In this special Campfire Series episode, Jeff Mottle joins the podcast to tell us the full story of CGarchitect — from a side project launched in 2001 to a 21-year platform, a sale to Chaos Group, and everything in between: the 3D Awards, CGschool, the evolution of archviz from expert-only technical gatekeeping to storytelling, and what COVID revealed when it stripped away all the travel and in-person events that had been keeping him going. We also get into his four years at NVIDIA, the AI wave he'd been predicting for nearly a decade before it hit, and why the AEC industry's instinct to wait for a clear winner may be the costliest mistake it makes.

This episode is especially relevant for visualization professionals, design technologists, and firm leaders watching AI reshape the tools they've built careers around. Jeff makes a direct case that the democratization of archviz didn't start with AI — the last 5% just got sped up — and he's specific about why billing by the hour is the industry's biggest liability going forward and what a shift to outcome-based pricing actually looks like.

To learn more about Jeff Mottle, see the full show notes with links at https://trxl.co/229

To get more great conversations with AEC technology leaders on the TRXL podcast please visit https://trxl.co

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