yeah, so we've known each other our whole lives. We grew up over in Coal Harbour, so it kind of picked up when Greg was

1:40getting into the same skill set. He reached out to me and asked a few questions about software, asked what I was doing, and we just kind of snowballed from there. So it kind of started as a hobby. Yeah, yeah. I was a big gamer growing up too, so all that 3D stuff always just blew me away. And it was really a passion that I was lucky enough to connect with Greg on and get going. Yeah, what

2:07about you, Greg? Yeah, so I was actually originally an accountant. I got my degree at St. Mary's, and I had my first real accounting job out in Calgary, so I moved out there to start the CPA program. And I got two weeks into it and I was like, this is not what I'm doing. It was very weird, I guess, compared to school, because it's like — in school, at least, even though they kind of make things unorganized for you to work through, it

2:35makes sense. Whereas I found that when you were actually working at a small accounting firm, nothing makes sense. It's just — like, what you're getting from the clients makes no sense. Like, all the past years were just sort of pushed in to kind of get it done. So I just realized very quickly that it wasn't something that I wanted to do. And it was actually around that exact time that I started using SketchUp. The reason why I had originally looked into

2:59SketchUp is because I was working for a local construction company. I just noticed in a lot of the meetings that, you know, it seems like so much thought was being put into making these proposals and doing these buildings, but people weren't really spending a lot of time actually — you know — really visualizing the project. What you would get is kind of like a generic gas station render, maybe someone goes into Paint or Photoshop, puts the logo on it. Some I've seen too — they kind of do like street signs,

3:27so they'll just kind of say like, this is on this street — they just Photoshop a street sign in. And I just felt like there was a market for that, even if it was just me working for a construction company on the side, just creating these renders. I thought that would be interesting. So that's originally how — as Nick mentioned — I reached out to him because I knew that he had done this in the past. And so we actually both first

3:50started to try rendering with Unreal Engine, going from SketchUp to Unreal Engine. And that is — it's just not going to happen at the time. Like, it was so difficult and ultimately we just didn't understand what we had to do to get to that point. So when COVID first started, we originally were just going to — we thought it would just sort of be like a part-time job, but at the beginning of COVID that kind of gave us time to set all that stuff up and we

4:15just sort of quickly realized that there was a huge demand in it — not only for having sort of what you'd call a billboard render, like what you just see on the front of every construction site, but we realized that there was a pretty big appetite for these virtual tours. And we kind of think that what we do a bit differently compared to other rendering firms is that we like to do a lot of renders. So sometimes if a certain company would be doing a building, they might only give three or

4:40four interior renders, where it's not uncommon for us to do over 100 panoramas across all the units and then another 50 or 60 photos just throughout the building — to really show the entire area, not only for potential tenants but also for internal use, to help give out accurate quotes or just to convey to the construction team exactly what's going to be built. And that's sort of how we got started with everything. It just sort of started as what you

5:06know was going to be a hobby, and then I ended up not continuing with the CPA program, just to do this full time. Because we really have been enjoying it. We were lucky enough too — I think at the beginning of COVID we had a lot of free time on our hands, so we really dove into everything, immersed ourselves in the whole software community, and tried to gain as much ground as we could. And I really do think that maybe gave us an edge, in terms of like we were

5:34probably able to cram about three or four years of learning — if we were working full-time — into a year. So it was super helpful, actually. So you started Luminous Labs during the transition at the beginning of 2019 — is that correct? Or before? Sort of technically — well, technically I joined after Nick. Nick started Luminous Labs probably like a year before we'd even talked about this. Yeah, right. Originally it was a completely different — yeah, it was originally for projection mapping, so you can 3D

6:06— you could scan an object with a projector and then projection map it. It's similar to stuff that's done on the waterfront. And that just kind of got put on hold, and that's kind of where the name came from. And then we started doing the render stuff as well. They're like, well, you know — yeah, our legal name is Luminous Labs Projector Signage. Yeah, I think it's kind of funny, but — he said the name and I was like, I really like that. I was like, let's just use that. Yeah, it's

6:30already set up. So kind of a weird transition, but I do think COVID played a good part in that. So let's break this down for our listeners. You know, your services that you're providing are typically to building owners and developers — people who are trying to sell real estate prior to construction completion — where you're providing a 3D rendering from street level in a still shot, or a virtual tour where you get your own footage of window views from certain elevations to make

7:05views real time in a building that's not built yet, and you provide a virtual tour of the space, all created with the software. So in the last couple years, maybe give some examples of some developers you've worked with, and just sort of the different requests and specific services that you're providing. I know you mentioned to me before the show the Margaretta — Banak Group — some work there. And currently you're working on some stuff for the Canard Centre. Southwest Properties — Southwest has been

7:37gracious enough to bring us on for the Canard project, and we've gotten a good amount of work out of that alone. And just to be able to see that building go up is amazing. I live in the Alexander, so I actually overlook — I'm on the 12th floor looking over the construction site. So I usually work in the day on the renders, and I can watch. As you mentioned too, with the Margaretta — we were working with Smarter

8:07Spaces on that one. And that was a really interesting project to be a part of, because that was the first time that we — I guess — got to see how we could be a part of that development cycle. And I think we were only going to do maybe a couple of units, because that was kind of typical — you'd see that a company would be getting maybe one or two of these units done. But Banak actually wanted to move forward,

8:34and I believe we did 10 or 11 in total. But it was just very interesting. Sorry, guys — these are virtual tours of these units, like full walk-throughs of the unit prior to being built, right? Yeah, it was actually something that we sort of had to brainstorm a little bit and figure some things out. The shape of the building — it has a courtyard, so it's kind of like this — so we actually were doing some of the interior units of the building. So you'd

8:59look across, and it wasn't a drone shot — it was the actual building. So we were trying to figure out exactly how to do that, because it wouldn't make any sense that the courtyard was looking out across the city for that particular angle. So we actually had to do some playing around and kind of optimize our workflow so we could actually get the Revit model in there. And then we basically would cut a hole where the unit is, and so then when you're looking out, there's actually a particular

9:20unit that I think is probably the one I like the most. And it's right on — so it's level with the actual courtyard itself — and you're looking out just like you would — like, look right out at it. And you can see the rocks and everything, or whatever the roof design was. And that was the one I think I definitely got more interested in, because it really shows the level of visualization that you can go to if you're willing to spend

9:43more time on it and show the building and the views, and get all the materials correct. A couple of friends of mine are actually moving into that building, and both of them used the virtual tour to sort of pick out whether they wanted to be at that building or not. Yeah, so I guess a bit of background on that process — we can do the still renders for exteriors and stuff like that, and that's usually all you need for a billboard. But

