Architectural visualization,
before anything is built

An architectural visualization studio for architects and developers, working since 2013. One model produces the rendering, animation, tour or floor plan the brief calls for.

Fixed price quote in 30 minutes, from the drawings you have
Clay stage first, so the camera is agreed before the expensive work
4K delivery standard, full usage rights included

Upload your drawings, get a quote Get the guide

We only take a limited number of projects each month, so every scene gets top quality.

1,231

Projects completed

Years in business

Countries delivered to

★★★★★ Rated 4.9 on Clutch · See our reviews

Architects, developers & interior designers.

Working for 215 companies since 2013.

125 of 220 clients came back.

More than half of our clients have hired us again.

The plain answer

What is architectural visualization?

Architectural visualization is the craft of showing a building before it exists, accurately enough that a decision can rest on the image.

You send the scheme as it stands: a plan, a model, a finish schedule, a photograph of the plot. We build the geometry to those drawings, light it to the hour that suits the argument, and render it at photographic quality. The result is a building nobody has stood in yet.

The words move around (architectural rendering, 3D visualization, archviz), but the job is one thing: the moment somebody who has to decide about the scheme first sees it. Get it right and the design is approved at the first showing, and units are sold off the images before the site is fenced. Which is why a render is not the picture at the end of a project. It is the one document the lender, the committee and the buyer will all read, and none of them will open a section.

Neither a drawing nor a photograph

A drawing is read by people trained to read drawings, and a photograph needs something that exists. A visualization shows an unbuilt building to somebody who was never trained to, which is how it ends up in front of committees, lenders and buyers.

What comes off the model

Stills are the bulk of it. Off the same model come animation, a 360° panorama, a 3D floor plan and a real-time scene you can walk through: outputs of one build rather than separate purchases.

Want to know which discipline your brief needs, or what shapes the quote? See architectural visualization services below, or jump straight to what it costs.

The vocabulary

Architectural rendering, archviz, CGI: what the words mean

Half the confusion in this market is terminology, some of it deliberate. Here it is in plain terms, including the two that change what you are buying.

Architectural visualization
The discipline as a whole: modelling, lighting, art direction and every output that comes off the model, from one still to a tour.
Architectural rendering
In practice a synonym. Where a distinction is drawn, a rendering is the individual image, and architectural renderings or architectural renders means several of them.
Archviz, arch viz
Trade shorthand, used by the people who make it rather than the people who buy it. A studio saying archviz means architectural visualization.
3D visualization, 3D visualisation
The same thing with the software named instead of the subject. Spelled 3D visualisation, and architectural visualisation, on UK, Irish and Australian briefs. Nothing about the work changes with the spelling.
3D architecture
What people outside the trade type when they mean any of the above. Not a discipline, but we answer to it.
CGI
Computer generated imagery, borrowed from film. Every architectural render is CGI; not all CGI is architectural.
Artist's impression
The older, looser term, still used in planning documents and the press. It carries a licence to be indicative rather than accurate.
Photomontage
A render composited into a real photograph of the site, so the surroundings are photographic rather than modelled.
Verified view, AVR
A photomontage from a surveyed camera position, with coordinates and lens recorded so an authority can check it. Some require one.
Clay render
An untextured grey view of the model. Not a deliverable but a checkpoint: where camera, massing and neighbours get agreed.
Walkthrough, flythrough
Animation at eye level, and animation from the air. Both off the model built for the stills.
A view
One camera position. Six views means six positions, not six versions of one image.
A set
Every view a scheme needs, planned together. A planning set and a launch set are different lists.

Two of those matter commercially. An artist's impression promises less than a render and should be priced accordingly. A verified view promises more, because a surveyor fixed the camera, and where one has been asked for, no ordinary render will do. The rest is dialect. A British or Australian brief asks for 3D visualisation services, an American one for 3D visualization services, and a few people write architecture visualization with the words swapped. All of it means the discipline this page is about.

Choosing between disciplines

Start with the argument you have to win

Nobody buys a visualization for its own sake. They buy it because something has to be approved, funded or sold. Work back from that and the discipline picks itself.

The argument is massing, height or the neighbours

You need the scheme in its real site. One aerial for context and one eye-level view from where an objector would stand beats six heroes. See exterior rendering and planning work.

The argument is the finish or the layout

The room, at full size, in the materials you specified. A plan will not settle an island or a stone the client has only seen as a 60mm sample. See interior rendering.

