How 3D Renders & Virtual Tours De-Risk Construction | Luminous Labs (Halifax)

0:05Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Today we welcome back our guests from episode 25 — Luminous Labs. That was a couple of years ago, so Greg Miles and Nick LeBlanc — it's great to have you gentlemen in the studio again. Great to be back. Yeah, it's great to be back, just both in person finally. Before we get started, we'll let our audience know how big a part you guys play behind the scenes for AC Media and the Atlantic Construction Podcast and helping with a lot of the recordings and

0:39editing behind the scenes. You guys have been a huge partner for us, so big — almost a year — just a huge partner in helping us get off the ground and keep doing the show. So let our audience know that Nick and Greg are a big part of what we do, so it's great to have you on. Yeah, it's great to be back. So two years — I mean, it's been two years and things have changed a lot for

1:06you both, and give us a little background on what's happened since. Well, it feels like we've done so much in the last two years while also really not doing anything — we've just been working and pretty much just been busy all the time. Yeah, it's crazy to think that it's been two years because it's like everything just kind of runs together. But we've done some pretty big jobs just in the city and I've just kind of been growing the

1:32business ever since then, and just kind of riding the waves I guess. So it's been — it's definitely been interesting. You know, there are days where you wonder why you started a business, and then there are other days that it's pretty fun. I'm sure all entrepreneurs feel like that, but yeah, it's a lot of ups and downs, a lot of sleepless nights followed by weeks where you're too busy, and then you're not busy enough. So it's like you're stressed because you're too busy

1:59and you're stressed because you're not busy — you're in a panic about something. But it's been good. I mean, since we last met we've worked on tons of projects, we've got a handful of them that we can actually show now that are no longer under NDA. So yeah, it's been a lot on the go. Yeah, the NDAs are a big thing for Luminous Labs, right? Because you're kind of in the conception and design phase, helping with the vision and producing these

2:29basically the real estate visuals before they're out there, so you always have to kind of get permission before letting those things out to the public. Yeah, and even some of the ones that are now — like, just recently — that we can share: I mean, they were done when we were on the podcast last time. Sometimes it takes quite a while — if we come in sometimes three or four years before the building's actually done, so then

2:55there could basically be a year-and-a-half window where all of the marketing materials are done but they're just kind of getting everything in order to actually do their big marketing push. In that time there are sometimes some changes, but for the most part it's just weird to see everything actually come together. Because even if there are some little details that change from when we finish the render to when it actually opens — when you actually go into

3:17the building — it's very weird. It's very surreal, because it's like having déjà vu. It's a place that you've spent literally hundreds of hours in sometimes, and then you actually walk in it for the first time and it's strange. How far are we into the business life cycle now? I mean, last time you were on was almost two years ago, but what are you at — year four, year five? Yeah, so I think the first job that we had was September of 2019, but that was before it

3:46was like — I guess before we were kind of serious about the company. We talked about it as something we might want to do, but it wasn't something at the time we were really going out of our way to do. And then that job came up, and then another job came up. And then I'd say that we really started around February of 2020. Because I know in the past couple of years, just in our

4:11conversations and whatnot, you guys have been through kind of a phase where you tried to scale up and delegate, get some systems in place, and then maybe scale back a little bit since that time. Maybe talk a little bit about that curve, because it's something that a lot of entrepreneurs and companies go through in their early years — the trials of that. Yeah, just

4:38give us the scoop there. Yeah, there is one small thing I wanted to mention about that. It was strange, because it wasn't like — when we did have to lay a couple of people off, it was strange because it wasn't actually because we didn't have enough work. It was because of the kind of job that we had set it up for. When we were hiring everyone on, we were doing a ton of virtual tours, which

5:02is kind of swinging back again — but in 2023 there just weren't that many virtual tours. We were doing a ton of jobs, but just not a lot of those virtual tours. So for the very unique projects that we were doing, it was a lot harder to delegate some of that, I guess, because we basically had to be there at the start and the end. With some of the virtual tours there are things where we can say, okay, maybe give us a hand modeling some

5:26of the walls, or putting some furniture in — things like that. It's all done in-house, but it was just a very specific job. So it was weird because we didn't have any work to give them, but we were basically slammed like 80, 90 hours a week, but then we didn't have any work to really give them. That was just a weird — well, we were training them as well, so they didn't have very much 3D experience at all.

5:52We kind of brought them on and trained them in the workflow of the virtual tour work. It's a pretty specific workflow, and for us to train them to that workflow isn't very hard — it's pretty basic stuff that we were getting them to do. But for whatever reason that year we had everything but virtual tours. And you know, we figured if we had a year like 2022 or 2021, there'd be enough full-time work to have these

6:24guys go on full-time, and then get into more of the animation stuff and stills. And we were getting requests for golf courses and just really specific, not beginner-friendly 3D stuff. So at that point we just realized it's probably a bit easier to scale back. We still do some contract work with them — we're kind of ramping up on virtual tours again so they're always there to be outsourced, just not full-time. I'd probably still like

6:57it — it's not quite outsourcing in the sense of sending it overseas or anything like that. They're all local — everyone we have doing contract work lives in Halifax or Dartmouth. And part of the reason why we wanted to do that as well is not just to try to keep things local, but when it comes to the equipment it's a lot more manageable — like, if one of their computers breaks I can go and fix

7:19it pretty much the same day. Whereas if we had someone working over in like Poland or something, and we were buying all of his or her equipment, then if something happened where their computer was out of commission for a week, there's just not as much control over that. I really like the fact that if something breaks I can go and buy it and fix it within a couple of hours, and that's

7:41really important to not have that downtime. Yeah, that's a big thing. Maybe talk a little bit about the back end — just the software and the tech side of things. Like Lumion, Unreal Engine — how much has that changed in the last couple of years? Assuming there are always changes, probably rapid ones. Have you shifted gears at all, or are you still kind of using the same software? For the most part I think it's the same. Lumion was kind of the beginner one that

8:12got our foot in the door — it's kind of a really beginner-friendly program, so you'll see a lot of architects and engineers use it because it's super easy to use, but it doesn't really produce the highest quality. So we kind of moved away from that for the most part. We don't use Lumion much, but yeah — Unreal Engine and Blender are full steam ahead. They're getting new updates every month, and the hardware itself

8:41moves pretty quickly as well. We use Nvidia for all our graphics cards, and they're going through the big boom with AI and everyone using their chips for AI stuff. Yeah, we'll get into that — that's probably a whole other podcast, the AI side of things. But yeah, we're still using Blender and Unreal. There are actually different render engines you can put onto Blender, so it's the same program but you can swap out the engine that renders everything if you want

9:13to get different-looking images — some are better for interior, some are better for exterior. So we've been kind of experimenting with Octane for Blender. We still use 3ds Max and Corona as well. We pretty much dabble in all the 3D software because every firm seems to use something different. Revit's a big one — I guess when we first started, there was a handful of people using Revit, it was pretty common, but now I'd say it's very — yeah, very

9:48standard. Things in the industry have really moved away from CAD to Revit. I mean, everyone still has a CAD account and I think still shares files that way, but when it comes to design, the Revit model is the way to go. It's industry standard. I've never worked at a construction firm so I don't know how they would have done it before, but Revit just seems like if you have a large firm, Revit has all the tools you need to actually have everyone

10:08working on it. I don't know how that would have worked before — if you have a hundred people working on a project, I'm sure there was a way to have CAD files synced up so people weren't working on each other's stuff. But it seems like Revit just has all the tools that you need, and it's something that's becoming almost like a common language in the industry where most

10:32students coming up have some sense of how Revit works. We're learning it a little bit right now as well, just to get a little more literate with it and figure out how to get everything working. But yeah, we're also thinking about maybe growing into another kind of section of work where we do a bit of Revit work or some of the floor plan stuff. There are a lot of architects and design