10:07the real advantage of the virtual tours is that you can get into your unit pre-construction. So you can theoretically sell those units. And not only that, but we can take the drone up at a specific height and take a panoramic 360. So maybe I'll pull up the video here — so we have a little clip that kind of shows the apartment unit just in a traditional kind of video animation form. And so this has all of the exact finishes, even down to pieces of

10:40furniture that are going to be in the unit. Yeah, everything inside is completely CG, so it's completely customizable. You can swap out the floors, you can test different marble options — you can pretty much do whatever. Is that in the Margaretta, or is that in a — ? This is the — so we're just showing the little test unit animation, right. And then I'll pull up the actual little walkthrough here, just because I do think it's super helpful, especially for us, to have the

11:11drone footage. Because we can — not only show, just pop this over here — getting the drone shots is really unparalleled with what we can do. Because even if we have to put a background outside — if we don't have a drone shot — you're either going to get sort of like a generic city photo, or we put like an actual building out there, but we wouldn't be able to recreate, say, the harbour and then the Dartmouth side. It's just — not only would it take up so much time that the

11:40price of the project is going to shoot through the roof, but it's also the computing power needed for that is incredibly high. Whereas a photo is far more realistic than we could ever model — at least for the drone shots — and everything is kind of to scale and it looks very realistic, and then it uses almost no computer resources. That ends up being the exact view from that 12th floor deck on the Canard Centre on the Dartmouth side. Yeah. So what the drone does is — on most DJI drones — you

12:09can set it up to go into panorama mode, so it'll take a photo looking up, a photo straight, a photo down, move over, up, straight, down — and it creates essentially a sphere. So what we do in our 3D program is we put that outside the window, blow the sphere up until it's the appropriate scale, and then you just have that 360 image. And it outputs with our 3D images in the same format, so the way it almost wraps at the bottom is the same way that

12:36DJI does it. So if you were to go by the window and then look straight down, you can theoretically see the ground down on the ground floor and everything below the building as well. And that's a big one too, because typically if you just sort of have a flat image — if you have to get near the window, like whether it's a balcony or a shot like that — then you're just going to look down basically into the abyss, because there's nothing there. So it's

12:59either just going to be like white, black, whatever it is. But with this, you can actually — the drone will look straight down — so you can actually almost go to the window and look almost over the edge. It's not perfect, but it is far better than just having nothing there at all. And the deliverable — like the deliverable for the end users — you're basically walking through the space as you would on Google Maps or Google Earth. Yeah,

13:21exactly — very similar. And this gives — I actually used this when I moved into my current apartment. Granted, the software was a little bit older and dated, so it wasn't as crisp as you can get it today. But it just gives people the comfort of being able to go see their apartment. They can pull it up on their mobile, they can pull it up on their laptop — you know, sit in bed and

13:45kind of tour different units. And we just found that would be not only helpful for the client, but also for the developer, who traditionally spends a good amount of money on model suites. And if you do have a model suite, you usually have to pay someone to be there to kind of give people tours. This gives people the opportunity to really do their own thing — walk around and see what they want to see. And it also comes with analytics

14:11too. So that's another thing — developers have liked to see that. You can see where people spend the most time, like in the one-bedrooms and the two-bedrooms — if they stop at the kitchen the most. It comes with that — and I guess it is worth mentioning, though — that's with 3D Vista. So that's the higher-end one. So the one that we might use if someone just wants to see like a quick tour —

14:33we have one called Kuula. So Kuula is great — it's extremely lightweight, it's got free hosting, so we don't have to charge any money for it. Basically we normally kind of put the baseline toward that — Kuula is sort of inside of the package — because it's just the easiest way of actually showing our work. So we kind of include that. But we do have one where you can kind of upgrade it a little bit, and that will come with the analytics, so that you can actually

14:57see where people are clicking, what they're looking at. Like if there's a lobby with four hotspots — say like a gym, offices, a meeting lounge, and then just like elevators to go up to the unit, something like that as an example — then you might look at it and say, okay, 75% of the time people are clicking on the gym. So that means that if we are actually going to be creating some material, then maybe we should put

15:21three photos of the gym in one of the other locations, something like that. So it does just give a little bit more analytics behind where you can focus your marketing. And it's something small, but you never know — that might help you get a couple of extra tenants. Yeah. So essentially, business-wise, this specific service of 3D virtual tours — you're basically providing the developer, the building owner, with a marketing tool to sell the units. And by doing that, you're avoiding the cost of

15:50an agent in there, spending time and money selling it. Yeah. So a lot of the time, the model suite won't even be what you're looking at — it'll have the same finishes and everything, but it's not actually your apartment. And I think that's where people really connect, is when they're really serious about a place and they see it — it's virtual — and they can walk around and get a sense of — you know, maybe we put the TV here, maybe we move

16:15the TV over this way. Yeah, it really gives people a sense of the space, and I think people really like that. Yeah. Something that — like, we haven't done a project on this scale because it's kind of overkill — but theoretically, what you could do is we could render every single unit. So like, you go to the second floor, do every unit, third floor — and then what we do is we can make it

16:41so that there's no background, but then we can put that in. So then you have the same unit on the floors going up, but the view is changing. That makes sense? So that one's kind of like — I don't think anyone would actually need to go that far into detail, but theoretically we could actually have it so that if you are showing a unit, it's the exact unit with the exact view. But again, you don't necessarily need to do that. Most of

17:02the time if you have like 10 to 15 units, then that's going to cover just about everything, since there are a lot of units that are mirrored, right? And most of the time it's just kind of redundant. But you could take each specific unit that has a variation, yeah, and have renderings of each of those units — you know, a year or two in advance of actually having tenants in there — and use those as a selling tool. And the only

17:27selling tool that you probably would need. Yeah, and I think what Southwest had done for the Canard is — I think they had two sorts of layouts in mind for the upper levels, including the penthouse. I think that with our tours we actually did one for them, and then they were kind of gauging if people were interested in them. And I believe there actually was enough interest — they decided to go with sort of the bigger

17:56units, because they were able to get enough people that were interested. And I don't have too much information about that because we just talked about it in passing. But I think that is just kind of a good example where, you know, if you're kind of stuck between two ideas — pretty much any time that we are showing you options, it's going to be quite a bit cheaper than if you just say, you know what, I'm gonna go with this one and you end

18:17up not liking it. Just a sort of little sidebar here — part of the reason why I was actually interested in getting into this as well is someone I knew out in Calgary. Her family bought a house — in Calgary they often do these large subdivisions where you buy the house and then you get to choose between three or four materials for everything, like bathroom tiles, kitchen counters, that sort of thing. So when they went in to