The buyer is remote, or the unit is one of forty identical ones

A tour plus a plan. The tour answers what is behind me, the plan answers how big is it, and together they carry a sale nobody attends. See 360° tours and 3D floor plans.

The argument is the approach or the sequence of spaces

Motion, and only then. A still cannot show arrival or a route through a building. Everything else a video gets bought for, a still does more cheaply. See 3D animation.

There is nothing to render yet

A clay massing from a sketch is the cheapest image in the discipline, and at feasibility usually the only one worth having. See 3D modeling.

The building exists and the rooms are empty

Nothing to model but the furniture. The room is photographed as it is and dressed in the render, so it is priced as a listing job rather than a modelling job. See virtual staging.

The part nobody sells you

What it costs to get this wrong

An image the process did not believe

Overstate the context, plant the trees at twenty years, lose the neighbours in a convenient haze, and the first person to spot the flattery owns the room for the rest of the meeting.

A deferred decision costs more than every image in the pack. Model the neighbours as they are and the image stays out of the argument, so the meeting stays about the scheme.

A set bought in the wrong order

The classic version: an exterior hero commissioned at launch, when the aerial the lender wanted six months earlier would have carried both jobs off one scene.

Out of order means paying twice for one model, and it is the most common avoidable cost in the discipline.

A supplier who did not keep the scene

If the scene is deleted at delivery, phase two, the tender change and the relaunch are full rebuilds at full price, eighteen months after anyone thought to ask. We keep every scene. Phase two is a new camera in a file that already exists, not a rebuild.

Architectural visualization services

One studio, the whole visual package

Most briefs need more than one kind of image. Every one of the 3D architectural rendering services below comes out of one studio, off one model, so the street view, the rooms behind it and the aerial read as the same building.

Exterior rendering

The hero shot. Facades and landscaping in real light, with the street, the planting and the weather the building will stand in. The frame that goes on the hoarding and into the planning pack.

See exterior rendering

Interior rendering

Rooms built to your drawings and dressed with the specified materials, then lit until the image reads as a photograph. The frame a client approves the scheme from, and the one an apartment is sold from before it exists.

See interior rendering

Aerial visualization

The view a drone cannot take yet. Aerials place a scheme in its context: the neighbouring roofs, the coastline, the boundary. What committees ask about first.

See aerial visualization

3D animation

A walkthrough or flythrough through the finished building. Animation earns its cost where a still cannot go: the approach to an entrance, the sequence of rooms.

See 3D animation

3D floor plans

Plans buyers can read. A furnished, textured or dollhouse plan carries scale and flow in a way a black-and-white CAD drawing never does, and it still reads on a phone screen.

See 3D floor plans

360° virtual tours

A panorama the viewer controls, in a browser or a headset. For the buyer who cannot visit, it is the nearest thing to standing in the room, and it works on the phone they already have.

See 360° tours

The same living room empty, before staging

BeforeAfter

Virtual staging

An empty room furnished convincingly, for far less than styling it physically. For resale listings and handover units that have to photograph as a home rather than a shell.

See virtual staging

3D modelling & product

The geometry underneath everything else. The same modelling covers a single object: furniture, fittings and building components rendered clean on white for a configurator.

See architectural 3D modeling services

Photomontage and verified views

New work rendered into a photograph of what already stands, so the street, the neighbours or the room are real and only the scheme is drawn. Where an authority wants the view checked, the camera sits where the surveyor fixed it.

See verified views for planning

By building type

A distribution shed and a hotel lobby are not the same brief

The craft is identical. The audience is not, and neither is the first thing each of them looks for.

Residential

Houses, apartments and townhouses, where the image is the entire product until handover. Judged on light, on the approach, and on whether a buyer can put their own furniture in it.

Workplace and office

Fit-outs and headquarters, read at once by a tenant, a landlord and a facilities team. Desk density, glazed meeting rooms and the breakout the letting agent leads on.

Retail and mixed use

The ground floor does the work: signage zones, thresholds, the street at the hour it is busy. The same block usually needs a daylight frame for planning and a dusk frame for leasing.

Hospitality

Hotels, spas and restaurants, where a brand standard, an investor's return and a guest's booking decision all read the same set.

See hospitality work

Industrial and logistics

Sheds, yards, workshops and depots. Unglamorous work that still has to be approved and let, judged on whether the access and the yard are shown honestly.