10:58firms overloaded with that, and not as many people with high skills just doing that every day — where they can be efficient with it. So that's probably a niche to be carved out or capitalized on. Yeah, and we work with — I mean, we're in the documents all the time. For the most part, we can read a set of documents pretty well. It's when we're rendering and we have to go in and find certain units, or find the reflected ceiling plan stuff —

11:23like, that's pretty much our day-to-day, so that isn't too foreign. There is kind of a limit on what you can do without a stamp — we would only be able to do, I think, residentials under 3,500 square feet or something like that. Anything larger — commercial — you'd need either an engineer or an architect to stamp it. But yeah, there seems to be quite a bit of small stuff, even just renovations like people's houses, or if

11:55they're putting an add-on to the back of the house or whatever it is — a small fit-up, even commercial. Yeah, or even the kind of Airbnb-shed-type things you can put on your lot and rent out. So there does seem to be kind of a hiccup for a bunch of teams that we've talked to, so we're kind of exploring what that would look like. It's a little bit more hands-on than the renders, so you'd need

12:26professional liability — it's a little bit more intense. But yeah, if it works, we'd definitely be interested in doing it. And just to kind of touch on all the software — there are a lot of things we can still learn from Revit, and there are a lot of good tools in there that we can actually use to speed up our workflow. But it's just crazy because in a way

12:49the software hasn't really changed in the last three years, while also being completely different. It's like at its core it's still the same thing, but there are just constant optimizations. Blender has — every two or three months they come up with some pretty big updates. It's the same thing with Unreal Engine — right now it's at 5.4, and every three or four months they come out with a new one, and there are always enormous changes whenever they do. So it's something

13:14that every time a new one comes out, we have to at least have some understanding of what it is. Even if it doesn't necessarily apply to the business, it's so good to have an idea of what it is because it might in the future. But there are just so many tools to keep up on — it could pretty much be a job in itself just trying to learn all the new stuff that comes out with this tech. So you kind of

13:32have to be able to sift through what's important and what's actually going to help the business. Yeah, a little more complicated than downloading an update to your iPhone. Well, at least the updating part's easy, but then it's like — it'd be like you update your phone and then there are all these new features. If you're using your phone 12 or 15 hours a day like we do sometimes, it really does add up,

13:53knowing some of the software. Because if you're doing 20 units, you might only save like 10 minutes, but there are 20 units — so it's like everything starts to add up quite a bit. Yeah. I'm just trying to think — when we were here last, was Unreal 5 even out two years ago? When did that come out? I think it was out but it wasn't — in the alpha or

14:17whatever — like you could download it, but no one was using it because it was a mess at that point. But even the render times from when we've started to now have increased significantly — it's almost exponential at this point. There's going to be a time, I think, where all render engines will be essentially real time — like you won't have to wait days for the image to finish. Let's say five years before we started, all render engines were

14:49like — you had to click a button and wait for the image to render, and it just took days and days. 'Cause yeah, I guess there was some real time, but for the most part if you were rendering anything closer up it would take a long time. Now it's like two minutes and your image is done. Those are — so yeah — basically the real-time and the ray-trace are kind of the two branches of rendering. Something like Lumion was at least real time, and now

15:17there's like a ray-tracing thing, but they're kind of merging together now. The stuff that used to take long — you can get like 85 or 90% of the quality instantly, and even leaving it for 10 or 15 minutes you get that extra little bit. It's definitely becoming closer and closer, especially as all these game engines become so much bigger — not just for video games themselves but in the architecture industry, developers, everything. It's really interesting to see how construction

15:46has kind of adopted a lot of these video game softwares to actually visualize everything — because you can walk through a house, changing materials and everything like that, all in real time. It does take a bit to set up, but it's pretty cool what you can do with it once it's all finished. Yeah, you're right — it is quite a synergy, the construction industry and this video game-type software and the service that you guys are building and

16:12providing. Because like you said, those are things that can cause a lot of hiccups when it comes to dealing with consultants and architects — things being handed off, the design team has got something done, it doesn't work, the builder's on site ordering materials, certain colors, and the owner's trying to pick. To be able to do it in real time and change materials and have it look identical to what it will appear like in reality — that's

16:40pretty neat. I mean, that's the trajectory it's on — it's not there yet. But even today — we've been saying this for a while — the first glasses-shaped goggles I'd say just came out. Like Meta just announced their new AR glasses. They look ridiculous — it basically looks like 3D glasses you get at a theater, but it's kind of a mix between Bubbles' glasses

17:12and 3D glasses — really thick frames, really big lenses. So you can see — it's Meta's competitive product against Apple's Vision Pro. You remember seeing those a couple of months ago where everyone was wearing those ski-goggle-looking Apple things? So this is kind of Meta's take on it, which I think will probably work a bit better just because they've been doing the VR stuff for so

17:45long — Apple just came out with their first VR/AR project, Meta has been doing it for close to six or seven years now. So yeah, Zuck's got a lot up his sleeve. I think there are going to be some pretty crazy things you can do with that. That's obviously the very first version of it, so there's going to be quite a bit that happens. But VR glasses in general — I don't know if those are actually going to stick

18:13around, just because I think what you can do with AR is much cooler. A lot of people — to me the VR is very interesting, but it's also not as user-friendly. If you're using the AR glasses, you can still see the room around you, and maybe there are pipes on the wall or something — you can walk through a building and see all that. The VR glasses you can kind of get that full

18:38effect, but a lot of people don't like wearing them strictly because you're basically boxed in. So even if you're looking at something, a lot of people just don't like the feeling they give. I think AR won't have that. Especially — I could see in even 10 years that AR glasses become very popular on construction sites. If you have a company like Smarter Spaces that can go in and actually scan buildings, it's not inconceivable to think

19:05that at some point, whatever those models are, you can basically overlay them to be exactly where you're seeing them with the AR glasses — into a Revit model, into the construction drawings, into the assemblies inside the wall, or in the floor assembly, wherever. Yeah, you just walk on site, walk through the front door — yeah, it calibrates where you're at — and then if you're an electrician you're like, okay, where does the conduit need to go? Instead of having to go through all the building documents, you could show up on site, click a button, and you'd see

19:33all the wires kind of through the walls. And even — this is one we've had on our radar for a long time, but the technology wasn't really there — it'd be kind of interesting where if you walk through a house or an apartment that's just down to the studs, theoretically you could have it where you basically line up the 3D model. We talked about this a long time

19:56ago, but you have the 3D model that basically fits over the wall — so if you walk through a door, you're in the next room. But you can't see through those studs because the 3D model is there, but then doors are just open like normal. And you basically put like a drone shot outside the window and you can basically walk around the apartment. Like I said, that's not at least fully there in the way that I'd know how to do it yet with the AR

20:17glasses, but I don't think they're that far off. It's just that not a lot of people have spent too much time doing this because the only AR glasses you can get right now look like these really big Star Trek spacer things — so no one's going to be seen walking down the street in that anytime soon. But those ones — the more they start looking like normal glasses, the more people are going to start using them. I

20:37think that's really interesting too. If you look at it from a 30,000-foot view of construction — in the sense of how it's kind of intertwined with real estate and finance — there are people looking at models where some investor groups want to take retrofits, buy properties, you know, convert this old apartment building from 1970 — that's 50 years old — and convert it into rental units. Those are high-risk projects because you get into that demolition and you don't

21:09know how it's going to go, and it's just chaos. But if you had more security with services like this, where they could have a game plan and almost just emulate the game plan — the same way they pick their retrofit properties, buying certain kinds of property across the country — they could just engage with a team that offers the services you're providing and say, you know, we can get in there and find out all these things prior to — at inception and prior to

21:37construction drawings — and be in touch with the architect. And you're going to know exactly what you're getting into. So that's kind of a niche in its own right, I think, because retrofits pose this huge risk factor. Like, maybe it's another million bucks for the demo — we just don't know yet, or it's more than that. Yeah, and that's even what we — this afternoon we came across some videos just on YouTube. It's like a group of three guys from Pennsylvania I think, but they