18:42actually pick all the materials, they sort of had like the little samples and they had them all on the counter, and they'd say, oh yeah, this looks great together. But then when you actually see those materials on the entire floor and the entire counter and the cabinets, the colours didn't really work as well as they'd like. So then they ended up basically being stuck with materials that weren't low quality — but it just wasn't exactly what they had wanted. And if they had even just one rendering of the kitchen,

19:04then they could have looked at that and said, oh actually, that makes no sense to have this floor and this marble together. Yeah. And it's kind of neat because I think, you know, one of the unique things about a lot of your services is that you're providing a tool — a marketing tool — for building owners to rent the space to potential buyers. But also you can use it for construction purposes too,

19:31yeah. Like, whereas you could look at a floor plan and say, oh, I like the layout — but that's for construction purposes. And then you guys can actually 3D render that — similar to SketchUp or something — and actually show what the unit looks like from a 3D rendering as well. And it's a lot cheaper, I guess, to — sorry, go ahead, Greg. No, I was just going to say, if you could actually pull up the Margaretta tour —

19:59there's one unit — it's 408, I think — and I think that's a perfect example of some of the benefits that we can provide with these tours. Because if you just look at the floor plan, you're kind of like, okay, so there's windows here, here, and here. But in that particular unit, there's actually a building probably about three to four feet outside of the window. So normally what you would get with a 3D tour like that is that people would just put a generic background out there

20:22and you would assume that in that bedroom you have a clear view of the city. But in reality, you're actually just looking right into another building. And that's just the kind of planning that we can help with, because then if they saw that they'd go, okay, well — maybe we're going to put a window there, but we'll make it like a frosted glass window. Or maybe we just remove the window, and we can just

20:42kind of play around with the options to find something that works. And usually cost-wise — in terms of if you're going to go that route and just build it — if you make one mistake, it could end up costing what a whole tour of a unit would cost, or even multiple units. Like the — the virtual — or sorry, the model suites that are traditionally done — you have to build them and then it's an empty space that's

21:11unoccupied, so that's revenue that you could be getting out of a space that just goes unused. So there's a lot of benefit to seeing these things beforehand. And if you can catch one mistake in pre-construction and it saves you 20 grand, then you've paid for yourself. I mean, you know — even for cabinetry and millwork and door hardware and flooring — you guys can change a wood grain look to a solid coloured floor, or the kitchen cabinets,

21:40the colours there, and all kinds of stuff that would be valuable in the pre-planning construction phase too, right? Yeah, so that's kind of why we dug into Unreal Engine. And maybe this is a good segue to kind of get into the next software — the software that we're working on now. It was Lumion before, right? It was Lumion before, to start off. The one that we just showed with the interior was actually Blender. This is a

22:06software called Blender. And the amazing thing about Blender is it's completely free — open source software. So if you wanted to go download it right now, you can go do that for free. Same with Unreal Engine. I think a lot of these softwares are trying to get people in the door with the free software — you know, you get people that learn it and kind of master it. And then I think Blender — I don't even think Blender has a paid tier — there's a development fund you can — yeah, it works mostly off of donations.

22:35And they also have something called the Blender Market, where people can buy things like sofas. And if you sell something for eight dollars they take like three dollars or something like that. So it just makes enough money to kind of keep the developers paid so they can get a really good team developing it. But for the most part it is an open source project. You're not going to get a $3,000-a-year licence like things like Revit or 3ds Max —

22:58all of those are, I believe, at least three grand a year each. Maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty expensive. So just for our non-tech listeners — like myself — trying to grasp a lot of this software, be it Lumion or what you're using now — Unreal Engine 5 and Blender and Unity — these are all software to build real-time 3D creation tools. Like, is this some of the same software they use to create video games and those kinds of things? Yeah. So Unreal Engine is

23:34the engine that Fortnite ran on — if you know the game Fortnite, that all the kids used to play a while ago. So it's pretty amazing what it can do. Adults too — there are a lot of adults playing Fortnite too. But ILM's visual effects studio — actually, so when they filmed The Mandalorian, they used Unreal Engine for their background. So they created something called a void. So instead of having a green screen — which traditionally, if I was wearing something reflective on myself,

24:02like a piece of armour, it would reflect the green screen, so you'd have to work around that, and it's quite hard to fix some screen bleed when you get stuff like that. But with Unreal Engine, they did a complete 360 LED screen. So we can probably — we'll throw some videos up — yeah, because it's pretty incredible. But they used it to kind of get around the COVID shooting restrictions, so they could have a sunset shot that lasts eight hours and really dial stuff in.

24:30So you can really get into it and it looks unbelievable — like photorealistic quality. Something that — just with The Mandalorian as well — something I thought was really interesting is that they actually have the director, and then I don't know what the exact title was, but it was basically like the virtual production director. And what he could actually do is, if they wanted a particular shot but the mountain in the background was just at a weird angle — like maybe it's

24:54just that they had to shift it — he actually had VR glasses on and he could just go in almost with his hands and kind of move stuff around like that to get that perfect shot. Whereas before, even with a green screen, they'd have to actually get someone to re-render the mountains and do all this stuff. But Unreal Engine does it in real time, because it's a video game engine. That's effectively what — even when we're making these interior units with

25:16Unreal Engine — it's a video game, more or less, right? It's just that we're tailoring it towards architecture. Just to piggyback on that, and just maybe this will give some context — I know it's a bit of a tangent — but when the Notre-Dame Cathedral burnt in 2019. Yeah, yeah. There was talk initially — obviously the architects want to rebuild this extremely complex structure back to exactly the way it was before. And there was talk about them using Unity in some

25:47kind of video game — I think it was Assassin's Creed or something — yeah, where they were — I don't think that actually happened, they used other technology and stuff. But just for our listeners, to give context of what you guys are in the business of doing — it's like recreating buildings, yeah, using software that you see in these video games, where they're first-person. And it's grown to — you know, Unreal Engine has made its way into the video production side of things too, so it's

26:16almost a weird mix of video production and video games. It's almost like we're creating a video game of the building. But then we have to put on our photography cap and say, okay, this angle looks good — and then we actually use a real camera in the software. So you know, if you want a 15-millimetre focal length or a 25, you really can — it's strange, because you have to know a little bit of photography, you have to know the 3D program, you have to

26:43understand marketing, construction, real estate — yeah. So there are a lot of things that are kind of tied in. But it's super fun to work with — Unreal Engine is just unbelievable to work with. We can pull up — I'll pull up the kind of walk-through. So Blender — the one that we showed before — if I want to render a clip, it'll take a while, because it has to render each light pass. It kind of goes through passes, so it