See construction work

Public, civic and masterplan

Schools, civic buildings and whole sites, where the image enters a public process and stays there, read by neighbours who know the road better than you.

See planning work

Why the whole set comes to one studio

What changes when one studio holds the whole set

The set agrees with itself

Split a scheme between four suppliers and you get four buildings. Keep the street, the interiors, the aerial and the film in one file under one art director and the brochure reads as one project. So does whatever phase two adds to it.

You brief whoever is in the scene

Comments are not relayed. Notes go straight to the person with the file open, so a change raised at the end of one day tends to appear the next.

Sensitive by default

Competition entries, off-market sites and schemes with no consent yet stay off this website, out of the portfolio and off social media. We will sign your paperwork, and behave the same way before anyone sends it.

Estonian studio, European hours

Trading since 2013 and delivering into 17 countries. An hour or two from most of Europe, so a comment sent at lunch is answered the same afternoon. A North American brief is worked on overnight and waiting in the morning.

The craft

What makes a render believed, whatever the discipline

3D exterior rendering of two dark timber houses on a rocky fjord slope at dusk, windows lit, Norway

Light is chosen, not applied

Any engine can light a scene evenly. What gets a frame trusted is light that is specific: the hour, the weather, the sky a camera would have caught that evening. A dusk exterior works because warm windows sit in a cold street. The same house lit from nowhere in particular reads as a diagram.

3D interior rendering of a lift lobby in green marble, bronze and polished stone, Estonia

Materials from the schedule, not the library

A surface is believed when it is built from what was specified: the veining of the stone the architect chose, the brushed bronze on the lift doors, the sheen of the sealed floor. Library presets give a render away at full size. Built surfaces take longer, and they are why a client can sign a finish off from the image.

Aerial 3D rendering of two low-rise apartment blocks between woodland and the coast, city skyline behind, Estonia

Composed for whoever has to read it

An aerial is the frame a committee, a lender and a neighbour read first, so the camera goes where the question is: how the blocks sit against the coast, what the trees still hide, where the cars go. Height, lens and horizon are chosen for that reading.

Delivery

About a week single view · 2 to 3 weeks for a set

Resolution

4K standard · 8K to 12K on request

Revisions

Two rounds, then refined until sign-off

Source files

CAD · PDF · SketchUp · Revit · ArchiCAD

Software and engines

What the renderer decides, and what it does not

"Which software do you use" is the most common qualifying question in this market and one of the least useful. File formats are a separate question, answered under 3D modeling.

3ds Max, Corona, V-Ray, Blender

The still-image pipeline, run by most studios including this one. A renderer sets how fast a frame comes back and how far resolution can go before render time outruns the fee. It has no say in whether the image is believed.

Unreal and the real-time engines

The one choice that changes what you can buy: a walkthrough you steer, a configurator, a headset tour, a scene changed live in a meeting. Real-time trades some photographic depth for interactivity.

Lumion, Enscape, Twinmotion, D5

Viewport tools, usually run inside an architect's own office. Good for design review, recognisable at a glance in a sales context, so they rarely survive a launch.

The question to ask instead

Every 3D rendering company runs the same three or four engines, so ask something the engine cannot answer: show me two projects that look nothing like each other. Believability is light, materials and composition, the three columns above, and a person decides all three.

Procurement, not craft

How to judge a studio before you sign

Every architectural rendering company edits its portfolio, and by the third one they all look good. Four checks still separate them.

Read the portfolio, not the hero

Is the same building shown twice, from different angles and hours, or only from the one that worked? Is the context modelled or pasted? A wall of dusk heroes is a studio that can make one image.

Settle it at the clay stage

The grey view is where camera, height, lens and hour get agreed, while all four are still free to move. A supplier who skips it is saving their own time, not your money.

What to check before you sign off a final

Verticals. Planting at handover size rather than maturity. Entourage at the right scale. The material read at full size rather than thumbnail. And the neighbours at their real height.

Five questions that expose a weak supplier

Do you keep the scene. What does the second view of this building cost. Who owns the images, and for how long. How many revisions before it becomes a variation. Who am I talking to.

How a project runs

From drawings to final frame

Four stages, whatever the discipline. The price is fixed before the first and the camera is agreed at the second, so nothing expensive happens until both are settled.

Brief

Brief and fixed quote

Upload CAD, PDF, Revit or SketchUp files, or a photo of a sketch. We prepare the brief from your files, so there is no questionnaire. You get one fixed project price and a delivery date within 30 minutes.

