Your 3D Rendering Workbook
This 8-page workbook will help you better understand how to integrate 3D rendering into your design process.
Click to download 3D Rendering workbook
If you have questions or need assistance with your SEO campaign, click on the link below to schedule a time to talk with one of our experts.
Schedule A Strategy Session Call!
Full 3D Renderings Video Transcript
Jason: Hello, Everyone! Welcome to our webinar of the month. Today, we’re going to be talking about how 3D renderings can amplify your design and remodel business. This is a CEU session, so whether you are watching live or on a replay, this is point one CEUs for the NKBA. So make sure to log this in, if you are NKBA.
We are joined here by Michael. He leads all of our 3D design services.
Jason: How are you today, Michael?
Michael: I’m doing very well. How are you?
Jason: I’m just going to have you do a little intro into who you are.
Michael: Yeah! So I actually came from the construction industry. I worked in residential and commercial construction prior to getting into the 3D rendering business. So I saw first hand, you know, I work directly with the architects, directly with the engineers, directly with the the foreman on site and, if only I had 3D renderings, you know, 90 percent of the issues that I had out there would have been solved. We had all the BIM models and things like that.
But I was really pushing within the company to focus more on, you know, doing the renderings and putting them out in the job site so that people could get a good idea of what things were supposed to look like before they went in and made mistakes and rework. So unfortunately, that push didn’t really go anywhere. So I decided to leave and start my own thing because I do and this was all pre covered. This is about two and a half, three years ago, and now we see just how much it’s taking off.
Michael: So it was just right place, right time and I’m really glad I did it. 3D rendering has, I’ve seen so many builders who changed the complete design of what they were going to make just because they saw how it looks in 3D. And the actual outcome was just a complete 180 from the initial design. That’s when I knew this is something special. This can help builders, this can help interior designers. This can help you sell early, sell for more and avoid issues along the way.
So that’s really where I came in. I have an engineering background, a civil engineer, and all this nerdy stuff just fits right in with me.
Jason: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And so I would just add it also, if you have not downloaded the workbook, we actually have a workbook that goes along with this. I’ll have it in to check here. And if you’re watching live, you’ll see the link on the screen. So make sure to download the workbook so you can follow along. And we’re going to start with rendering 101, and so briefly, Michael, in your own words, what is rendering to you?
Michael: Yes, a 3D rendering is basically bringing your vision to fruition and one thing that I really want to make clear is that a 3D rendering is not an expense on a project, it is an asset. It is actually a money maker and a time saver. So a 3D rendering is a huge asset. It’s not an expense. It’s an investment into a project. And it can really change the tides of how things are going. The biggest use case for 3D rendering, obviously, is seeing the final result.
Michael: But it goes so much deeper than that. It can allow you to build something. If you’re an interior designer, it can allow you to show your vision, even if you don’t have that project yet that you’re able to use those high end furnishings and the high end materials. So it’s really a way for you to show your creativity, show your skill as a designer without having a huge budget that is at your disposal. So to me, a 3D rendering is just making visions and conveying visions to others.
Jason: OK, and then next, we had talked about what are some typical prices for 3D renderings because we get this question a lot. What should designers or remodelers plan to pay for typical renderings?
Michael: Yeah! So in the workbook, we made a nice little spreadsheet for you. It kind of lists things out by budget use case, what services you’re looking to get. It’s really going to depend on your project. If you are doing a project and it’s for, you have to do some sort of planning for the city. You’re going to want to go low. And it’s not something that you use for marketing. It’s not going to be public.
It’s just serving a purpose. That’s where you’re going to do your low end stuff and do it yourself. Projects, personal projects, that’s where I would even recommend checking out some of those DIY rendering services where you’re not even not even outsourcing. You’re doing it yourself. But if you are outsourcing, there are basically three different areas. You got the low end, mid and the high end. The low ends, you’re going to get the the lower accuracy.
Michael: It’s kind of exactly how if you get a bid on a job, everything works the same way. The lowest bid is attractive, but it’s typically going to be a pain. It’s not going to come out the way you want it. You’re going to have to reduce some things, but you might get lucky and it might nail what you need and you’ve got away with it. I personally like to stick within the mid end range.