22:03just bought some old building — like an old high school for like $100,000 — spent I think three and a half million renovating it, and basically got this beautiful industrial loft. And then there was one right across the street and they just bought that one too. For those two buildings I think they bought them for like $200,000, and maybe the renovations were somewhere in the five-and-a-half to six million dollar range. But it's just very interesting because that kind of architecture — like,

22:29unless you're converting an old building, no one builds like that anymore — you just don't see that style anymore. A lot of the newer buildings have, you know, just sort of the current style. Exactly, yeah. But those old industrial lofts — you're kind of mixing a lot of the new materials with that old style. Yeah, there's probably a tangent there too with heritage properties throughout the country,

22:55where these are projects — whether it's a public building or any kind of heritage property that they need to preserve — when you're doing renovations and retrofits, services like this are really valuable. Even this building would probably fall under that category, right? Like a lot of buildings on the waterfront, there are a lot of old properties. Well, we've been doing some more work with Smarter Spaces as well, like Greg mentioned, and kind of got to peek at some of the services they

23:22provide. One of them is scanning concrete slabs as they go up to see if there are any dips or valleys that aren't supposed to be there, and they do it for each floor. So as you go up you can see — it's like a thermal image — and it also shows where the pipes are laid in reality against the plans. So sometimes they won't line up exactly where the sleeve needs to go through that concrete.

23:50So they'll have a representation — I'd say down to the centimeter, pretty accurate depending on what they use. It's pretty — yeah, I know, we've mentioned them quite a bit, but they use LiDAR, so it's very accurate. But it's just crazy to see some of those data sets that are available. And because we deal a lot with visualizations

24:18but we're not typically on job sites — seeing all of the logistics of it, seeing all the data sets that are out there — it's always very interesting when everything comes together. That's kind of exactly what we were talking about before the podcast, where they're in my apartment building now ripping up a lot of the ceilings and floors because they didn't pour the slab correctly, and then they put all the

24:47hardwood and the LVT over everything. So now they're kind of backtracking. If they had spent a little bit at the beginning when everything was going up, they would have been able to say, you know, that's not flat — that's not supposed to be there — and probably save themselves a good amount of money. Yeah, there are all kinds of services like that, all kinds of value you could extract. Even beyond the services that you're providing now — all the high-end

25:11renderings and animations and virtual tours — if you could reach into the developer, building asset owner, architecture and design phase, into construction. And I think that's the beauty of having different people on the podcast and different people through the doors circulating around AC Media — these conversations always escalate into other conversations, and the inception of those things happening could start

25:43because it always starts with just an idea and talking through it. Yeah, and it's just crazy thinking back to the last time we were on. Like I said, every two years new graphics cards come out, and every time that happens the graphics cards are twice as powerful as the generation before. So the graphics cards have basically gone up exponentially since we even started four years ago. We bought pretty

26:10close to top-of-the-line graphics cards back then and they're basically not usable anymore — they're crap. Like, they're what we put in computers when it's just like we need something to just turn on and do something quick. So everything just gets so much more powerful. And even in the lifespan of a build — you know, it might take maybe eight or nine years for some of these really big buildings from the time that you have

26:33the land, get the zoning and everything — in that time, eight or nine years is a long time in technology. Even if you were to do one building, go to the next — the whole playing field can be different. Yeah, and it kind of spawns into different fields of what you can do too. So Unreal Engine has kind of gone full-fledged on virtual production, which is essentially — you can have sets behind you on

27:01a screen instead of a green screen. I think we kind of talked about it on the last podcast as well, where we showed that big volume. But that's all because of real-time rendering — you can have a city and stuff moving behind you because you don't have to wait for the render to happen, it's real time. So yeah, we spend a lot of time — when this new tech comes out or a new function comes out and we're like, oh, well, maybe we

27:25could use it for that. And then we have to pick and choose our battles and where it can actually go. There are a lot of different things you can do, not even just with the construction industry — I mean, that's a big one, that's usually where most of our thoughts go. But yeah, just in general, the tech and where it's moving and how fast it goes — it always presents new business opportunities. And if anyone

27:50listening to this has watched the Mandalorian, I'd really recommend going on YouTube and seeing how that was made. Because for virtual production, that was probably one of the best examples of it — where they didn't use a green screen. You're basically in this 360 volume — yeah, the volume. Instead of having the green screens put in after, it's actually just a bunch of screens going around. So all the reflections on the armor, all the reflections on the guns, anything like

28:17that — those are all real reflections that are happening. And then if they were doing it and the director didn't like where a certain mountain was in the background, he could actually stop the production, have people standing in the same spot, and basically go in with like a VR hand controller and actually grab the object and move it — so you get all these perfect shots. When you're watching a lot of old movies, the reason the armor would look really plastic and not reflective is just because they didn't want to bother fixing all the green reflections from the green screen. So even something like that — it may not seem like much, but it pretty much changes almost the entirety of filmmaking and how you go about making films and sets and everything. And you can include props in there too, where if you're holding basically a little cylinder with a little sensor on

28:38the end — if you point that at the screen, a light will appear on the screen and actually light up like a cave or something. And that's all just happening pretty much right whenever the actor does that. So it's just stuff like that. Like I said, we go on about all this stuff that you're tapping into and doing these high-end renderings for construction, for developers. Yeah, same software, and trying to apply it in different ways. Some of the

29:01AR stuff was — to be able to have, if those glasses get to a point where you don't look too ridiculous wearing them — you could have a presentation where the building's on a table and it's like a hologram of the building. You could click on it and snap to different areas. We kind of take it in the construction route and look at how we can apply most of these systems to construction and architecture, because there is a lot of overlap and I think a

29:25lot of value that it provides. But yeah — would they have used similar software in the Dune movies? Those are pretty popular. Or even as far back as Lord of the Rings — would that have been just green screen? Well, actually, Lord of the Rings in particular — they definitely did use CGI, but Peter Jackson in particular is a huge fan of miniatures. So you'd be surprised at how

29:52much — around the age of, like, 1990 to maybe 2005 — that was when a lot of CGI was really coming into its own, but a lot of them were miniatures. You'd be surprised. I think even in Star Wars, there were miniature castles put in front of the camera in front of a mountain, so it looks like there's this huge castle on a mountain, but it's just a miniature model.

30:17It's pretty cool — that in itself is not quite CGI, it's more like practical effects, but it's really cool to see all that too. The same way people take pictures with their phone of the Eiffel Tower as if they're holding it — essentially what they're doing. But Dune — it's funny you mention Dune because they did do a whole pre-production planning with Unreal Engine. So they had to go — yeah, I don't know if I showed you the video actually — they went to yeah, some

30:46It's pretty cool — that in itself is not quite CGI, it's more like practical effects, but it's really cool to see all that too. The same way people take pictures of their phone of the Eiffel Tower as if they're holding it — essentially what they're doing. But Dune — it's funny you mention Dune because they did do a whole pre-production planning with Unreal Engine. So they had to go — yeah, I don't know if I showed you the video actually — they went to

31:13somewhere in Africa, I think, to film all the Dune scenes where it's sand everywhere. But what they did is they remade the locations they were going to shoot in Unreal Engine, and then they tied a sun system to it. So at 6:00 p.m., you know this valley is going to have sunlight coming down it, and they would do that in the engine. So they could be like, okay, this day at 6:00 a.m. we need to be here, and then when

31:42the sun goes to sunset they'd simulate it in the engine and then go to this other location. They did all the pre-planning for that in Unreal Engine. It's a great talking point though, just to overlay — the service you're providing doing these renderings for these major projects in Halifax — where it really is tapping into the way that films are made. It's the same essence, the same technology, a similar process. And sun studies actually, in

32:14particular — that's a good point. The software we use — like Nick said — you can tie it directly to where you are on the globe, the time of day, and everything, so you get very realistic sun patterns. We can actually do sun studies better than a lot of other firms, just because we have that. We can have