Days 1-3

Clay model

We build the 3D model without materials and place the camera. The viewpoint, lens, height and time of day are agreed on this grey model, when changes are quick and cheap.

Week 1

Preview render

The same view with materials, lighting and surroundings added. You see it early, while the light and the finishes can still be changed easily. 2 revision rounds are included, and we keep refining until you approve.

Delivery

Final render

The approved image, fully finished and delivered in 4K, with larger sizes for print on request and full usage rights. Every further view in the set uses the scene already built, so each extra image costs much less than the first.

2 revision rounds included, then refined until you sign off. Delivered on the date we agree.

Clay model to final render

Drag to see what the visualization adds

On the left, the grey model that every project passes through first: the geometry as drawn, the levels as surveyed, the neighbours as they stand, and nothing that could be argued with.

On the right, the frame the meeting reacts to. Same camera, same geometry, finished. The distance between the two is the whole discipline.

A private house in France. The living room in the services strip above is from the same project.

Clay model of the same house and pool terrace, no materials and no light

Clay modelFinal render

Selected work

Buildings that did not exist yet

Work across the Nordics and the Baltics, the rest of Europe, the UK, the US and Australia. The chips sort it by type of work, sector, light and market.

See the full portfolio

What it costs

What architectural visualization costs

One fixed price for the whole scheme, agreed before anything starts. We do not charge per image, because the 10th view costs us far less than the first. There is no published starting price, because it would not be true for any real project. These 7 things affect the price.

Which disciplines the scheme spans
A dusk exterior, the interiors, an aerial, a walkthrough and a panorama are five crafts off one model. The quote follows that mix, and costs less than assembling it from five suppliers.
How much of the building has to exist
An envelope lit from the street is one job. The same envelope with furnished, lit rooms behind every window is another. What gets modelled follows what the images must show, never the size of the site.
One scheme, or a type you will reuse
A single house is priced once. A house type due to reappear on eleven plots, or a layout sold across three phases, is priced as the reusable asset it becomes.
The state the source files arrive in
A coordinated model with a finish schedule attached reaches a first preview far sooner than a folder of PDFs and a photographed mood board. It is the one driver you control.
How many audiences the image has to survive
Something only a design team sees can stay loose. Something facing a committee, an investment memorandum and a portal listing must withstand all three readings, which is art direction rather than render time.
Whether it has to match what already exists
Joining a set delivered last year means adopting its palette, hour and camera height closely enough that the new frames are not read as a different building.
What gets taken while the scene is open
A floor plan, a 360 or thirty seconds of motion pulled from a scene still loaded is a small job next to standing that scene back up a year later.

Free guide

The Architectural Visualization Buyer's Guide

What the quote weighs, and what to send so it comes back fast.

Every driver of an architectural visualization quotation, explained
Which files get a quote back fastest
How to brief the audience and the hour, so the first preview is the right one
No sales call, one fixed price back in 30 minutes

Get a fixed quote

Opens the upload form. Send what you have; no sales call.

Who we work with

Who briefs us, and what each of them needs first

The six we are most often briefed by. Estate agencies, construction teams and public consultations have pages of their own.

Architecture studios

Competition boards, planning packs and client presentations, art-directed to your house style rather than ours, so six images read as one practice.

Real estate developers

Marketing sets for off-plan sales: hero exteriors, interiors, aerials, plans and tours from one model, released in the order the deal happens.

Interior design firms

Schemes shown at full size with the specified finishes, so a client signs off on the room rather than on a mood board and three sample trays.

Property marketing

Portal-ready stills, staged interiors and 360 tours produced to a listing deadline rather than a studio one.

Hotel and hospitality

Suites, lobbies, spas and dining rooms rendered before the operator signs, so the brand agreement, the financing and the first bookings need not wait for the building.

Game studios and apps

Buildings and interiors modelled to survey scale and handed over as clean geometry, so an environment artist starts from a plan rather than a guess.

What changes hands

What we need, and what lands back

Whatever stage the scheme has reached, there is a version of it we can start from. None of it needs tidying first.