That’s where you have clients you want to impress. You’re making a custom home design. You’re doing a renovation where the materials matter, where the lighting of the room matters. You don’t want to show a room being super bright. And then once it’s built with these dark materials, it’s actually very gloomy and doomy. So you really want a designer and a 3D renderer that knows their way around the physical base rendering, knows their way around lights, colors. Because the cheaper services are you’re going to get the guys who just learned the software and you can make things look good really easily. It’s not going to match reality. So where I love to hover is the mid end range. The high end is going to be for, these are your commercial projects or multiunit projects. If you have floor plans that you want to build over and over and over again, go as high end as you can because it’s only going to make you money in the long run. Keep in mind, just like when you take photos of a property, the better the photo, the more perceived value you have.
And I really want to hit home on that word is the perceived value is directly tied to the money you receive on a home, how fast you sell it, how much buzz you get. So if you’re an interior designer and you’re showing off these amazing high end renderings of what your stuff’s going to be, that’s going to attract other people and go, oh, I want that from me. If you’re if you’re showing off low end renderings, it’s still better than nothing.
Michael: But it’s not going to attract as many new customers. It’s also going to revolve around the type of services you want. So if you’re going low end, I would never recommend doing an animation or cinematic in a low end. And we all know how popular video is becoming. That’s something that I am personally going all in on with my renderings as the animations in the cinematics and a low end version of that. It’s very hard to get right.
So you want someone who’s skilled in that area, if you’re just trying to do like a virtual staging where you have an empty room and you want to take a picture of it and stage it with some furniture, then you can. That’s you can get that stuff for like sixteen dollars. An image floor plan renderings. Just about any company can do a good floor plan rendering and then simple exterior renderings. It just kind of get the gist of your idea across.
If you want to go, if you want to do something like a site map rendering, an interactive 3D tour. We’ve all seen Mattapoisett tours, but I don’t know if any of us has seen an actual virtual Mattapoisett tour where the whole thing is just 3D rendering. Like I said, animations, cinematics, colored in 3D floor plans, the more advanced the material, the more skilled person you want working on it. Some pros and cons of working with the low end developer is really the only pro I can think is low cost.
I’ve outsourced to low end developers in the beginning of my 3D modeling career. Whenever I had too much work to take on myself, I would try and squeeze a little way, but I always ended up just doing it myself. The quality was never there. It just didn’t meet my expectations. Now, I might have high expectations, but I think a lot of us do as designers and builders, we want things to be our way and perfect.
Michael: So do it right the first time and work with a professional, someone who’s going to get your ideas across the way you want it. The pros of the middle end is, it’s still affordable. You know, when we’re talking prices between four hundred and three thousand dollars on, say, a custom home, for example, these renderings are going to increase the value of that home three, six, 10 percent. And you’re only paying a fraction of a percent.
Just to have these renderings made, when you’re working with an experienced designer, you’re going to get that one on one. They’re going to walk you through it. Like myself, I have eight years of construction experience behind me. So when I see these plans, I’m not just doing the renderings. I’m also doing a whole critique of the layout of the materials being used and kind of giving my opinions here and there to help drive the design forward. You’re not going to get that from a low end.
You’ll definitely get that from a high end. But that’s if you want top of the line quality, you really need to sell early, you really need to get the property moving, or if it’s just a big property where the cost of doing it is negligible. The cons of working obviously low cost. You’re going to have a lot of revisions, low quality, inconsistent quality. That’s a big thing. You might look at these low end renderings and they’re going to show all this amazing stuff up front, and then you’re going to get something that looks like it was molded in clay and you’re going to wonder where it went wrong. And it’s because, you know, these low end renderings, they have artists coming in and out, in and out, in and out. And so one, every once in a while, they’re going to get someone who’s done an amazing job and they’re going to post that on their page.
Michael: But he’s been gone for two years and they don’t have anyone who can make that quality anymore. So really got to be careful with stuff like that. You want the consistency. You want someone that you can call up, text when you’re going through these designs. It’s fast paced, iteration on iteration. You don’t want to have to email and then wait five days to get a response just so you can change the cabinets into different color. So you want someone who’s going to be there for you and work with you, talk with you, coach you through the process. The high end, obviously, the more complex the project, the higher the cost, the longer the turnaround, and the mid end like I said, that’s just that sweet spot. You’re going to get the professional. He’s capable of doing the high end work, but he knows that the price point needs to be somewhat reasonable and can adjust his services based on that.
