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Computer rendering has come a long way. One of the things that is always hard to know if you are not working with it is how much of it is due to the skill and training of the person doing the rendering and how much is actually done by the computer. People see these and often believe that the computer is doing most of the work without the understanding that it is all input driven.
Colorado State has long been known for putting out students with very high hand graphic abilities. That means their faculty is very strict. It is also my understanding, having gone to school with someone who told me he was cut from that program, that they don't accept just anyone and they give you the boot if you are not up to a pretty high standard. Nick is well trained and is bringing some personal abilities to the table as well.
These programs are still a lot like a box of colored pencils and a rack of markers in that without the right training with the software, the right training in graphic techniques, and a certain amount of individual talent they don't do you much good. It is pretty clear that Nick is making darn good use of these tools.
One knock that is often leveled at cad drawings is that they are stiff and sterile. Again, that has more to do with user input than the tool. A lot of people who do not draw well and a lot of people without knowledge of drawing in general are quick to use cad thinking that it will make up for all of that. We all see a lot of cad drawings done by people who fit those categories making it easy to conclude that cad was responsible for the lack of interest in the drawings.
It also took a while for people to adjust to the idea that as long as you apply the same techniques such as using lineweight, stipples, and hatching, it really is no different. The line drawings above are exactly like any high quality hand drawings that you will find in landscape graphics books from twenty and thirty years ago. The only major difference in appearance is text, although you can use fonts that imitate hand lettering. These look good for the exact same reasons that the similar hand drawings looked good - the person drawing them knew how to draw.
Most professionals have come around to applying the age old hand drawing techniques to cad and it is often difficult to know if it is cad or hand work. Some programs now set default lineweights for you in order to help novice users get a better looking drawing right of the bat (that what sells Dynascape in my opinion).
Certainly, software developers and graphics people are putting together more detailed components that can be inserted into drawings. The trees and people in the renderings above look to be such. The nice thing is that you can copy, rescale, render on multiple layers, and reuse in other drawings whether you buy them or make them yourself.
One thing that I have seen more and more of is the "borrowing" of standard cad details. More cad drawings are being passed back and forth between engineers, surveyors, architects, landscape architects, and even construction companies everyday. A lot of people are "recycling" details by simply copying and pasting. I know that I have seen a planting detail, drawn by an engineer who I used to work for, used by at least three other companies. Former employees took them and reused them. I think this will become a complicated and common legal issue that will have to be dealt with. Its pretty tough to keep from happening at this point - like music downloads.
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