32:39it where — it's not so much the data that comes with it, but you can visually see on each side of the building, or wherever it is, exactly at what time the sunlight's going to be there. Some people may find that valuable, some people may not — it really just depends on the building that's going up. It might not even be in someone's thought pattern, but then to someone else it might be. Yeah, well, we did that on the Cunard — for Southwest

33:05on the waterfront. They had some art installations that they were putting kind of in between their existing building and the new building, and they wanted to see where they should place it relative to the sun angle. So we did a number of studies. And the software — you can get pretty detailed with it. You can put in not only the time of day but the month and day as well, which will affect where the sun is when

33:34it's spinning — so you can do a winter one, a summer one — and it simulates it pretty perfectly. That was one — I mean, we had everything modeled anyway from doing the 3D work there, but it was just a matter of dropping in a little element for where the art installation is and then testing the sun angle. Yeah, talk a little more about — because you guys mentioned Revit before, and a lot of our listeners would be coming at

34:01that from the angle of a contractor, a CM, or an architect — consultants and design teams sharing Revit files all the time, from before construction, before final drawings are set — from IFP for permitting on to an IFC set for construction. But you're using Revit, so typically the process is: you get the Revit model, incorporate it into your software and Unreal Engine, you're rendering the building with, you know, your

34:31drone heights for window views and all that kind of stuff. So the Revit model is important. Are there times where you don't have that? Obviously you would on the major projects, but sometimes maybe you don't, so you've got to build it from scratch — is that right? Yeah, so for the exteriors, most of the time when we're doing — typically the bigger the building gets, the more likely there's going to be a 3D model. So it does kind of resolve itself on the really big ones. But there are

34:53typically smaller buildings — maybe somewhere in the 20 to 50 unit range — where someone would have just the CAD files for it. So if we're doing a building like that, we can normally model it — it's way easier, even if we have a rough 3D model to reference. Because even though we can read all the elevations and everything, there are sometimes just little details that you kind of have to feel out. Whereas if I have a SketchUp model or a Revit

35:20model or something that is already from the architect, it's very easy for me to see — like, oh okay, this balcony hangs out over here, this window is going to be 7 feet tall, things like that. I could get there just based on having a standard architectural package, but it is a lot easier if you have more data. And a lot of the time, yeah, sometimes people are a

35:46little wary to give up the Revit stuff because there is a lot of information in there. Even most of the time on the construction side — like if you want to get a Revit model for a contractor on a major project, whether it's a lump sum or a public tender, yeah, with a typical GC you've got to sign a waiver and get that. But you might want it to order prefab material or whatever — usually yeah, it's not like you can just say, hey, chuck

36:07me the Revit model. And they're usually tied into families and stuff too. Like Greg mentioned earlier, that's kind of how everyone works now — if someone in one division updates something it kind of updates for everyone. So there is a whole — I guess if you're not on the server you can't really screw anything up, but for the most part it's like — if we get a building, it's really

36:33just more of a visual aid, and great for measurements. We'll typically build over the major structures anyway — like if there's a huge wall that's going to need a really detailed material, it doesn't make sense for us to use the Revit geometry because it's usually really buggy and just not very clean geometry. So we'll just model over the top of it, almost like a shell. And that way everything works a lot better with our software — the materials work better, the lighting looks

37:06better. When it comes to building — sorry, Greg, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say — for the interior units, it's also nice to have the Revit model, but honestly for that one it's basically just we can get a little bit of extra information — like ceiling heights, where the windows are, and everything — but honestly all that's kind of already in the package. So the exteriors are definitely way more important to have the Revit model for. Having

37:29it for the interior units — we typically remodel the whole thing anyway, because that's how our workflow works. But what we always tell our clients is just send us everything — even if you don't think it's helpful. Because if we can get into Procore or something like that, all the data is right there and we can just go and pick out whatever we need. It's definitely better that we get too much information. Kind of like being

37:51a detective at a crime scene — you might not think it's important, but all the info you have is valuable. Exactly. Because then the most common thing is — when the architectural package is broken down into all its different sections, we just get the A section. So we don't have the electrical, maybe we don't have structural or mechanical or something like that. We just kind of have the unit layouts, and you might have the

38:14furniture, maybe sometimes a ceiling plan but not the actual lighting plan — things like that. So we have to kind of go back and forth and get all of that. But typically I would much rather receive 100 PDFs than just receive one and then we're trying to fill in the blanks. Because then we assume and get it wrong and have to backtrack. So I'm thinking — trying to think about this from the perspective of just different scenarios with

38:43the people involved in the building process. Like, when it comes to building materials — I know you can render in any material, for example: any countertop you want — do you want granite, do you want quartz, do you want some other solid surface or laminate? Or like the Caesarstone material, the flooring, exterior curtain wall glass, different types of ACM, ceramics or cement board — those kinds of things. And the lighting on the outside. So when you build those things into your

39:15animated render model — into your virtual tours, into your walkthroughs — and you can swap out materials, does it get as deep as just that kind of material? Or can you actually take a spec product with that color from a manufacturer and put that in and show exactly how it's going to look? How deep can you go? That's a good question, actually. So we typically try to get it as close as possible every time. Sometimes close enough for the eyes and for the

39:39reasoning for the purpose of doing it. But if we have physical samples — which, obviously, if we're doing any local job we typically have those — it can be honestly quite different. Websites are really inconsistent. Where's your catalog though — is that within the Revit software? Oh, no sorry — typically if you're pulling that from wherever — yeah, so typically that would come from the interior designer. So the architecture plans typically have — sometimes the architects will go through and specify this hardwood floor, this wall paint, and everything. And then that

40:11can just get thrown out the window when the interior designer works on it. So once we get the package though — if it's this LVT, these tiles in the bathroom — most of the time we can get it pretty much exact. A lot of websites actually have it where you go on, you can get a picture, and we have a bunch of upscaling software. So even if we have a crappy picture from the website, we can actually upscale it, bring it

40:34into Photoshop, adjust the colors, make it seamless, and then you're pretty much good to go. So whenever we're doing it, we try to get it absolutely perfect. A lot of the materials we use actually aren't in our library — because even though we have a lot of generic wood, plastic, and marble, if someone says they want Caesarstone at this particular number,

41:00we actually go and get the full slab from the website. And the best product — the one that's always great when we're using it — is Shaw Contract. Whenever we're doing a project with that it's always a pleasure. Whoever works at that company and runs the website should definitely get a pay raise or a promotion. Shaw Contract, yeah. So I don't — I'm actually not familiar — yeah, I'm not sure, I feel like some of

41:30our listeners will hear that and think of The Shaw Group. I'm actually not sure if that's them or not. I just know it's — we see it in quite a few projects, mostly for flooring — a lot of LVT, a lot of carpets. But the reason why we like them so much is that for every texture they have eight tiles, and then with those eight tiles we

41:56can basically make all of our planks use one of them, and it makes a perfectly random floor. So even if there are only eight pictures repeating, you'll never be able to see a pattern. And for us, we basically just go around the outline of the room, make all these planks appear, and you basically get perfect hardwood flooring — and everything's perfectly labeled. So whenever we have those kinds of resources, we get it pretty much bang on. The only thing

42:20that may change is that when we have the physical samples, sometimes there's a little bit of a color difference — a brightness difference — to a point where if anybody's going to notice that, they need to get a life. Yeah, and a lot of the time you're not going to notice that stuff. There definitely are lots of people in the industry that would notice. There are two small things about that. One of them is — part of the issue we actually

42:44kind of run into — which is a small problem, but it's kind of weird — is that if we're working on the render and we may have the colors absolutely perfect, but then if someone loads it up on their TV and their TV's not great, it's not perfect anymore. They're not seeing it in its purest form. The same way as when you're recording music — you don't know what they're going to be listening to it on. So you've