Jason: That makes sense, and I’ll let you talk more about that, Michael, on how you could you differentiate low quality, high quality renderings
Michael: Yeah, definitely so to the untrained eye, any rendering is going to look really, really cool. I send videos to people a lot of times and I constantly get asked, they will ask me, is this a, you know, is this real or is this fake? And to me, I’m like, how do they not see that it’s fake? You know, to me it’s so obvious. But that’s because I am such a trained eye and I’ve been doing this for so long that I can spot a rendering from a real image right away. Most people aren’t able to do that. Now, that’s a good thing and a bad thing because you know that one. That means that maybe you can get away with the lower end rendering and it’s still going to have that wow factor because people don’t really have that much experience seeing renderings. The bad thing is if they do think it’s a real photo, you’re misleading them. A low end renderer, they’re typically going to use generic materials. Whatever they have available to them, they’re going to use.
Michael: They’re not going to go and create the material that you use. Like for my builders, they’ll send me a picture of the tile and I’ll be going to Photoshop or a 3D material creation software. And I will expertly create that, you know, the bump on the tile, the glossiness of the tile, everything is exactly to the real world specifications. And it really comes through when you compare if you’re looking at the workbook, these two renderings, one thing for certain you’ll see is that, you know, the appliances, the fixtures, I’m sure that this company on the bottom has used the same appliance at least a thousand times.
It’s copied and pasted into every rendering they do, whereas on the top, those appliances come directly from the client’s request. All right. Down to the buttons on the fridge, to the gauge on the stove. So everything is modeled exactly as it is in the real world. And we really take pride in being able to deliver as close as possible to what you’re going to get when the building is actually built or when the design is actually complete.
So one thing that you always want to look for is these overexposed areas in the bottom rendering. You see, it looks like there are shelves there, but you can’t see them because it’s so whitewashed. And that’s a really key detail. And I’m sure that builder was not very happy when you saw that this key, these hanging shelves are completely obliterated by the unskilled renderer not managing the exposure levels, the one on the top, everything is in plain sight. We don’t need this nuclear bloom and bright and everything. Not a lot of people will try and cover up a bad rendering with just really bright lights. If you have a good rendering, you don’t need to do that. So that’s you always just go through their website. I guarantee you will find every company is only as good as their worst rendering, because I guarantee you that’s the quality you’re going to get if you go low end.
Michael: If you work with an experienced guy like I will not stop until I am personally happy with it, I treat everything like, you know, it’s an ad that I’m going to send out so you can guarantee that is going to be the highest quality possible. And even if it’s not, we’re going to revise it for you until it’s perfect. So that’s the generic appliances, the generic materials, the poor lighting, the inaccurate lighting. It’s just it may seem like it’s a good rendering on the surface, but as you dig down into it, it’s really just kind of doing you a disservice more than anything.
Jason: Did you want to talk about the house on the next page? Yeah, the residents.
Michael: Yes, and this is another thing about, this is a low quality rendering, like the one on top. I’m sure it was very quick to make it didn’t cost that much. But for one, this home doesn’t have palm trees around it. It’s uncharacteristic vegetation there. That’s when you know that they’re not like when I do one of these, it’s I’m going to Google. Where is the location? What is the vegetation in that location? Is that going to be perfect?
Look at how dark gray that house looks. And it’s really a much more outer light and an eerie look. Just the overall composition, the angle that the rendering is being taken, that straight on view that they have from down. It’s kind of like when you look at yourself in and you’re laying down on the couch and your chin is all scrunched up and you’re looking down at your phone versus you got the right complexion and the right angle, that goes a long way.
