What Resolution to Deliver a 3D Walkthrough In
Deliver a 3D walkthrough at 1920x1080 as the default, and at 3840x2160 only when it will play on a large physical screen or needs to survive future cropping. Frame rate should be 30fps for most commercial work and 24fps when the piece is meant to read cinematically. Request the master file and the compressed web file separately, plus any vertical or square crops, and ask for all of them at scoping, because render time is spent once and repeating it is a new cost.
Resolution looks like a technical afterthought and is actually a scoping decision, because it multiplies render time across every frame of the piece.
These are the specs we agree before rendering a 3D walkthrough, and the reasoning behind each.
Resolution: match the largest screen it will actually play on
1080p is correct for websites, email, most presentations and every social platform. It is not a compromise, it is what the delivery channels re-encode to anyway.
4K earns its render cost in three situations: a sales center video wall, a trade show screen viewed from close range, and any piece you expect to re-crop later, since cropping a 4K frame to 1080p is free while upscaling is not.
Rendering in 4K purely because it sounds better is a real cost with no visible return on a phone.
Frame rate: pick one and do not change it midway
30fps reads as clear and modern and is the safe default for commercial and leasing work. 24fps carries a filmic quality that suits narrative pieces and hospitality. 60fps is worth it only for fast camera movement or for interactive contexts, and it doubles frame count.
Changing frame rate after rendering means re-rendering, not converting. Conversions introduce judder that is obvious on camera moves.
Delivery matrix
| Option | Technical constraint | When it is the right call |
|---|---|---|
| 1920x1080, 30fps | None significant; the baseline render cost | Default for web, leasing pages, email and presentations |
| 3840x2160, 30fps | Roughly four times the pixels, so materially longer render time | Video walls, large trade show screens, future re-cropping |
| 24fps | Camera moves must be slower or motion reads as stuttered | Narrative pieces, hospitality, brand films |
| 60fps | Doubles frames rendered at the same resolution | Fast movement, or playback inside an interactive experience |
| 16:9 horizontal master | Requires separate crops for vertical platforms | Always produce this; it is the source everything else comes from |
| 9:16 vertical version | Must be composed for at storyboard, not cropped blindly after | Any paid social or in-feed placement |
| 1:1 square version | Loses the sides of every shot, so framing must anticipate it | Feed placements where vertical is not supported |
| High bitrate master file | Large file, not suitable for direct web hosting | Archive and future re-export; always request one |
| Compressed web file | Quality loss is acceptable and expected | Site embedding and email; ask for this separately |
| Image sequence delivery | Very large; needs someone able to assemble it | Only when an in-house editor will re-cut the piece |
Codec and hosting, briefly
H.264 in an MP4 container plays everywhere and is the right web format. Take the master in a higher quality codec for archive. Host video on a platform built for it rather than serving a large file directly from the site, because a heavy self-hosted file is a page speed problem that shows up on mobile connections first.
The specs to lock before rendering starts
Resolution, frame rate, aspect ratios needed, whether you want a master file, and whether audio is included. Those five in writing prevent the post-delivery request we field most often, which is a format nobody mentioned during production.
Not sure which of these your channels require? Send us the list of places it will play and we will specify the delivery set.
Related reading: revision rounds is the other spec that belongs in the scope, using a walkthrough in a leasing tour is a venue with its own constraints, office and workplace projects often need the video wall version, and how much detail a walkthrough needs covers the quality question resolution cannot solve.
Tell us your channels and we will put the delivery specs in the scope in writing.