Knowledge
Short answers to the questions clients ask before a visualisation project: what the services are, what they cost, and which of two options fits.
What is architectural visualisation?
Architectural visualisation is the production of photorealistic images, films and interactive tours of a building before it is built, from the architect's plans or 3D model. It is used to sell apartments off-plan, to obtain building permits, to win competitions and to present a project to investors.
What does a 3D rendering cost?
A photorealistic exterior rendering costs from about CHF 690 per view, an interior from about CHF 590, a bird's-eye view from CHF 890; a sixty-second animation from CHF 4,900 and a 360° tour of one apartment from CHF 1,900. Prices in EUR for Germany and Austria follow the same ranges. The first view carries the model-building; every further view from the same model costs a fraction.
What is virtual staging?
Virtual staging is the digital furnishing of a photograph of an empty room: furniture, lighting and decor are placed into the real photo at correct scale and perspective, so a listing shows a home instead of bare walls. It costs a fraction of physical staging and is delivered in days.
What is a 360° virtual tour of a new build?
A 360° virtual tour of a new build is a set of rendered panoramas of an apartment that does not exist yet, linked room to room so a buyer can look around and walk through it in a browser, on a phone or in a VR headset. It replaces the show apartment during off-plan sales.
Virtual staging or home staging: which sells the apartment?
Home staging furnishes the real apartment with rented furniture for viewings; virtual staging furnishes the photographs for the listing. Virtual staging is ten to twenty times cheaper and ready in days; home staging still matters when buyers visit an empty apartment in person. Most listings today use virtual staging, and premium properties combine both.
360° tour or show apartment: what should a developer build first?
A show apartment costs six figures, exists in one place and is ready late in construction; a 360° tour costs under two thousand francs per apartment type, works on every phone and is ready the day sales start. For off-plan sales the tour comes first; a show apartment, if at all, follows once the structure is up.
Rendering or photomontage: which does a building permit need?
A photomontage inserts the modelled building into a real photograph of the site; a full rendering models the surroundings too. For building permits and neighbour consultation, the photomontage is usually the right choice because the surroundings are provably real; for sales marketing, the full rendering is, because light, season and people can be chosen.