Michael: And like I said, that perceived value is everything. You want to make your home look as good as possible because then people are going to think it’s worth more and most of the time it is worth more. And you’re taking the extra step to show your design the way you envisioned it, that shows that you are a builder who cares about your work, you are a builder who or an interior designer that takes pride in what you do when you want to share with the world. You’re an artist and not just, you know, trying to make a quick buck. Absolutely, I mean, if you’re not showing this, if you’re not making this go public, if it’s just for you, you know what you’re, you know, in your head, what your house is going to look like, you just need that rendering to kind of give you maybe the spatial layout. You know, I have clients all the time. I like to make the, I like to detail out my projects. And a lot of times clients will be like, hey, I don’t need all the furniture. I need all the decoration. I just want to see how the space fits together. And am I going to be pinched walking between the island and the refrigerator. So if that’s what you’re looking for, then absolutely go lower end. But again, you’re dancing with fire. You pay a little bit of a little bit and you get you think that you’re reassured and that you’re verifying what you’re thinking and come to find out that the angle that their camera was taken from was in a place that’s impossible to get.
And that’s why it looked like the space was so big. It’s so easy to deceive someone even in physical photographs. You know how easy it is to deceive someone. That’s why I love video. Video is very true. Even in the concept phase, you know, even when something very simple I like to do a video tour of the home because that when the movement is there, that’s when you can see the things coming through. And something like that doesn’t cost much.
Michael: Even with the mid end, you know, you don’t necessarily need to go lower end. Middle end developer doing a very simple task is going to cost similar to a low end developer.
Jason: Yeah, that makes sense. All right, so now let’s move to the design process.
Michael: So my preferred method, I’m very collaborative. There’s no other way to do this other than being collaborative. I think it’s very cold to just say, hey, you know, email us your plans, we email you a price and then we’ll talk to you in three weeks when we have something to show. I don’t like doing things that way. I like to have a discussion on what are your goals for the project? What are you trying to get out of it? Are you trying to see something for yourself or are you trying to show something to potential buyers? Is this project built yet? Is it not built yet? You just want to stage it without buying furniture. Do you need to see the materials depending on your goals and what you’re trying to get out of it? That’s going to lend me to then recommend different services to you. So going back to the original question of we’re just looking for a prototype.
Do we need to go high end or mid end if you’re just looking for a prototype? I’m not going to sell you a Cadillac or a Mercedes if you’re just looking for a Lincoln town car. I’m going to sell you the Lincoln town car. It’s going to be a very affordable berry and we’re going to work together through it. And then if that project evolves, you’ve already built up that relationship with a designer who knows you know your project. And when you want to take it to the next step, we’re right there with you following that initial discussion.
Michael: This is a very detailed personal one on one similar to how you would do with a counselor or a personal coach. And following that, we’re going to send you over a detailed quote. It’s going to have a couple of different options. So you’re not just going to get, hey, this is what you’re going to pay or we’re not doing business. It’s going to have hey, here is your lower end service. It’s more affordable price than if you want to splurge a little bit and get some of the more core modern, futuristic things. And then this is a service that you can go with. Once we agree on pricing, talked about the project, we’re going to gather content from now. I guess I will share my screen so we can. But yes, we’re going to gather all the content, we’re going to send you a list so you don’t even have to really think about it. You’re just going to go down through a checklist and it’s going to say, you know, model number for the fridge, model number for the fixtures, the door knobs.
I mean, we do everything there is and I think, here we go. All right, so everyone can see the screen, OK? So this is a live feed right now. This is it. It’s completely real time. This is the environment that I work in for all of my designs. And as you can see, we do not skimp on the details. This is the exact model number taken from the manufacturer’s website. So we’re going to get the fridge.
We’re going to get the faucet, light fixtures. We’re going to get the exact fireplace that you guys specify. And in this case, we even did the furniture, the rug, the coffee table. The dining table was exactly modeled for what they gave us the backsplash here. This is one of those examples where the developer gave a picture. And you can just see, you know, this is reflecting exactly as this tiles as it can reflect in the real world.
