What a Homeowner Supplies for a Rendering
Send whatever drawings exist, plans and elevations from your architect or designer, photographs of the site or the existing house from every side, your material and colour direction, and reference images of what you are aiming for. Drawings are the blocking item, but they do not have to be a complete permit set. If no drawings exist at all, a rendering can still be produced from a sketch and measurements, though what it depicts becomes an interpretation rather than a depiction of a resolved design.
Homeowners commissioning a rendering are usually doing it once, and the process is unfamiliar in a way it is not for architects and builders. This is the plain version of what we need for residential 3D rendering and why each item matters.
Drawings
Floor plans and exterior elevations are the core. Whatever format they are in is fine: architect CAD, a builder's plan set, a PDF, even a scanned drawing, though the more approximate the source the more approximate the result.
They do not need to be final. They do need to be current, and if several versions exist it saves time to say which one is the live one. Ceiling heights are the detail most often missing and cannot be inferred from a plan.
Photographs
For a renovation or an addition, photographs of the existing house from every side, plus close ups of the materials that are staying. These are what let the new work be shown attached to your actual house instead of a generic one.
For a new build, photographs of the empty lot from each approach direction, plus the neighboring houses. Context matters more than people expect, and it takes ten minutes to gather. This is covered further in site context in exterior renderings.
Materials and colours
Exterior: siding or masonry, roofing, window frames, trim, front door, garage doors. Interior, if interiors are included: flooring, cabinetry, countertops, tile, paint.
Product names are ideal. Photographs of physical samples work well. Colour names alone are the weakest, since the same name can look quite different across manufacturers. Anything left unspecified becomes our selection, which will be reasonable but will not be yours.
Direction
- Reference images. Houses or rooms you like. These communicate faster than any description and are the most useful thing an unfamiliar client can send.
- What the image is for. Deciding on a design, showing an association or review board, working with a builder, or sharing with family. Each pushes the image in a different direction.
- Which views. We treat the front approach as the default. Say if the rear, the kitchen or a particular room matters more to you.
- Landscape intent. Even a sentence. Landscape occupies a large part of an exterior image.
If there are no drawings
This is common on renovations. A rendering can be produced from measurements, photographs and a sketch, and it is a legitimate way to explore an idea before engaging a designer. Two things should be understood: it is an interpretation of your description, not a depiction of an engineered design, and it should not be relied on for permitting or construction. If the project is going to be built, drawings will be needed eventually and the rendering will be more accurate once they exist.
Marketing an unbuilt home is covered in renderings to market a home before it is built, and the difference between a one off and a builder program in custom home versus production builder renderings. Higher end residential is on luxury home rendering.
Send us whatever you have, drawings or just photographs and an idea and we will tell you plainly what it supports.