43:07got to get it right at the highest level at that phase. And there is something we came across to help with that — you typically see it a lot with photographers. It's a physical color sample, basically a grid with different colors on it. If you can match your picture up to those colors you should have the perfect color for each of them. But the other thing I want to mention about that is that if

43:29someone's saying the hardwood floors are slightly off or something, and that's the most they can find — then that's great, because there are always going to be some notes. But the worse you do, the bigger they are. So if we get a note saying the kitchen's wrong, we probably misread something. If it's just that the handles are nickel instead of stainless steel — it's really close. There are always going to be some notes, but the better you do, the smaller the notes are going to get and the more fine they become. So every time we do a draft,

43:54things kind of get ground down a little bit more. At first, if we're doing a draft we may just send it off and say, you know, we're still missing some things, but just to make sure the kitchens are

44:14laid out correctly. So if there's no island and we're showing an island, we want to make sure we get that ironed out pretty much right away, because it lets us focus on the smaller details. But some of the material manufacturers, surprisingly, can vary quite a bit depending on the manufacturer. Some manufacturers have everything laid out — high-quality photos — you go on and it's great. Some of them won't even have photos for their products. Makes you wonder

44:40how they engage with architects and get into the spec, because those are pretty important things to have. A lot of them — pretty much all companies are going to have physical samples, so that's obviously extremely important. If you're a carpet company with no physical samples, people don't really know what they're getting — that's why they always have all these booklets. I've seen some interior designers who basically have rooms just full of booklets that are old

45:02samples. But you'd think you'd want to have most of your samples online, for ease of use. Because if someone's in the heat of the moment — they're like, okay, I can't get that carpet, I need to get something else — and you're online, you don't have a sample there, and they're like, oh, we'll send you a sample, it takes a couple of weeks. There might be some people making that decision on the fly. And if

45:22you don't have something online, it's not going to help you. So it's pretty rare that there's nothing on their website and we can't use anything. But we also have access to — there are a ton of different libraries online of companies that will go and scan real physical samples. Polygon's a good one — you'll see actual marble tile, actual materials — they go and scan it, take photos of it, make sure it's seamless so it doesn't repeat or anything like that. Yeah, and there's

45:51some — one I won't say who it is, but I did reach out to one website and basically said, hey, do you have any 3D models of all your furniture? And they said no — we don't give out 3D models because we don't want people basically ripping them off. But I was like — that at its surface sounds like it makes sense, but it really makes no sense. Because the only people you're stopping from

46:14having it are people who don't render. Like, if there's a sofa that's going in — I can model the sofa. So it's something I think is kind of an outdated way of looking at it. Where it's like, oh, we don't want people taking our models and selling them. But if that person wants to sell your model, they're going to do it. And this is kind of where there's a weird area, because what we're

46:37doing — it's not considered a photograph. It's closer to a painting. So you're not going to hear about Coca-Cola suing someone because they painted a picture of a Coke can. And so that's where — there are a bunch of websites we use for furniture, but if we get a spec and it's like, you know, Ikea, whatever sofa goes here — we

47:05can go on this site and there's a 90% chance there are like five or six 3D models. That's just people — they'll go through the technical drawings, build it, and sell it on this website. Yeah, the notion that by not putting your 3D models on the website you're preventing people from having them — it does nothing, really. Because the people who are going to try and sell the models can already build them in 20 minutes. So it's like

47:32the only people you're really hurting by doing that are the interior designers or people trying to visualize certain spaces using your product. Because I think one of the best examples of this — and it's really weird to me — is Ikea. A lot of people may not know this, but most of the Ikea catalog is completely CGI. If you're looking through the catalog, most of them are completely renders — because then they can change colors, remove products, they

47:57have all this control over it. Because if you really think about how a lot of these scenes are set up — it might take someone an afternoon to model everything and put it in, but if you want to set up a lighting stage and do all this stuff, it's going to take way longer. But Ikea has all of these models that must have been made by someone, and they've never made them available. If Ikea came up with

48:18some package that you paid $500 a year for and had access to the models — thousands, tens of thousands of people would buy that. And it's already basically a sunk cost when they've already paid to put it into all these products, especially their own. So it's things like that — it sounds kind of weird, but there are a lot of companies that really get it, and a lot of companies that do not get it. Yeah, and it is very nice

48:41when you have a project where you're going down the list and it's all like Caesarstone, Shaw Contract — there are a lot of repeating suppliers that we see and we're like, okay, we know this one's going to move quickly. But yeah, it comes down to just having your product shown — that's kind of what you want, and that's kind of what our job is, to bring everything together. I think I said this on the podcast last time, but it's

49:05like you have a set of documents and everyone's looking through them — it's like everyone's reading a book and visualizing one thing, but if you have a movie it's different. Yeah, it's like there's no misconstruing it. So we've had documents where we've built off them and done renders, and they've noticed — oh, there's actually supposed to be a bump-out under that door, or there's a bulkhead that's not supposed to be there. And they'll be like, oh shoot, that was a mistake, we didn't mean to do that. So yeah, if

49:34they didn't have these meetings where they brought all the images together and kind of looked things over, they would have essentially — I mean, it's a communication tool. Because at the end of the day it comes down to communication. Even the best companies — no matter what, the technical side obviously needs competency — but it's the companies that can communicate the best that reach the top, especially in that realm, in our industry. So if you can communicate away from subjectivity — where

50:01people are like, this is what I think, that's what you think — to being objective, everybody on the same page — that's a huge communication tool, beyond the other value that's there. Between the different parties in design, ownership, and construction. And that kind of ties into when we come on the project. If it's earlier on and they're still going through things, our job is to communicate the designs to the teams internally so they can make decisions. Okay, that's good. And then they make their decisions,

50:31they order all the materials and stuff, and then it's like, okay, the next phase is communicating these units to potential buyers. So that's when we get into the virtual tours and kind of show it off in more of a marketing way, so people can see the potential units and everything. And then we're even trying to get past that — there are some other systems we're currently looking into with a

50:58number of different partners — but essentially you can have the 3D model, once it's done internally and you've made all the decisions internally, you put the 3D model online. And then for the clients or the people who might want to move in, you can see the lobby, you can click around, go into the different units, essentially walk into your unit, look out the window, see the view — but then that's tied into a CRM software. So when you rent the unit there's going to be a

51:27leasing manager that has access to a back-end CRM that says unit 1, 2, 3, 4 — those are sold, what's open. It can track all the information of the tenants, like the payment schedules and stuff. So that's something we're trying to integrate even after the fact. You have the images to make the decisions, the virtual tours to sell the units, and then you have this platform that kind of holds everything together — to keep track of the

51:57building, who's in there, and the pricing for everything. I think that's going to make a good clip — I think you just really explained your model well there in the last 30 seconds. That was good, and it's kind of seamless. Yeah, and it's a good point. What he was saying is — with a lot of these different softwares, they overlap in kind of weird ways. Because we can do virtual tours in Blender and then we can use Unreal

52:21Engine, and basically tying everything together you're combining the outputs into this very unique product. So I think we're starting to see more and more where people definitely want renders, but I think they also want to see the renting information tied into that. So that if they're showing it to someone, or it's built into a website, people can see exactly what units are open, they can see

52:48what the price is, what the square footage is — and that's becoming much more popular now. Yeah, analytics too — we've looked at some CRM softwares where, if you're trying to rent out units, they can click through, they can see who the potential buyers are, they can see what time or what areas they spend the most time in. So if they're looking at the lobby or the gym and stuff — it can get pretty deep. So

53:13we're kind of trying to take it a little further than just the visual side. It's great to have — yeah, it's a sales tool as well. And it's better than just having different systems — like, you've got the links for the virtual tours but your CRM is on a different software. We're really trying to bring everything into one piece of software, so you have a front end for potential buyers that can see everything and then a back end that goes hand-in-hand