Michael: And it all comes together to, you know, this is a home that you’re selling good luck not finding a buyer, it’s going to sell very fast. It’s one of these, is so powerful for your business and just your own work. And, you know, for example, this developer, the site, we went through four different wood styles for this countertop or for the island and eventually landed on this natural cedar look. But another variation of this kitchen is, you know, the white, with the white cabinets and the subway backsplash, which you can just see first hand how quickly we’re able to transition the design, and it’s simple as that. So this is really something that I cannot recommend enough if you are passionate about, if you’re building your own home. Absolutely. Do it this way. If you’re building a home for someone else, it’s only going to increase the value of the home and that 10 times out of ten, it’s going to increase the value more than the cost of doing. The rendering is going to be, so sorry. I got a little bit sidetracked there, as I knew I would when I multitask. But this is the content gathering, the exact subway tile the exact was the appliances, the handles on the drawers. That’s the shaker style there. Your wood beans running across the ceiling, the ship lap on the fireplace. We’re going to get all that information from you. We’re going to incorporate that into the rendering. Following that, it’s really very simple. You are going to and I lost my, here we go. Um. We probably should, I probably should have done this from the beginning in case people didn’t have the workbook followed.
Jason: Because we’ll have this on the recording, so we will actually be showing slides on it. So, yes, just for the people. So and then the people here, I’ve message all of them and they all have the workbooks, so we’re good. Michael: Gotcha. OK, so the next step is really where we take over the creative process. We got your finishes and we are going to create a design that complements those finishes. So if you look at this kitchen here, you know, we went we had the gold faucet, we have the gold knob. So we really wanted to go with the gold black, white and plant themed, designed scheme, all the furnishings on the table, and if you can actually show you what this will look like without all the furniture and you can just, you can see just how different it is now that you don’t have the stuff. One thing that we like to do when we’re given the final deliverables is creative before and after. So that’s really where it can you know, when you go from seeing the kitchen like this and then you see the shelves filled up and you see the stools and the couches and the rug, and now you’re getting a sense of what this space is going to feel like when you move in or when your client moves in. So just really powerful stuff, really visually stimulating stuff that’s going to wow any client you have and really kick start your business to a whole new level once all the final deliverables are in your hands. We’ll go through the revisions. You know, all revisions are completely covered underneath the roof. Most of the time we nail it the first time around. If there are revisions, it’s because they want to see a different style or something like that. And I personally, that’s my favorite thing to do. I love going through different options with my clients and and finding a design that’s perfect for them. So that’s the process in a nutshell. It’s so simple. We walk you through every step of the way. Like I said, we have the builders’ background. So when you send us the floor plans, we know what’s going on. We built homes from plans before, so I don’t need to be spoon fed information and hand-held the whole way. You’re not going to get 20 questions. It’s really going to be, hey, tell me what you want it to look like and we’re going to deliver.
Jason: That’s awesome. So did you have any animations or anything that you wanted to show?
Michael: That’s awesome. So did you have any animations or anything that you wanted to show? I actually not mentioned it. I do have an example of the, I don’t know how well this is going to come through, but this is a cool way to show off if you have a…
Jason: TV show
Michael: where you’re offering different design styles and then this is a perfect way to show, hey, you want that upgraded? You know you know, you want that upgraded fireplace when you see that, and one of, it’s a psychology thing when you see the before and after, if the before is unstaged and then you show that upgrade with the stagings, it makes it twice as desirable for the person to want to get that, so for all you builders out there who offer customizable options, there is no better way to do that. The best thing I like to describe it as, especially for this beginning, is, you know, it’s kind of like you’re fishing with a net as opposed to a single fishing line. If you’re showing three, four or five different styles of kitchen, you’re going to retain those customers who might have been turned off if I’d only just shown them the all white kitchen. And, you know, when you’re showing an added fireplace on your floor plan and it’s just a little symbol, 2D black and white symbol of a fireplace that’s been seen a million times by everyone, they’re going to go, OK, maybe, but they can’t visualize it when they see this. It’s a no brainer.
Jason: Yeah, that makes sense and it is showed really well. We have a couple of questions already. One is how long does this process usually take?
Michael: So for, it obviously depends on the complexity of the job, but we’re right within a seven to 10 day turnaround time, depending on how busy we are, but we work in a real time, like you just saw. I’m flying around through there. It’s that looks as realistic as you can get. And trust me, I have spent hundreds of hours making sure it looks that way, not that specific project, but just in general. So we’ve gotten this down to a science where you send us your plans and we can in as little as three days and typically we like to give 10 days so we can have some back and forth and go through and clean up the design and make it just the way you want to go.
Jason: And then what software were you using?