27:10takes a bit longer. Unreal Engine is completely real time. So it does take a little bit longer to set up, but when it is set up you can walk around. Is there AI involved in like the behaviour of the lighting that you're creating? It's — it's weird, yeah. Most things are ray traced. So what ray tracing actually is — a computer will shoot rays of light and they'll bounce. It's almost like — have you ever seen wind studies, where they simulate wind? They have a

27:39big building and they do the wind study where they have wind going through. So it's essentially that but with light. So we have to remember — it's so cool, yeah. The real-time stuff is unbelievable. You can just pop right in, and if you want to change the marble — it's just crazy that you created this from nothing. Like it just — it looks like you're actually walking through a — yeah. So there's a lot of reference

28:06photos. But we wanted to create this almost like a European-style loft that was maybe two or three stories up. We wanted to throw some trees in the middle for shadows — just kind of cinematic looking. So this is obviously just for context — and I think it's good because I have no idea about this stuff. So for any listeners who don't either — compare this to SketchUp. Is it the same at all, or is this just way more advanced for aesthetics? So

28:35there are advantages and disadvantages of SketchUp. So originally we were actually using SketchUp and Lumion. And just to quickly touch on those, because it is sort of important to understand — SketchUp is sort of — it's close, it's not AutoCAD, but I think it at least tried to fill a niche similar to AutoCAD in the sense that it's very precise — the measurements are all very precise — and you can do the floor plans and everything. And while you can do that in Blender, Blender is not as — it

29:04doesn't cost three thousand dollars a year either. Well, no, it's free. But it's also like — if you describe SketchUp as using pencil and paper and a ruler to measure all that, Blender is probably closer to using clay. So it's like we can get exactly what we need and we can make everything very exact, but it does function a little bit differently. Because SketchUp is meant to be more about information and not so much visuals. Like, it's very interesting when you have the

29:31building and you can sort of see how it looks, but it's never going to look photorealistic unless you actually have a render engine inside of SketchUp, yeah. So that's kind of where Lumion comes in. So Lumion and SketchUp are very common among architects and landscape designers, because Lumion is kind of made for people that are not professional 3D artists but need to get renders quickly. So if you have to use SketchUp to create a draft of a building, then it's very easy to just plug that into Lumion,

29:58right. But those aren't going to look like your 3D renderings that you get — no. From the beginning — no, yeah. Basically, like, even if you were really, really good at Lumion, you can get some pretty decent renders, but it does take a long time — it's almost not worth it at a certain point. Like, Lumion is almost best when you're not doing really nice renders — it's just like, throw it in, put some sunlight, grass, bang, there you go. Yeah. If you're spending a lot of time on it — like we are — even if you're

30:22just okay at Blender, you're almost always going to blow Lumion out of the water. Yeah. So talk about that — like, when you guys did the still rendering for the Canard, or some of the other buildings here in the city — you have to recreate the landscape, like whether it's the water and the streets off to the side — there's so much that goes into that, right? It's not just as simple as what you do on SketchUp obviously. And well, it's usually the building itself

30:48that will come with some kind of Revit model, if it's a large building. There's either an AutoCAD or a Revit model, which is the 3D model of the building. So that's essentially — think of it as a cup, but with no material on it — like it's just a white, basic building. And we can use that a lot of the time to bring it in. But to create the surrounding areas is kind of what gives it the feel and the atmosphere. So we try to use — we can use drone

31:13shots as well, if you wanted to go that route. But for the Canard building, we actually went a different route, just because we had the whole waterfront area built in 3D. So that gave us the opportunity to say, okay, it's all built — it's not a photograph, right. We can, if we want to do a video pan of the waterfront with

31:41the boardwalk, we could do that. So I guess there are two routes to kind of go. When you have — there's a video we could bring up of — I think it's on the side of Queen's Marque. Whether it's Murphy's — Murphy's, right? Yeah. What is it called? Yeah. So that was — did you create that whole area? Yeah, so that was all — there's no photography involved there — that's all 3D. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's a lot

32:06of reference photos. You know, we knew the area pretty well, so we were able to get down there and actually check things out. So you say reference photos — like, you actually go down to that location and sort of take photos and stuff, and then use those as a starting point to get the atmosphere, the mood of the area — but you're recreating everything? And then we recreate everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just — so what we can typically do is, like, if we had that

32:28location — let's say we had sort of a top-down CAD drawing — it's gonna say like, you know, the entrance is 300 metres away from this area in the city, or it's like 30 metres from the road, whatever it is. Then if we have that top-down and just sort of a reference photo, we can sort of start to build off the two angles. So once we sort of set up one location where it's like

32:50maybe there's like a block in the middle, then we can sort of start to fill in the gaps. And what we normally would have — one of those exterior shots — is we kind of have everything where it's just blocks, or we might just have like placeholder assets to make sure that we have everything in the right spot. Then maybe we'll put some people around, put some grass — and then we'll start changing out the building. There are just a lot of different ways

33:12that we can kind of do that. Because that's sort of how we do the interior units as well — we will take an actual snapshot from the architectural plans. So we don't actually use the CAD files for that — we just use a picture of the floor plan, sort of like your standard layout. And then it'll normally just have like two lines somewhere that say, this is six feet. So then we drop a block that's six feet, scale up the photo, and

33:41then we have a perfect footprint of the building. And so that's how we sort of block out both of them. Yeah, we've worked with architects in the past. So if they have something that's in a development stage and they want to get funding, or if they want a project that they really enjoy that they want to see — we've worked with architects and home builders as well for residential home rendering, yeah. Things like that. Yeah, yeah. The home builders and developers are probably the ones that have ended up being our biggest clients. We actually originally thought that it would probably be

34:05architects. But we just — I guess we just didn't really realize how much of an appetite the developers would have for these full virtual tours. Because from a marketing perspective for them it's great. And so originally we were just sort of — I guess our game plan was just to help architects sort of upgrade what they're presenting to the client. But we just found that it's a much deeper pool than we originally thought. Yeah. I think I was talking to somebody

34:32from — I won't mention the gentleman's name or the company — but he mentioned to me that it might be part of the legislation in the future, either soon or — we've heard about that, yeah — where it's like, as a developer, before you proceed with construction, I think you need to have some kind of a rendering — a real-time rendering, not just a