53:41and you can see what units are rented and stuff. Yeah. You mentioned golf courses earlier, and I wanted to kind of touch on that a little bit. Because obviously we're talking about this service in terms of buildings, right — commercial buildings, apartment buildings, condos — and being able to show those conceptual animations prior to the building being there. I mean, the holes are in the ground but you can walk through

54:10the building right — that's the value you bring. But when it comes to golf courses, and even developments on a larger scale — if someone's buying a plot of land and planning a major development with multiple buildings — you guys were involved with Richmond Yards, that would kind of be an example. I know the Milestone is another project you've helped with, and Crombie, and you just mentioned the Cunard for Southwest. These are all major jobs you're part of. So

54:37let's talk a little bit about those projects, because they're ones everyone in Halifax would know. But also golf courses — even like amusement parks — there are probably other areas where, if you're a golf course owner, those would qualify as developments, right? They're not as much on the building side, but someone is taking a piece of land and turning it over as a business. Yeah, we've never done amusement

55:07parks in particular — that's one we could certainly do, but it would definitely be a big one, and honestly there just aren't that many around here. But I mean, there are no geographical boundaries for your service. If someone's building a theme park, they're spending what — $500 million? If it's one of these places around the world, they've got to have these

55:33actually a few kind of unique ones we've been doing are ski hills around here. There are a couple of different hills we've worked on. Essentially, a traditional ski map is like a hand-drawn map of the hill — you can see the different ski lines, you can see the trails in between. And a lot of these hills have summer and winter cycles — in the summer they'll do bike trails, and in the winter they'll have the ski trails. So we worked

56:01with Ski Wentworth to produce their ski map, where essentially it's a procedural ski hill. We have the topography — the actual hill itself — and then we have a system where if we want to cut lines through the trees we just put splines down and it doesn't spawn trees there. So we have control to edit the ski hill. And if it's a popular hill and they're doing a lot of renovations, for them to

56:31get a new map every time they add a new trail can cost a lot of money. So to have these systems in place where — if you make edits to the mountain or cut a new trail — we can just go in and add that in quickly. We just have way more control over it. Especially like if we submit the final image and they go, you know,

56:55one of the main paths is just tough to see because of the angle — we can basically either pull some things down or just make it wider than it is in reality, just for the sake of showing the map off. And once we have the topography, the system — we've developed it in-house — it's pretty awesome what you can do. Because like Nick said, you basically

57:19just draw a line — it's called a spline in the software. You draw a line going down the hill and you'll see that cut appear with the trees cleared out. Everything is just tied back to basically a button for the season, so we can have a bunch of different options. Whereas — maybe I'm just ignorant on how they're doing the hand-drawn maps — maybe they have a way of actually winterizing

57:44it or something like that. But I think it would definitely take a lot more work to convert for three seasons than it does the way we do it. Yeah, and I'm bringing this up — not just to think about where else your services could be valuable, but also to give our listeners context of what they think of when they think of renderings. They probably just think, oh, we need a

58:08picture of the outside of the building because we need it for our permit or whatever. But you can really apply rendering to anything. You mentioned ski hills — I mean, you could be involved in major sporting events where the bobsled track needs to be visualized for training, or there's a new stadium — I think in Ottawa there's a new downtown football stadium — renderings of that. Golf courses are a good one, though,

58:34because that's kind of an undervalued area where they don't have a lot of options for render studios. It is definitely a bit more troublesome depending on the detail they want — if you need to do layers of fescue and grass and rough and all that stuff, it's a lot of 3D. But for the most part, all those designers or golf course architects will have topography plans that show the elevation of the hills, so we

59:08can take that directly into our software. And we've got tons of materials and models — we've got the vegetation assets pretty much set up for anywhere in North America. So golf courses were one where you'll see golf course architects pull together images in their software, and for the most part that software is pretty dated, so you don't really see a lot of high-quality images. But when we did our first one and showed it off, that one

59:38snowballed quite a bit — because no one ever really thought you could get images like that for a decent price. But for us it fits right into our workflow — it's kind of exactly what we do. Anything that's pre-planning, where you have a piece of land, or anything really — the golf courses, the ski hills — if you want to visualize something before it's built, or test different options, there's really no limit to what we can pull into the

60:09software. And to kind of touch on what you said too — where people just sort of think of it as, oh, it's just a picture, maybe some marketing, whatever — we've definitely had good reception with being used as an internal tool, especially with virtual tours. For example, if someone says, well, I'm going to rent out every unit in my building, I don't need virtual tours — that may be true for now. But if you think about it

60:34more as an asset for the building, these virtual tours aren't going to go anywhere. So as long as — in 10 years the quality is still going to hold up. There are certainly going to be a lot of things that change with the software, but I feel like we've gotten to a point where our quality is still improving. It's more so the back end of everything — how it all runs, how fast everything is — that's seeing a much bigger leap compared to the quality. So in

61:0010 years these are still going to hold up. So maybe in 10 years the market cools down a little bit and it's not as easy to rent some of these units out, but if you have all the virtual tours you basically have a leg up on everyone. You can replace those too — if we set up the virtual tours and the front end, with your building and the marketing and everything, and you want to go in after the fact and take actual 360s of

61:26the units before people move in, we can go in with a 360 camera, take the images, and swap them out. So down the line if that unit opens up and you can't sell it, you've got either the 3D or the actual 360 image. A lot of the times it would make sense — like, pre-sale, if you're trying to pre-sell, get the 3D renders done, and then when the building's actually up it's pretty easy for us to go in, take photos

61:55and just swap it — the back end's the same essentially. So I'm thinking from a business development standpoint — and I know there's some protocol within the city and the municipality, and depending, maybe it's different in larger cities — where you're putting a building up and it's going to affect the surrounding neighboring areas, you need to have renderings. But maybe you just need a still rendering from an architect who

62:22that's not what they specialize in — it's going to come with your set of drawings, a rendering on the front page. But then you guys are going to take it so much further. And in that developer's budget, they're going to have $250,000 for architectural consultant fees, and then all their other consultant fees, and insurance at $200,000, and permitting in their budget for $150,000. Like, those are all numbers they have in their budget — they

62:46expect to spend. And at what point does your service become so mainstream — because it's so helpful, it's such a protection of your risk and your sales and all those things — that it can just be incorporated in people's budgets for renderings alongside an architect? Because that's your inroad, and then it's just common practice. Whether it gets to that point any time in the near future or not — well, we definitely have that now with some of our clients.

63:13I think once most people get the virtual tours done and see the value they generate, they do want to go and get more. Honestly, the problem we sort of have is just getting our foot in the door. Because as we talked about, a lot of people just haven't done it before — they're like, oh, I've done buildings, I don't need this kind of thing. But that's the same as anything that's innovative. I mean,

63:3410 years ago that's what they were saying about so-and-so, and now it's like, I can't believe you don't have one of these — why didn't I do this five years ago? So whatever — that's just the nature of it. If you do it correctly, it kind of is an insurance policy. Like, if you actually give us all the information we need and we do things the right way, you'll get an image that is going to look exactly like

63:55what's going to go in. It's not uncommon for us to do renders and then an owner or project manager sees it and actually decides to go with a different product or a different look — because the way it starts to form, it just doesn't look the same. When you're looking up at this chandelier that's supposed to be really grand, but when you actually get the real size you're like, ah, it's kind of rinky-dink. Let's go

64:16with something else. Like, maybe this doesn't look as good with a 14-foot ceiling compared to a 9-foot. That kind of thing — you're helping catch things early, which is basically a project manager's job: to look through a project and catch it six months before it happens, so that the raw material is not ordered, or so that the owner is not unhappy about this. Yeah, and especially if we were to come in early on the project and

64:44we can generate value for you internally and externally through marketing — helping you pick materials and making sure everything's on track. That's where I think the value is maximized — if we come on really early. And like I said, it's common to see: you've got some hardwood floors and some tiles and then you're like, you know what, I'm just not crazy about this. Or something very common: they love this hardwood floor, but when you get basically halfway