What we can start from

DrawingsDWG, DXF or PDF plans, sections and elevations. A sketch photographed on tracing paper counts

Native 3DRevit, ArchiCAD, SketchUp, Rhino, 3ds Max or IFC, opened as they are instead of traced again

FinishesAnything that fixes the palette: a schedule, supplier links, RAL or NCS codes, or three photographs you like

SurroundingsA survey, one photograph from the site, a map pin, or nothing at all where the plot is empty

Nothing polishedOne plan and one reference image is enough for a fixed figure. There is no intake form

What comes back

Masters4K by default, and 8K to 12K where a hoarding or a printed spread calls for it

RatiosPortrait, landscape, square and banner crops taken off the same scene, never re-ordered as new work

CheckpointsAn untextured view early for camera sign-off, then 2 revision rounds and refinement until you are happy

Same-scene extrasMotion, a 360 panorama or a readable plan drawn from the scene that is already standing

The rightsUnrestricted commercial use of the delivered files, with the source scene kept on our side

Not sure which discipline you need? Send what you have; the quotation says what the scheme calls for.

What usually happens next

Briefs grow, and they grow in a predictable order

Almost nobody stops at what they first asked for. This is the order the additions usually arrive in.

An exterior brief becomes a set

The hero goes out. Then the planners want two street views and the agent wants the entrance at dusk. Each is one more camera in a scene that already stands, and is priced as one more view.

An interior brief becomes a tour

Once the room exists, a 360° panorama and a 3D floor plan are a short step from it, and between them most of what a remote buyer looks at.

A still becomes motion

A flythrough, or a short loop for social, rendered from the scene you already paid to build. Bought this way, animation is priced as an extra rather than a project.

Questions we get asked

Architectural visualization FAQs

The questions that come up before a first architectural visualization project. Anything else, put it in the quote request; it gets answered alongside the price.

Ask us directly

What is the difference between architectural visualization and architectural rendering?

None that anyone enforces, and archviz means the same again. Where a brief does separate them, rendering is the single image and visualization the discipline. The terms that do change the job are artist's impression, verified view, and a set rather than a view.

How much does architectural visualization cost?

By the project, not by the image. What affects the price is the mix of disciplines a scheme calls for, how much of it has to be modelled, the condition of the files you hand over, and how hard the art direction has to work. Upload the plans and one firm price comes back within 30 minutes.

How long does architectural visualization take?

A single view, about a week. A full set, two to three weeks. A grey model reaches you a few days in, so the camera gets argued about early, while the hour and the finishes are still cheap to move.

How many images does a project need?

Fewer than most people order, and in a different order. A planning submission wants an aerial and two street-level views, taken from the points the neighbours know best. A launch wants one hero, two or three interiors and a plan. Name the audience for each frame.

What counts as a revision and what counts as a new view?

Changing light, materials, styling or entourage in an agreed frame is a revision, and two rounds are included. Moving the camera or changing the design after sign-off is a new view, priced as one. We say which before doing it.

What happens if the design changes after delivery?

The scene is kept, so a changed cladding or roof line is re-rendered from the same camera for far less than the frame first cost. Resubmissions and phase two are the usual reasons.

Will AI replace architectural visualization?

It has changed the drafting, not the deliverable. AI is fast at a mood and unreliable at what a render is bought for: your actual geometry, the specified finish, the real neighbours. The full argument is on the interior rendering page.

What software do you use?

3ds Max and Corona for most stills, V-Ray and Blender where they suit, Unreal Engine where a project needs real-time output. What that choice changes is set out under software and engines above.

What files do you need to start?

Anything that already exists. Native models from Revit, ArchiCAD, SketchUp, Rhino or 3ds Max, an IFC export, DWG or PDF drawings, or a hand sketch. Where a piece is missing, that is flagged in the quotation rather than discovered halfway through.

Can you work on a project in my country?

Almost certainly. We are an architectural visualization company that has worked remotely since 2013, for clients in 17 countries, among them Estonia, Finland, Norway, Germany, France, the UK, Canada and Australia. Drawings, comments and files move by upload and email; nobody has needed to visit.

Who owns the images?

You do. Full usage rights to every delivered image are included: brochures, portals, hoardings, press, social and planning submissions, for as long as you like. No separate licence and no per-use fee.

Do I get the 3D model as well as the images?

The images, with full usage rights. The scene stays with us, which is what keeps a later view cheap. If you need the geometry itself, that is a separate deliverable, priced on the 3D modeling page.

Start a project

The drawings you have are enough. Fixed quote back in 30 minutes

Plans, elevations or a model, in whatever state they are in. No budget dropdown, no discovery call first.

Get a fixed quote See how it works

Few projects a month, on purpose, so every scene gets full attention.