3D Apartment Rendering

The off-the-plan apartment set

A buyer signing an off-the-plan contract commits to a home neither of you can walk through, so off the plan renders have to answer their questions in a deliberate order: what does the building look like from the street, what will my apartment feel like, and what else comes with it. The set is sized to the release, not copied from a template. For a first launch, our guide for property developers sets out the sequence of images and decisions.

For a boutique building the set can be as few as six or seven images. For a tower with several apartment types and two colour schemes it runs well past a dozen, which is why we agree the model and the camera plan first and draw everything from them.

• Hero exterior for the brochure cover and the hoarding
• Streetscape at pedestrian eye level, with the building against its neighbours
• Dusk view with the interior lights on, for social media and the display suite
• Interiors for each apartment type, in every colour scheme offered
• Amenity views of the rooftop, pool, gym and co-working spaces
• Lobby and arrival sequence
• Furnished 3D floor plans for every apartment type, for portals and brochures
• Aerial view placing the building in its precinct
• 3D architectural animation for the launch film and the display suite screens

Apartment exteriors: facade, context and height

The exterior carries the most scrutiny from the widest audience. In a podium and tower scheme the image has to show what a buyer reads first: how the building meets the ground, where the podium gives way to the tower and what the crown does against the sky. Those are also the places where generic massing hides an unresolved design, so we model them from the elevations and sections instead of approximating the massing. Our 3D exterior renders use the same method for a four-storey walk-up or a taller building.

Balconies deserve equal care, because on an apartment building they are the facade. Balustrade type, glass tint, soffit finish, planter boxes and the depth of each recess change how the building reads at a distance and at night. We build them from your facade package and material schedule, matching brick, concrete, cladding and glazing to samples where you have them.

Context matters as much as materials. Neighbouring buildings are modelled at their true height and bulk from survey and aerial data, trees are placed at the maturity the landscape plan reaches at handover for marketing views; application views show planting at planted size, and the street is drawn with its real kerb, crossovers and street trees. Where height is the contentious point, a view that includes the neighbours is both more honest and more persuasive.

Sun studies are a different kind of image. A set of views at fixed times of day, or a shadow diagram over the surrounding lots, shows how the building shades its neighbours and its own communal open space. They matter most in the planning conversation, and cost less when they are taken from a model that already exists. Our Waterside Apartment Development project used one camera set and one lighting rig across three dusk and daytime views so they cut together on a campaign page.

Interiors by apartment type and colour scheme

A scheme may sell several apartment types, and some offer two colour schemes, often a light one and a dark one. The interior set is therefore a grid, with views by type down one side and schemes across the other. The costly part is building each room once, with correct dimensions and joinery. Putting a second scheme on a modelled view is a material change, so it is priced as a variant and not as a new image.

Kitchens do most of the selling. Stone benchtop, splashback, handles, appliance finish and tapware are the details buyers compare, so they come from your finishes schedule, not a library. Living areas are composed from where a visitor would stand on entry, with the balcony and outlook in frame.

Bedrooms and bathrooms are shown where they differ between types or schemes: the main bedroom with its built-in robe, the ensuite with the tile layout that is actually specified. A bathroom render is only credible if the tile pattern and fixture positions match the drawing, because it is the room buyers check against the plan. These interior renders then go on the display suite walls and screens and into the agent's pack, so each view is composed for print, the display suite screen and the phone.

If a display apartment is being built, send us its finishes so the suite and the renders match. Our Boutique Apartment Building project was living and bedroom interiors for two apartment types, then a front exterior ordered once the design settled.

Amenity and common areas

Amenity sells the building to buyers who will never use most of it, because it signals the kind of building they are joining. Rooftop terraces, pools, gyms, residents' lounges and co-working rooms are rendered from the architect's and interior designer's packages and lightly populated, so the space looks usable rather than staged.

The lobby gets a view of its own. It is the first interior a visitor sees and it sets the finish level for everything above it: floor stone, letterbox wall, concierge desk, feature lighting, lift lobby. For rooftops and pools the time of day often does more work than the furniture, and a late afternoon rooftop with the skyline behind reads very differently from a midday one. Our Apartment Amenity Interiors project covers a clubroom with a demonstration kitchen, a rooftop lounge opening onto a terrace and a games room, produced for marketing and funding material.

• Rooftop terrace, barbecue and lounge areas
• Pool, deck and landscaped podium gardens
• Gym, wellness and yoga rooms
• Lobby, mail room and lift lobby
• Co-working and residents' lounge spaces

Renders for the development application

Rendering of apartment buildings for a development application is tested against design codes that care about specific, visible things: separation between buildings, solar access, communal open space, deep soil and planting, how the building meets the street and how tall it looks from the neighbouring lots. A render for an application has to show those accurately, not flatteringly. We take briefs for 3D rendering in Sydney, 3D rendering in Melbourne and 3D rendering in Brisbane with each state's code in mind, and our architectural visualisation work for applications uses the same model as the marketing set.

Verified views, where the camera position is surveyed and the model is matched to a photograph, are quoted per project, because the work depends on the site, the photograph and what the application requires. A render illustrates a design and does not demonstrate compliance with a code, so your town planner should confirm which views the assessment will turn on before you brief us.

Build-to-rent and student accommodation

Build-to-rent and student schemes are sold to an investor or funder, so the set is weighted differently. The operating story matters more than any single apartment: shared kitchens, study spaces, laundry, a clubroom, bike storage. There are fewer apartment types, repeated many times, so interiors move quickly once the first is built. Shared kitchens and study spaces are shown as places people would choose to spend an evening, not as corridors with furniture.

Our Waterfront Student Accommodation project was five exterior views of a sawtooth-roofed scheme for investor documents and community consultation, and Virtual Staging: Build-to-Rent Apartment shows the leasing-stage option, where photographs of a completed apartment are dressed to read as a home.

What apartment renders cost

Exteriors start at A$445 per image, interiors at A$345 and furnished 3D floor plans at A$445, all ex GST. Aerial and masterplan views start from A$795, and animation from A$65 per second with a 30-second minimum. Sets of five images or more are priced as a package, which covers most launches.

Colour-scheme variants of a modelled view are priced as variants, not as new images, which is where apartment pricing differs most from one-off pricing. As a worked example, take a boutique launch of a hero exterior, a streetscape and a dusk view, three interiors in two colour schemes (six images), one amenity space and four furnished plans. At single-image published prices that is three exteriors at A$1,335, seven interiors at A$2,415 and four plans at A$1,780, a total of A$5,530 before volume pricing. Treat that as a starting point. Towers, precinct views and extra schemes are quoted per project from your drawings.

The 3D rendering cost guide sets out what moves the price, from the number of apartment types to how many views carry planning weight.

How to brief an apartment set

Start with the drawings: floor plans for every apartment type, elevations, sections and the facade package, as DWG, PDF, Revit or ArchiCAD files. Add a finishes schedule for each colour scheme, naming stone, tile, joinery, paint, flooring and tapware, with supplier codes or samples where you have them. The landscape plan and the site survey complete the exterior brief, and our briefing guide walks through each item.

Then give us the deadline that actually matters, usually the brochure print date or the display suite opening. Work back from it. Standard delivery is 5–7 business days from an approved brief, with a draft render for feedback and up to 4 revision rounds, and rush delivery in 48–72 hours (rush surcharge applies) is available. Undecided colour schemes are the commonest cause of slipped dates, so settle them before the model is built. Our turnaround guide shows how long each stage takes.

Finally, tell us which images are heading into an application, so they are built to planning standard from the start.