65:10through the project you realize you can only get 30% of the hardwood floor you need. So then you're like, okay, now we need to find a different hardwood floor supplier, find a similar one. We've actually gone through maybe 10 or 15 virtual tours before and just changed the hardwood floor, so they have almost a before-and-after. They can look at it and go, you know what, we're saving $2 a square foot on this hardwood floor — maybe

65:34the other one's a little bit nicer, but if we're saving $100,000 or $200,000 — or whatever that amount is — well, that's a valuable tradeoff. Right there, just being able to make that decision — saving $100K or $200K — that's way beyond anything we're going to charge for all the virtual tours. So I think especially with those weird little units that have weird little nooks and things like that, it just helps make the

66:00decision so that you're making the changes on paper — you're not having people drywalling over things or tearing things out and doing all this. Because any time you do that, the cost is just far more than it's going to take us to move something around. If it takes us 10 minutes to move something in the file, that's no big deal at all. But if you've got to pay the architect

66:23to do something that might take a couple of hours — or even a day — the costs are going to shoot way past what it's going to take us to do it. Because our software is extremely fast at doing that — probably the fastest software for doing that compared to Revit and things like that. Yeah, and I think having that stuff kind of elevates your brand as well. Like, I remember when I was moving into an apartment — the Alexander — that was a while

66:45ago, so it was a pretty dated virtual tour, but I loved having the ability to go on and see the unit. It had three different units and one was the one I was looking at, so when I was comparing different apartments, to be able to go on and see how everything would lay out and kind of envision — you know, my couch would fit there, I can put that there. I'd love to do it. I

67:11know my girlfriend and I spent a lot of time in the virtual tour planning where to put stuff, and it ultimately swayed our decision to go there. Because the other places had photos and we had to book a time to go meet them — it just kind of elevates your brand to have that ease of access on the website. It kind of helps you stand out. Yeah, and for me at

67:37least — what we do as well is, if there are 20 units in the building and a client gets five virtual tours, something we kind of offer is: we can render a top-down of all the other units. So you have the ability to have like a floor plan card, or to put that on your website — all 20 units rendered top-down for marketing purposes. Because then you're showing off basically the soul of the

68:03building — you're seeing all the materials, the furniture, just how the sunlight's going to come through the window — which you lose all of that with the architect's 2D plans. When they're doing these 2D plans, it's typically used on websites for showing everything off — you can get the measurements. But I think the majority of people looking at that — if you're looking at units from different buildings and they're all just in the standard 2D CAD

68:30drawings — there's no difference between the cheapest buildings and the most high-end buildings. It's just walls and lines, right? So I think by actually getting the floor plans rendered, the value we drive with that is extremely high. Because even just looking at the top-downs for units you don't have virtual tours of, people can really get a feeling of what it's going to be like living there — and it keeps your branding tied together too. We've had so

68:57many websites where we go on and you've got an image from one company, exterior images from another company, floor plans are 2D — it just feels kind of mismatched. But if you get all this marketing material together, you're going to have a branding experience that pulls everything together, and everything's going to flow a lot better than if you were to just have a bunch of random images

69:26thrown up, or 2D black-and-white floor plans. So is there anything you guys want to say about some of the local projects? Like — you're working a little bit on One77 — people can see the marketing coming up for that now, near the rotary here in Halifax. And Richmond Yards, and the Marlstone that's underway here — that Maple's building for Crombie — and sure, there's lots to say, we don't have time to dig into every one, but there are some

69:52big jobs and some major parts of development in the city — you're rendering on all of them. Well, it's kind of what I said at the beginning — it's really weird to see them. It's like I can't even describe it. It's almost like — and I'm sure people that look at drawings all day kind of feel like this too — it's almost like reading a book and then seeing that thing in reality. It's very strange,

70:16because particularly on the Cunard — I think between all the units, the amenity spaces, the exteriors, and all the other things we were doing with that building — I've spent hundreds of hours in it. So to see a picture of the lobby finished — or not finished, I'm not sure exactly how far along it is, I think it's pretty much done now — but to see pictures of it, it's really weird. And it's really cool to be able to see

70:41all of this actually develop. So it goes — at first you see some plans, then you see basically the concrete frame of everything, then the windows go on, and then you see the cladding and everything. So it's really cool to be a part of all this. And it's especially cool to see some of the views you're going to see. Specifically with One77 — we flew the drone up to, I

71:07think, the 32nd floor, and just got some shots from up there. So you can really see — if you're standing on that balcony, what are you going to see around the city? And something that we do with all of our virtual tours is — if we're doing the ninth floor of a building — Nick has his Advanced drone licence, so we have a bit more flexibility in what we're allowed to do

71:30with our drones. We actually fly it up pretty much to where the window would be — maybe add a couple of feet in — so it's at eye level. And then we take a 360 of that. So if you're looking out the window, not only are you going to get the view, but when we do the 360, if you're standing next to the window — I've seen a lot of rendering firms where it's just like you have a picture floating in space and under it is

71:51just black — there's nothing there. So that really breaks the illusion. But if you put it into a sphere, no matter where you go, no matter what you do, you're always going to have reflections coming in the window and you'll see exactly what the view is. And then it's also an advantage where if you have the same unit 10 times, if you really wanted to, we could go and get 10 different drone shots, render them all with that different viewpoint. And then even

72:16though it's the same unit — because we changed the view outside, all the reflections are different, you're seeing exactly what would be out there. Whether you're on the second floor or in the penthouse — and I think that's something we have a big advantage over someone who doesn't live here. Because having those drone shots I think can really help. You're local, you're on the ground. Yeah, and when you describe that — it's got me picturing NHL 94 as a kid, getting to the

72:43edge of the rink and you can't see anything but black — they didn't render it in. That's exactly it. And that was usually just a 2D plane, so if you looked over there was nothing there. But One77 was a cool one — they've got such a nice location, amazing view up there. With the large units on the top, from the 30th floor upward, they're all just one unit — a 360-degree view of the whole city and the water. I couldn't get over it, because

73:07you never know what you're going to see until you get up there. So when we first flew up, I got to a point where you can see over the middle of Halifax — you can see Richmond Yards, you can see the bridge going to Dartmouth, you can see up toward Portland Hills, you can literally see out the harbor toward Peggy's Cove, and then back in. The views are insane. So when that one's finally pulled together and we put

73:32the drone images outside, I think that one's going to be pretty cool. It's a really interesting building. Yeah, the design on that one is really cool. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say — just the balcony design. I'm sure anyone who's driven by the building has seen it — I just thought it was very unique. Kind of — I don't know what you'd call it — the way it has almost like — yeah, I'm not sure

73:53exactly. I guess once they finish the cladding details and stuff around those balconies, it'll start to take shape — the circular pattern — yeah. It's just really weird looking up at it. We were over there a couple of weeks ago, and when you're just looking straight up at it, it's obviously quite a tall building, especially for Halifax. Just looking up at it, it was just crazy to kind of see that pattern. What you described earlier about how weird it

74:18is to see it after you've had your head in the whole thing — well, it's not that much different than a lot of builders and tradesmen and guys that work on sites, whose heads are in the drawings, and they're on that site for a year or two or even more sometimes. But the thing is, sometimes they'd rather never walk through the building again, depending on how it went. But the thing

74:38that — Nick and I have talked about this actually — the thing we're really surprised by is that sometimes when we're looking through all the documents, I mean, I'm sure mistakes happen on job sites, but it's always just funny to me. I'm thinking: some of this stuff, when you're looking at it, it has to be common that people just misread it. Or there's something that's kind of just — some of them are just very

75:02complicated. When we start to build it up, we're like, okay, this makes sense. But if you were someone doing woodworking or something like that — we've seen some very abstract designs and things like that. I'd love to see how they actually go through and plan all this, because some of them are very — even if you kind of know how it's supposed to look, just looking at the 2D drawings you're sitting there lining