34:58SketchUp photo. But I guess that would be positive for your business if there's some truth to it. Yeah, it'd be — and it'd be kind of interesting, because a lot of times I didn't realize how upset people seem to get when new buildings are going up. Like, it seems like whenever there's talk of anything being built, people are not happy about something. So I think that having high quality renders of that building, to kind of show how people would be interacting

35:25with the space and how it's going to fit into the city, can really help that. Because I guess I just never realized that people had such strong opinions about that. But yeah, I think that's one of the biggest problems for developers. And I think if you can not only help them sell the space by providing an actual 3D animated virtual tour in real time — of all the specific materials and even the furniture layout and everything in real time — but you can also have something

35:53a couple of years before they break ground that'll show the city how the people in the community can interact with the space. Because essentially, at this level — with Unreal Engine 5 and these advanced softwares that you're using — you're creating stuff that takes emotion and those kinds of things into perspective with these amazing renderings. And it's pretty incredible just how fast all of this

36:24moves. So just as a little background — the main company that makes graphics cards is Nvidia. And every two years they come up with a new graphics card, more or less. And that one is typically always twice as good as the one that came out two years before it. So it goes up exponentially. And every single time that happens, the amount that we can do with this software basically just skyrockets. So it's pretty crazy how fast it moves. And even in five years, we may not

36:53be doing the virtual tours like we might — we might just have completely Unreal Engine tours, because maybe it's just faster to do it then. So it's pretty crazy just to see how everything moves like that, because it seems like it's moving faster than even the world around it. Well, up until about five years ago, if you wanted to render a still image — you know, depending on your machine — that could take you 10, 15, 20 hours on a

37:18average machine. Now the average machine — the graphics cards have doubled in performance and they've halved in price. It was a big problem when they first came out, because a lot of the people buying them were using them for Bitcoin mining and stuff like that. So I guess they've made it so you can't mine off them anymore. But they're still really hard to get a hold of. But it just goes to show — what took you 15 hours to render

37:46still now takes us about 10 minutes. So yeah, that's just in the last two years alone — that jump has grown exponentially. So it's a cool space to be in, just to see where it's going with the hardware. Sounds hard to keep up with. Yeah. Well, it's just — we've actually talked to some people before too, and they said that for one of those 360 photos that we were talking about, it was taking them 12 hours.

38:11And right now, depending on what we're working on, it's either between 10 to 25 minutes — seconds or minutes, sorry. But it just shows that instead of rendering one photo overnight, now we're doing multiple units. So what about — talk about some of the work that goes into rendering if, for an example, somewhere like downtown Halifax or downtown Toronto, where there's all kinds of

38:44structures and stuff — you know, maybe water in the background — just all kinds of different things that you have to recreate. Like, how long does that process take? It kind of depends, actually. Because what you can do — yeah — so we didn't do this on Canard — what you can do is take a photo, like a professional photo, and match the building in. So essentially you take a photo of the empty development site, photo-match the building in. And that kind of

39:15— with Photoshop and stuff like that, we're able to overlay it on the actual photograph. But then it comes back to, you know, you have to have good composition, you have to have a good camera to take a picture. But with Canard, we went a different route, just because we had the whole waterfront area built in 3D. So that gave us the opportunity to say, okay, it's all built — it's not a photograph, right. We can, if we want to do a video pan of the waterfront with

39:40the boardwalk, then we could do that. So I guess there are two routes to kind of go. There's a video we could bring up of — I think it's on the side of Queen's Marque. Whether it's Murphy's — Murphy's, right? Yeah. What is it called? Yeah. That was — did you create that whole area? Yeah, so that was all — there's no photography involved there — that's all 3D. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's a lot

40:13of reference photos. You know, we knew the area pretty well, so we were able to get down there and actually check things out. So you say reference photos — like, you actually go down to that location and sort of take photos and things, and then use those as a starting point to get the atmosphere, the mood of the area — but you're recreating everything? And then we recreate everything. Yeah, yeah. And just — so what we can typically do is, like, if we had that

40:40location — let's say we had sort of a top-down CAD drawing — it's gonna say like, you know, the entrance is 300 metres away from this area in the city, or it's like 30 metres from the road, whatever it is. Then if we have that top-down and just sort of a reference photo, we can sort of start to build off the two angles. So once we sort of set up one location where it's like

41:01maybe there's like a block in the middle, then we can sort of start to fill in the gaps. And what we normally would have — one of those exterior shots — is we kind of have everything where it's just blocks, or we might just have like placeholder assets to make sure that we have everything in the right spot. Then maybe we'll put some people around, put some grass — and then we'll start changing out the building. There are just a lot of different ways

41:22that we can kind of do that. Because that's sort of how we do the interior units as well — we will take an actual snapshot from the architectural plans. So we don't actually use the CAD files for that — we just use a picture of the floor plan, sort of like your standard layout. And then it'll normally just have like two lines somewhere that say, this is six feet. So then we drop a block that's six feet, scale up the photo, and

41:48then we have a perfect footprint of the building. And so that's how we sort of block out both of them. And I guess to tie back into what you were talking about with how we blocked the area in the back — it really just is about what we think is going to look better. So if it's got an extremely complex background — like Halifax Harbour is a good example — then most of the time we would actually use a photo. But since for Canard we had

42:15actually built up some of that area anyway, then we were able to just put a bit more work into it so that we have that full background. Because the background — while it is sometimes an afterthought — will make the photo. Like, if we took the Canard and just slapped it down in the middle of a bunch of trees where there's no harbour in the background, it wouldn't make any sense. The whole shape of the building wouldn't make any sense. So the context is important, even though it's not

42:38necessarily the main focus in that photo. But it's just those little details that we kind of go over — where traditional render companies might not even be from here, have no idea where the development is, and a lot of the time you won't even get those details in there. So we try to position ourselves more as marketing content creators. We take that extra bit of detail and that extra bit of time to make it that much better. So when it does come down to

43:05a virtual tour, or stills, or whatever — you know, if you get a good example like that little apartment I showed — once that's built, we traditionally don't really charge for still renders. So once the whole apartment is built, you can go in and if you want 10 stills, we'll just go in and take the photographs. So what we typically — if you pay for a virtual tour of the unit, you're sort of paying for the 360

43:34images, but then we include the still images because everything is built. So in reality, even if someone wanted us to go around the apartment and take 15 different shots or something, everything is built — because we have to do the entire thing, down to the pot lights, the moulding, everything. And we also include the floor plan, so we actually remove the roof, put a camera up there — and so then you're getting a rendered floor plan that will look exactly like the virtual tour when you're down inside of it. And then we

