Fletch, this debate, of course, has been going around for years and as a new convert to the wonders of 3D I was always a bit perplexed by the catagoric statements from design heavyweights that clients should always be presented with sketchy, schematic concepts rather than anything approaching photorealism. The arguement being that the poor, impressionable [OK lets just call them plain stupid!
] clients would feel there wasnt anywhere to manoeuvre and were locked in to that particular concept.
Yeah...as if!!
I feel the whole purpose of photoreal 3D images in this context is to communicate to clients the design intentions and ideas we have for them....and the clearer these ideas are expressed, the more information the client has to make decisions with. I generally preface a 3D concept presentation with the emphasis that the pretty pics arent necessarily the final design but I presume also that the client has got his head around that as well.
What I do find quite often is that the more photoreal the concepts are the more revision there can be......simply because all the design elements are there to be clearly seen. OK, so a bit more work, but it means that the clients know what they are getting....with not too many surprises at the end.
Stu