75:21everything up and figuring out exactly where all the slopes are and everything. It's crazy that people can do that. You basically just described the job of every foreman and site super — here you go, build it. It's crazy though, because we have the luxury of being able to hit Ctrl+Z and undo. They can't undo anything. For the most part — more pressure for those guys, they don't get enough credit. It's very true. Like, we can spend a bunch of

75:49time trying to get something right and just undo it — they for the most part can't. Once that concrete's poured, you've got to know where things are going. One kick at the can. Yeah. And the scheduling of everything too — that's probably crazy. Obviously we're doing everything for the building virtually — we can move things around and do all this. But I can't even imagine what it's like trying to coordinate all these different teams

76:12working on these buildings. And maybe this is how all great companies start, but it kind of feels like we were just stumbling around. Because we had always said it was something we wanted to do — like, we think it'd be a great business — but we didn't just have one day where we were like, okay, we're doing it, today's the day, we're going to quit our jobs and do it. COVID kind of helped

76:33speed that up. It helped a lot. I'd say if COVID didn't happen — yeah. But I think there'll be a lot of stories in the coming years about that transition — that storm, socially and business-wise — and the things that were actually born out of that time, when creative things like this happened, or you were forced to do something, or you found out, hey, we can make a business out of this. But a lot of things

76:54transpired in that time that we're probably only going to find out about later on. And that was actually something worth mentioning, even just about the virtual tours. Because the one that Nick was talking about — that was before COVID. So they actually got virtual tours done before we were a company and before COVID happened. And when we started the company, that was really when virtual tours started becoming a lot more popular. But if you had that for the

77:19beginning of COVID, then you would have been laughing. Because you don't have to actually have people coming in and out of apartments — I don't know if you could even have done viewings normally then. So having the virtual tour — and that ties back to what I mean about it being an asset for your building. Because it's not inconceivable that in 20 years, or 10, there's another COVID-type event where people have to

77:41socially distance again. So having that as an option is very good. Any final thoughts you guys want to mention before we close out the episode? This is great — it's been a great conversation. So much to talk about, we touched on a lot of things. Yeah, I think that was probably most of it. We'll probably get some footage of some of the developments we talked about — yeah, we'll get this out

78:06while we're chatting about it, up on the screen so people can see and have a little taste of the product. Yeah, it's nice that we're able to share some of that stuff now. We'll try and come back on pretty soon — if AI doesn't run us out of — yeah, a lot of people are worried about that, but I'm not even going to go there. I don't think my brain can handle it. Oh man — we didn't want to get into it, but

78:30I'll say this: I think it's a borderline scam. Like, it's a marketing — all this stuff you're seeing with AI — we don't have to get too far into this, but AI was invented in literally 1950. It's a very broad term. Anything that uses any kind of search engine is AI. So now all these companies are saying, oh, with our AI-powered — they could have never changed their software in the last 30 years and just say it's AI-powered. It's not

78:55new. It's just a marketing word. And it doesn't really make any sense either. Like, if you think about it this way: if I have this machine where I can just hit a button and it makes a building — well, I don't know all the intricate details about concrete, about how you put walls up, how you put flooring down. So if I don't know these things, it doesn't matter if I have some tool

79:18that can do it — I don't know how it works. Which is why it doesn't really make any sense that a lot of people think AI is just going to replace all of this. It's a tool. If you don't know how to do something, it might just be feeding you complete garbage and you don't know. If it's wrong, how are you going to tell? It's like I could make something where you could put the most complex math formula into it and it gives you an answer — it might not be

79:40right, but you don't know the difference. It's just going to give you an answer. And I think AI kind of does that. We don't have to get into that — we'll talk about it next time. It's very funny. Next time — we don't want to go there. It's something we just see so much that it's always funny to go into. But yeah, that stuff will blow over soon, at least in the way that people are talking about it.

80:00It's just funny that there are some other jobs on the horizon too — we're finishing up in New Brunswick — that I think we'll be able to share. They're kind of under NDAs now too. But we have enough, I think, with the stuff we can show that should fill up this episode. And then when some of that stuff finishes up I think it'd be cool to show some of that. Yeah, definitely an episode to tune in to — instead of, you know,

80:25our audio platforms on Spotify and Google and all that — but yeah, again, Greg Miles and Nick LeBlanc with Luminous Labs. So much gratitude from our end, and all the support you guys have given us over the years as a partner and sponsor. And just, again, how much you guys help behind the scenes for the Atlantic Construction Podcast — want to mention that again for our listeners. And yeah, it's been a great journey, and just having you guys — being able to call you guys friends is a blessing too. So thanks a lot for everything, and thanks for chatting today.

80:51Absolutely. Thanks for having us on.

86:53It's really cool to be a part of it. But we're also kind of — we're not right in it, we're kind of a satellite to everything. I think this is going to be a great episode, man. We talked a lot. I want to mention the EY award thing because I think we should get that out there. I mean, oh yeah — maybe you guys don't care, but well, it's no — I

87:53think you're the same as me though — it's like it's awesome, you want to get recognition, but you wouldn't really want to show it off. But yeah, my brother was like, oh well, you don't know who you'd be going against. I was like, I don't know — someone like Pic by Chocolat? He's like, yeah, you're not going to win. And honestly, he's not pulling people's heartstrings the same way. Well, yeah — because he was at

88:16the top 30 under 30 event. I think Nick — he's not at the EY though, is he? Is that what you're winning? No, but I just mean that's the kind of company you'd be competing against. The business is definitely successful, but it's — this is kind of what I was saying to my mom — you could say there's a company that makes $50 million in revenue and you're like, oh, it's $50 million. But then it's like

88:39they don't make any profit. Well, that's exactly it. So we don't necessarily make that much revenue — it's a decent amount — but we have a much healthier profit margin, so we don't have to make $2 million to keep the lights on. So you might look at it and go, okay, they're doing good. But when you look at how much we really need to operate — because we've never really

89:02wanted a big proper office that we're paying $6,000 a month for — you guys are doing what you love, working from home, setting up your own space. Well, yeah. And honestly, the working-from-home thing too — part of the issue is just that we have so much more control over

89:28all the electronics. Like I said, the thing we were kind of running into is we have a lot of computer parts that aren't being used, but we basically ran out of circuits at our houses — we literally, electrically, couldn't do any more without getting someone to come in and change all this stuff. And when you're renting a place, obviously the landlord doesn't really care if I can only have two computers on in my

89:49room at a time. So what were you nominated for with EY — was it 30 Under 30? What was the name of it? So that one's Business of the Year. Entrepreneur — oh, it's Entrepreneur of the Year. So you're top 30 in that? No, so there were two events. I don't even remember what it was for, but it was Top 30 Under 30 — Atlantic Business Magazine, right? That

90:13was prior. This is EY, where they hand-picked 200 entrepreneurs or something. I think there were 200 picked but there are only 30 finalists. So of that 30 — yeah, well, you're in some pretty good company, right? I mean, that's something to celebrate in itself, whether you win or not, whether you come top five or whatever. It's still something to celebrate. And that's kind of how we're looking at it too, because when we were getting the information about it they were talking about the two

90:42companies in the finals for the global finals or something — one was a mushroom farm out in Saskatchewan doing huge numbers, and the other one was Hilton. So I was like, okay, we're probably not going to win — I think Hilton might be a little more of a household name. Yeah, exactly. They have the Atlantic region, so Canada's broken

91:12up into the different regions — regionals — and then there's a national one, and then there's an international one. So if we were to move on to the next one, you'd go from the Maritimes to Canada, which I think is in Toronto, and then from there I don't know if there's a North American one or if you go straight to a global EY event somewhere in Europe. But

91:38I can't stress this enough — the businesses that would be included in that are very, very hyper-successful. But that's the point — I mean, being top 30 says something. You can be proud of that, whatever happens — you've reached a certain level where you're there in that company. That's awesome.