44:01normally offer the drone panoramas — sometimes there's an extra charge for that one, just because drone work in general is sort of broad. Like, maybe we have to fly over certain areas, and depending on where the building is it's more difficult to get the drone. But we do try to include that, because as we've sort of mentioned, it's beneficial for not only us but the client if we have those drone photos. So most of the time that's kind of all

44:28within one package. And then the animation that Nick showed you earlier — with everything kind of moving through the apartment — that's kind of like getting to see the detail that we have to put into everything to get it to work with the 360. Doors — how compatible is Lumion and Unreal Engine 5 with things like BIM, CAD, and Revit? Like, if an architect reached out to you and wanted a rendering done above and beyond what they would usually

44:59do with your services — would you get a Revit file from them and be able to create from that, or do you just start from scratch? Yeah, so Lumion actually has a live link for Revit, so you can hit the live link and then it transfers everything into Lumion. Unreal Engine kind of goes the same way. We've seen a lot of digital twins of buildings being made now, and some of them in the States — I've actually seen one

45:26that had the HVAC system built into it as well, so they could kind of pre-route everything before they put the walls up. So most of the software that we use is extremely compatible with Revit files and stuff like that. Something that is — what we typically like about having the Revit model is — if you're doing the exterior of a building, that's typically a high enough quality — that's good to go. But for the interiors, we still like to sometimes see the Revit

45:53model, because the dimensions are exact. So we can look at something and go, oh, okay — actually, it looks like in the floor plan, maybe there's a closet here, but then in the Revit model we noticed that it's like two separate doors — things like that. Because the Revit model will just give us more information. But we typically put a shell over the walls in the interior, just because for things like Blender and Unreal it does have to be set up in a particular way. So you could bring it

46:15straight into Unreal, but to get that extremely high quality that we were looking for, we do have to sort of do some conversion in our workflow. Because the other thing too is that Revit — if you pull up a Revit model, you're looking at the entire building, so there's chairs, ovens, things like that. And they can only use — like, you normally get this kind of blocky oven, because they might only use, I don't know, let's say 300 faces to make this object.

46:41Whereas it's very easy for us to have a million and a half — yeah, it's just the beautiful geometry that comes with the Revit models. But the Revit models are extremely detailed — like, it can tell you down to the screw what's going in the building. So it is a very good reference point, and it gives us the — we'll probably show it as an example, I don't think we have anything here, but we'll send it in afterwards. But the

47:06Canard building is almost shaped like an L. So if you were on the far side of the building, or even above one of the pools, you'd see the other half of the building. Or you would look out your balcony and see that there's a pool deck or a patio. So we're able to actually bring the Revit model in — you could be out on that pool deck — yeah, and be in combination. So you can look at your

47:29deck and say, oh okay, well the drone photo would be there as the background, but then there's also the 3D model of the building in there. So yeah — you'll send that to me later so I can join the full day at the Canard when it's minus 20 next week. And that actually touches a bit on what we were saying — not only having the background for context, but if you have a certain terrace or a pool but the building isn't in there,

47:51that's not going to make any sense. Like, the building in relation to that pool is a huge part of it. I know that — I believe it's The George — we didn't do those renders, but that's just a great example for people that have seen those, where you're on their terrace but then you actually look up and you can see the rest of the building. If that wasn't there, you would just assume that you're at the very top of the building. Whereas it kind of shows that

48:13you have sort of the bigger terrace and then the higher wing or the higher levels, I suppose. Yeah, and that extra context is extremely important to sort of show the area. Yeah. Well, it's needed too, because a lot of the time people won't tell that this is virtual, right? So if they see something and they're like, oh, that's not what I saw — you almost have to tell them, you know, this is virtual. And unless you're willing to put those

48:36details in, yeah. The more you talk about these different scenarios — yeah, it sounds like the interior renderings and those things are almost a different ball game than the still shots of architecture. Yeah, there's a different approach for sure. It's — we kind of, you know — it's usually one or the other in terms of what people are looking for, unless they're looking for a walk-through that starts inside and goes outside, which the Canard walk-through does. We'll probably be able to show

49:07some footage of that too, which gives a good example. But yeah, it's crazy how photorealistic stuff is getting these days — it's almost too realistic. Yeah, yeah. The main difference — so with an exterior, sunlight is fairly predictable in the sense that, you know, if you put up a piece of wood, you have a shadow — that kind of thing. But interiors are a bit of a different ball game, because it's

49:34hitting countertops, you might have multiple pot lights all over the place, you have things going through glass and all these different things. And then there's also the natural light included in that. So there are so many different things that it's bouncing off of — you have to get it right or people are going to be able to tell right away — like, that doesn't look realistic. It has to have a lot of bounces and very soft

49:58shadows. Whereas most of the time if you're doing an exterior, the main source is the sun, and you are going to have sort of what you would expect from a building casting a shadow in the afternoon. So I'd say they both come with their own challenges. Having the Revit model is huge though — like, there are times where we can actually quote 30 to 40 percent of what we normally would, because we have that Revit model. I'm fully capable of modelling something

50:26like the Canard, but that would be a huge undertaking. It would probably take me weeks, if not over a month, just to get every detail — because I'd have to put every piece of spandrel, every door, every window, like that. And I'd have to keep referencing the photo. So while it's possible for us to do it, the architect has already done it in most cases. And so with that level of detail we're able to just kind of take it and then sort of elevate that beyond

50:50just a standard — like throwing in the sun and grass. We're able to put people in, we're able to put high quality cars in, we're able to change the mood. So maybe you have like a dusk shot, or a morning shot where people are just going to work — things like that. And especially for the larger, more complex projects — you know, a lot of these large architecture firms working throughout Atlantic Canada or elsewhere — you'd think that

51:13that extensive level of rendering you just mentioned would be desirable, especially on these largely-funded projects, right? Yeah. And I think a lot of the time, people are interested once they kind of see what we can do and the value that we can offer. It's just sort of getting our foot in the door with people. I think if people find out that we do renders, they sort of think about how renders used to

51:37be done — in the sense that, you know, maybe it's like one still image. And they assume something that someone did on SketchUp for them, yeah. And that's also — yeah, exactly. So it might just be something that is either low quality, or maybe they just didn't get that many. Because in reality, if you're only getting one or two images done for the interior of a building, yeah, you could probably just not go with it. But now, if you're talking about the

51:58service that we can provide — where you're getting hundreds of 360 photos and then maybe 50 or 60 still images — well, that's a very big difference. That's basically a whole marketing package. And I think once people realize that they can also use that internally and externally, then people are much more willing to let us sort of do our thing, and they're much more interested in the long term. It comes back to the mistake thing too — like, if you render a room and that's used

