from Idea to Image : Computer Shows Owner How Remodeling, Landscaping Would Look

Sheila Ross’ two-story house in Santa Monica has the kind of front yard only the owner could love: long on potential, short on everything else.

After stripping the yard of an overgrown bougainvillea, she found that the house looked lopsided, with flagstone facing on one side and none on the other.

She wondered how it would look with flagstone on both sides, different windows, a bleached wooden door and perhaps a palm tree and a walk lined with flowers.

She could have hired an architect or contractor to produce a blueprint of what she had in mind, but having already remodeled her kitchen and stairs, she had become wary of working from blueprints.

“It didn’t turn out exactly like I thought it would,” she said of her kitchen, adding that the contractor was blameless. “We both had the same thing in mind, but there was still a difference in what we saw.”

Finally, she tried a new computerized service that transforms a homeowner’s ideas for remodeling and landscaping into a picture of one’s house.

For about $300, a technician photographed the outside of Ross’ house and a week later, sent a computer-generated image showing all the changes she had in mind: the flagstones, windows, palm tree, walk, flowers--even the bleached wooden door.

When Ross decided she wanted two palms instead of one, she made a phone call and back came a revised image.

“I think I’m going to go with the one palm tree,” she said the other day from the office where she works as a legal secretary.

As soon as she has enough money, she said, she will have various designers bid the job based on the “before” and “after” pictures. “It’s a question of communication,” she said. “Instead of telling them what I want, I can show them.”

Computer-aided imaging has been commonplace for the past several years in real estate, and in other fields such as plastic surgery and dental reconstruction.

Impact Images of Santa Ana, which was founded in the late 1970s, uses a computer to redraw the blueprints of model homes as they are being built.

“Builders always make changes as they go along, depending on what looks right for the project,” said Linda Dusckett, vice president of Impact Images. She was unaware, however, of a computer-aided service for the homeowner bent on redoing the outside of his house.

“Your average consumer looks at a blueprint by a landscape architect and sees a circle; the architect looks and sees a podocarpus,” said Howard Lefkowitz, president of Visual Translations, the company Ross employed.

By bringing forth pictures from its memory, a computer can show the consumer more or less what a podocarpus--an evergreen shrub--would look like when blended with a color photograph of his house or yard.

“A photograph is something the homeowner is already familiar with,” said Glenn Sylvern, president of Imagescape, which also offers the service. “When you hand the customer a photograph, you’re working with something the customer will immediately recognize and accept.”

The imaging system was developed by New Image of Canoga Park and has been sold to about 150 landscape designers and architects who offer it as an adjunct to their design services, said New Image president Bob Gurevitch.

He believes Visual Translations of Woodland Hills and Imagescape of Long Beach are the only companies in Southern California to offer the service by itself.

The service is a year old and still relatively unknown. Visual Translations has served only about 50 homeowners and Imagescape still does 90% of its business with Disneyland and other commercial clients.

New Image adapted the software from a program it had written for use in beauty salons. The New Image Salon System shows a customer how changes in hairstyle and make up will look before they are made. The same principle was applied to the face of a house.

Technician Diane Squire of Visual Translations showed how it is done. Seated at an Everex 286/60, a powerful IBM clone, she called to the screen a color photograph of a back yard that showed bare dirt and the side of a pink stucco garage.

This was the “before” shot from a customer who wanted to add a pool, deck, grass and shrubs, and convert the garage to a pool-side bungalow.

Taking patches from the existing garage, she extended the building a few feet, being careful to keep the tiles on the roof in proper alignment. Then, from a menu of about 600 plants and architectural elements, she laid a pool, a concrete deck, grass and some brickwork over the dirt. She added a sliding glass door to the garage, set in two liquid amber trees and a low-growing variety of wisteria.

She touched it up by giving the trees a trim and some inviting splashes of shade.

The process took about four hours. With more time, she said, she might have added the bungalow’s reflection on the surface of the pool.

Adding a Pool

For $150 the company provides one image of a single addition such as a pool, said sales director Carla Christensen. Landscaping and other elements would bring the price to $350 and would also allow the customer to request one change within two weeks. Thereafter the image is dumped from the computer’s memory bank. In addition to a paper copy of the image, the customer may buy a digitized version on a disk or a videotape.

Imagescape charges from $100 to $500, depending on revisions and other services, Sylvern said.

Squire said she sometimes has run-ins with customers who find that her product looks differently than what was expected.

“But that’s the best time to deal with the problem,” she said, and she demonstrated by taking one of the trees on her screen and moving it to another part of the yard. “Let’s say someone wants the tree here, instead of here. Takes two seconds.”

On revisions, Squire works directly with customers over the telephone and via fax. She also creates color renderings from elevation blueprints.

The process presents some drawbacks: It is not designed to do interiors. The computer image is not nearly as crisp as that of a photograph. And any computer’s menu of landscaping and architectural elements may lack the specific items a customer has in mind.

Relocating Trees

Jan Mitchell of Temecula sent Visual Translations a photograph of her side yard with instructions to relocate some camphor trees and oleander shrubs and to add a fountain.

But the fountain in the company’s computer wasn’t quite what she wanted. She photographed a neighbor’s fountain and sent that in. Visual Translations will set it next to her house and then store that fountain in its computer for future use.

Although the second photograph cost Mitchell more money, she is content. “I would have spent a lot more just having the crane come out a second time and move the trees around,” she said.

Lefkowitz said one client in Beverly Hills intends to tear down his house and build another in its place. But before hiring a demolition crew, he had Visual Translations show him what the lot would look like without the house.

Another client in Encino had the company “add” a second story to his house as a preliminary to investing in an architectural design.

“For most consumers, their house is their biggest asset,” Lefkowitz said. “So there’s no such thing as a minor change. Even changing the color of your house--for most people that has to be a major decision.”

The potential size of the homeowners’ market was one reason New Image decided to adapt its beauty product to landscaping and remodeling, said Gurevitch. “It looked like a natural for us,” he said.

“You think of the typical homeowner who looks at an 8-inch by 8-inch patch of paint and is supposed to imagine what that color is going to look like over 3,000 square feet. That homeowner is going to want some help.”

He said a forthcoming generation of the same system will produce a greater illusion of three dimensionality and will permit the user to treat larger and more complex spaces than the average suburban lot.

Said Ross: “I wish I could have used the computer on my kitchen. But I’ll probably use it again when I do my back yard.”