52:25as a tool for an electrician to go in and see where the plugs go or whatever — if it prevents one problem, that can pay for itself. Like, in terms of the tour — the money that you would save in rent and monthly rent income for one year — I think the tour would pay for itself. You just need to get one person in there that used the tour and then it's paid for itself. So in terms of — well, you're also saving

52:53costs on sellers for those units — people having actual physical tours on site. Yeah, yeah. The 3D Vista stuff actually comes with a virtual tour agent, so I think you can go in and schedule the time and meet with other people and it'll actually take you around and show you that. So it's — I mean, you have to think that you're going to see more and more of this. I mean, you're working on this first big one with the Canard Centre,

53:24you've done some stuff with the Margaretta, but you have to think — I'm a developer, and I can get five renderings of five different types of units in my building that has a hundred units. Yeah, why not get those done and have everything rendered before — every type is already done, right? So in the model suite you've got one unit type. But you can get a virtual tour of — traditionally there are 10 to 15 to 20 unit types. And if there are 200 units in your building, it makes sense to

53:54get every unit type. And then if anyone wants to move in at any point, you have that data, that content that you can just pull up and say, here you go — here's your unit. And they have exactly what they're going to get. The walk-through is identical. If they don't like some colours a year before, you can change — yeah, change the cabinets and put completely satin or stainless steel hardware on there, yeah. You know, yeah. And we can even sort of take

54:18out the — so let's just say that we were doing a building and the materials were perfect. So they have all the materials picked out, like there were no problems there — they wouldn't have had any extra costs incurred for any mistakes with the materials. Once we have gone in and done that, then you can actually show what it would look like in a photorealistic photo to all the people doing the millwork or the cabinetry, as we mentioned. So if there's a particular — you know, maybe there's

54:42something that's a very unique problem and people are thinking — just looking at these designs they're saying, okay, so these are the quotes and they have a wider spread. I would argue that once we do those renders, it's actually going to give a much more accurate description to the people doing the work, and you may actually be able to have a more accurate reflection of those costs. And that just drives value in that way. And that's not

55:08even including the fact that if a large building makes one mistake with the materials — whether it's ordering slightly the wrong colour or something like that — then that's probably going to cost more than all of the renders that we did for that building. Okay, well let's say another hypothetical. If I'm a developer and there are five units on the top floor of a new building that's going to be finished in a year from now,

55:33and they're all suites — different than the other units — and I wanted to leave all the materials up to the renters. You could just do a 3D walk-through of each one and put like four different options of colours and flooring material and all that kind of stuff. And if a client wanted to request a change, well then you just make the edit and show them what the space looks like with that change, whatever it might be. So yeah, we can take it almost a step further, where if a

55:59developer comes to us and they have a unit and they will have, say, five different hardwoods picked out — we can go to those suppliers, get the actual hardwood photos, bring that in with the cost per square foot, and then you have, you know, here's what this option looks like, here's what this option looks like, but here's also what the price is going to cost you. Like, it's going to be X amount of dollars more, but it looks amazing — so let's do it. And that's — yeah, that's we found that

56:24was pretty valuable. Greg, you had a good analogy — I guess in the sense that, when you get these documents beforehand, the interior design and stuff — you have a layout of everything but you don't know what it's going to look like in the space. So you compared it — I think — to reading a book together as opposed to watching a movie together. So you can all look through the materials and have a different idea of what's going on. But if you all see that

56:48together in a room — yeah, yeah — it's pretty powerful. Like, if there's any discrepancy — you know, you thought, oh, maybe that would look good — then you're all sitting there looking at it and you can address it. You're not leaving anything on the table. And the exact thing I guess we were talking about — so like, you know, if you're reading a book and someone says there was like a dark castle in the distance, I almost guarantee that every single person that just pictured that in their head has it different. Like, if we were able to all

57:12compare, we each pictured it differently. Whereas if I showed you the picture of it, then you can start to say like, okay, well maybe the path going up to the castle — you know, we need to change this. So you really are all focusing on the exact same image, instead of trying to compare how you're each interpreting the area. Right. So who are you competing with? I mean, you mentioned companies in China, and a lot of people have been

57:38outsourcing that. Like, locally, is anyone else doing exactly what you're doing here? There will be — yes and no. Renders — so something that I think makes us different from other rendering companies is that we try and take on bigger jobs. As I mentioned, it's not uncommon for a rendering studio to only do like three shots of an interior or something. It's kind of an economy of scale, in the sense that the more renders we're doing,

58:11the less we actually have to charge per render, in a way. Because if we're doing a full 360 tour, we would probably charge more for four stills inside of an apartment than for the actual virtual tour. Whereas if you just get the virtual tour, we'll give you 10 if you want. Because it's very jarring to do a certain area and then have people say, oh actually, can you shift it so we can see the bathroom? Because now we have to do the kitchen and the bathroom, and it's much more

58:37back-and-forth, and it's kind of jarring in that respect. So not only have we figured out some workflows to do these big jobs, but we do a lot of work behind the scenes. So I've spent hundreds of hours organizing our model library — we have everything organized with furniture — you know, maybe it's like wall plaster, all the assets that we need — so that when it is actually go time to drop everything in, we are dropping in our finished asset. And then we

59:07can sort of adjust the materials from there. Whereas with other companies, what would happen is they may not even have that bed until you actually go and say like, we need to get something like this. So then they would have to go set up the materials every single time they have this brand new asset. And it might take them — realistically — five to ten times longer to do a single unit. And that's not even including

59:29the fact that our computers combined are probably close to fifteen thousand dollars. But we're even looking right now at getting basically a crazy computer that can render even faster than that. Because that ultimately means more drafts for the client — which is a big difference too. We try to give tons of drafts so that the client doesn't just get the final image and then it's wrong. Like, you'll be able to walk through the apartment

59:55before it's finished, and we're still working through it. So I think that, to kind of summarize, we're much better adapted to doing these huge jobs because we link everything together and we spend lots of time before we actually get the job setting things up, so that everything can just roll through quickly. And we are in the process of actually putting all these onto our website. You know, when we get a development and there's a new apartment unit, a lot of the time

60:24there's some back and forth with different styles and what they're going for. This would allow us to put all 5,000 of our assets onto our website — you can go in, they're all labelled as free, so you just check out with whatever you want, and then that's your building style. We found that's pretty easy. And, you know, we're not pioneers in the space by any means, but the rate at which it's just come around and progressed is unbelievable in the last two or three

60:54years. Yeah, so anyone can get into it — and with Blender and stuff, it's encouraged because it's free. But it does take some time to learn. You're doing a lot of educational videos online as well, right? I mean, you have a large following and you're teaching people how to use some of these softwares — with Lumion and stuff? Yeah, and Unreal Engine 5 too, yeah. Yeah. The YouTube community has been

61:21pretty crazy. And it's going to connect you — you know, when we put these tutorials out, a firm down in Mexico or wherever will reach out and say, oh, this really helped us — thank you for that. And we just connect with different types of people, and then find different problems that are kind of universal in the space. And then you could watch all our tutorials, I guess, and start a render company and go that route if you wanted to. But

61:47it's a commitment — there's a lot to learn, and there's no real course you can take that will teach you this stuff. There are courses, but to really understand it — if you watch a course, you're not just going to be able to do it instantly. It's something that's almost like taking a course on painting. Like, you'll be better than when you started the course, but you're not going to be able to go and paint whatever you want

62:11because you took a 15-hour course. Yeah, like it's a lot of practice and a lot of visualizing it. I think, you know — you're talking about some really large projects that you're targeting, and obviously those types of clients are going to want to see your portfolio and some past work that you've done and all that kind of stuff too. So yeah. So you guys are maybe not pioneers, but front

62:34runners for sure. Especially for sure — we'd love to think so. But you know how busy it is right now, yeah, for development and stuff. Yeah, just — all over Atlantic Canada, yeah. We've seen — I mean, we have a couple of clients in New Brunswick, we've got people reaching out to us in western Canada as well. So there is a need for stuff like this. And it's amazing because, like, we love doing it — it's super fun to

63:03do this stuff. But it's a weird skill set. Like, you can be amazing at rendering, but then if you can't use a camera and you don't know how to position it — you need to almost know architectural photography. You need to know lighting. And you have to have some kind of interior background, or some kind of design background — that's really helpful. But there are a lot of elements to

63:27kind of pull from. But it's fun, we love doing it. It's — yeah. It's funny you mentioned that — go ahead, Greg, sorry. Oh no, so I'm just going to say — it's kind of funny, because when you're a 3D artist, being able to make something that looks photorealistic — people say that's like step one. Because that's almost like — it's like being a photographer — figuring out where to hit that snapshot button. That's the first step.

63:54Then you have to learn the composition of a photo. Like, well, why are you showing this? How is everything positioned? So being able to just use Blender to show something that looks realistic is only the first step to really becoming a world-class 3D artist. I'm not saying we are, but I'm saying that first step is actually just being able to control the software well enough to make it look realistic. But then you have many steps after that — just learning

64:19how to really convey a scene with just one image. And it's a bit of a rabbit hole you find yourself down. But if you're into that kind of stuff — like movie effects, gaming, and stuff — that's always been a passion of ours and very interesting to us. So to be able to kind of draw from the video game engine and then maybe pull some video effects that are used in Hollywood, just to be able to leverage everything — I think it's super fun. I

64:48mean, it's a service that allows us to kind of pull some different creative strings and do some cool stuff. Yeah, it's definitely cool stuff. I mean, it's been great to chat with you guys about all the exciting stuff you're doing. And I'm sure our listeners and viewers that are seeing the videos of your products on the screen here are going to be as impressed as

65:16we are with how cool it is and the stuff that you guys can create. It's amazing. Any closing comments before we wrap up? It's been great — I know we probably could have talked a lot more about technology and software and things like that. I hope I asked some interesting questions for people who don't know anything about that side of things, like myself. But yeah, no, it's — it's kind of a delicate balance, because as Nick said, there are so many rabbit holes with this

65:40that it can get pretty crazy. But you also need to try to convey it in a sense that someone who's not too familiar with it would still make sense of it. But we probably did some rambling, just because there is really so much out there that you wouldn't believe. And even just trying to condense that down can be impossible sometimes. And the whole virtual building space is kind of blowing up — like with the metaverse and everything else —

66:05that's something — pre-COVID — you wouldn't really think opportunities like that would arrive. But we've had people reach out to us asking if we do NFTs, or if we can build a virtual home for someone's online platform, which — up until COVID — I would never have thought that would be a market. But it seems to be. Well, I think you're in a really unique space, you know, because I think — I could speak from the world that I come from —

66:32the construction world. There are a lot of — maybe there are even developers and more on the real estate side — that aren't aware of how extensive the services that you guys can create are, and to the extent that it can go with these 3D animations and virtual tours and things. And then also to understand, after seeing the product, the value on the business side — not just to market it, but to save money and not having units unrented or not purchased,

67:02because you're able to show the space virtually. And you're saving all kinds of overhead costs and things like that. So I think you're kind of on the verge of two different worlds, but it seems to be something that's — yeah, it's almost — and to incorporate a creative endeavour with a business, but it seems to be more and more mainstream now with everything that's going on. And it's

67:30just a really cool space to be in. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. I just find it funny that if you told me five years ago, when I was still in school, that I'd be a 3D artist — I just would not have believed it. So I was just — just an accountant, I guess. No, it's a very — well, on that account — YouTube, yeah — he's got the — he's a creative. He's a creative — watch out, you don't want to hire this

67:59guy. Yeah, it's just — I don't know — it's crazy how that's all developed. But I'm very happy to be living back in Halifax full-time and especially kind of being a part of everything that's been going on. Because our lives — Halifax was just sort of treading water. It wasn't going — nothing really bad or good. It was just sort of the quiet Halifax — just nice. But now it doesn't feel like that at all.

68:22So yeah, we've been extremely blessed in that sense — it was a good time to start the business. Not only was there a need for it, but getting in when we did and being able to take that full year to learn and stuff — that really helped us out in terms of where everything's going. And the boom in Halifax behind it — that's just the cherry on top. Yeah, for sure. Timing's definitely perfect. And

68:46we'll be excited to hear how things are going for you guys in the near future. This has been great — hopefully informative for listeners and people in the industry that are going to be interested in this service, whether it be architects or developers or whatnot. So yeah — and if anyone is interested in learning more, please reach out to us. My email is g.miles@luminouslabs and I believe Nick's is just nick@luminouslabs. So if you had any

69:10questions, or just wanted to talk about it a little bit — we're pretty much always at our computers, so we can give you some more information there. Awesome. Yeah, and they can also — we'll post your contact info on our platforms, and if they DM us we'll forward them along to you. Yeah, best of luck, and this has been great — really interesting and a great time chatting with you guys. So Nick and Greg from Luminous Labs, thank you.

69:34Thanks so much! Awesome. Thanks, thanks for having us on. Yeah, thank you. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Be sure to follow us on any podcast platform you use. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram at Atlantic Construction Podcast. Be sure to send us a comment or review — we'd love to engage with you.