Michael: That is Unreal Engine. So some of you may have heard of it. It’s that basically it’s a super complex. It’s not like a user friendly software that I would recommend anyone to dove in if they don’t know anything about it. If you do want to get into it yourself, I recommend doing like a you know, a house pro or chief architect or probably SketchUp is a little more beginner friendly, but Unreal Engine is a game engine. So it’s actually what they use to make real time 3D video games. But it’s becoming more and more used by the real estate industry, construction industry, interior designers to really create stunning animations without those super long, and that’s one of the reasons why our turnaround times are so fast, because if you make a change, we don’t have to wait twenty four hours for that change to be rendered out. We can do it in 13 seconds. So I typically like I said, we’re texting back and forth and you’re like, OK, make it blue, OK, make it red.
Michael: OK, make it make it yellow. And you’re getting those images, you know, rapid fire really speed things up and and makes the whole process more enjoyable.
Jason: That makes sense. And then one question was on the textures and the materials and fixtures. How close can you come to the actual appliances that are being used or that are actually being specified?
Michael: Yeah. So we literally will. We’ll go to the manufacturers website and I’ll share my screen again, just so you can see how detailed we get with this stuff and almost to the point where it’s unnecessary, if I’m being completely honest, because, you know, you’re never going to be as close as you know, when you really zoom in here, you can see. We do not spare any detail on any of the appliances. We even got the fisher, we got all. You’re never going to see that down there, but we put it there just in case, the faucets, this is exactly from the manufacturer’s website, the sink, everything. So you can expect a one to one match the materials. They’re handmade. So we don’t use a generic material library. Like, I can come over to this tile right here, for example, and I can make it as dull or this is a bad example, because it’s not a real time one. So I can make you know, I can increase the weight in between the lines and the depth in between the lines, I can increase the tiling. Not that you would ever have a tile that looks like that, but we can make it as reflective or as unrefined. So it’s called physically based rendering for a reason. It’s taking real world values, reflection, values, the way light bounces off objects. The light is actually hitting an object, detecting what color that object is, and it’s bouncing that color off just like it would in the real world.
Michael: That’s why I love using this engine specifically, because it offers that I can set the sun intensity to the exact intensity of the sun in the real world. And same with every light bulb in the room. Everything is real world value. So, you know, you’re getting a one to one match. I can show you a very good example of a video store right now. So you can get an idea of why I prefer these over. So this is one that actually includes that rendering that we just saw. This is why I like to do videos and there’s music on it and maybe I can play it. I don’t want to play the music. But you can see how impactful this is going to be and you don’t have to do anything, you just get to sit back, put your hands over your head, and you get to watch and enjoy and let the artist take you through the house the way that they want you to see it or the developer take you through. When you go into these Mattapoisett virtual tours, it can kind of feel like it can get boring. It can get dull when you see something like this, especially when you hear the music behind it. It’s a very powerful experience and it’s going to get people knocking on your door.
Jason: Yeah, and that looks really good, really lifelike as well. So one question we had from one interior designer here, they wanted to know, based on your experience working with designers and remodelers, how often do they make changes to the design once they’ve seen a design, once they’ve seen the rendering that you have provided them every time?
Michael: Now, it’s like I was telling you earlier, I mean, you give someone who’s never had cake before, chocolate cake, it’s the best thing in the world. And you give them velvet cake. Now, that’s the best thing in the world. And you give them carrot cake now and then they just want more cake because every client at one point or another in the project is going to change something about the project, whether it’s the cabinets. We had it, we had a client that he went from all gray exterior to natural cedar shakes siding with. Black windows and white trim, and as you just saw right there, you know, that’s showing off the ability to put a mood behind things. We want to be able to show exactly what that room is used for. And you can see yourself a lot of I had a builder that we were blocking. I have the island staged a certain way. And as the builder, you know, he’s very attached to how his island look. And he was a little bit upset with how, what he wasn’t able to see the island in the rendering and his partner came in and said, you know, people aren’t going to care what the island looks like if they can imagine themselves eating at it. And that is so true in so many ways. If you can show if you can just take that person’s imagination away from them and you show like, hey, this flex room, I could have put a pool table in there. I could have put anything in that room. I could have made it a children’s room. I could have made it anything you want. But to me, that room was meant to have a theater and that’s going to appeal to the most amount of buyers. So being able to show someone what these rooms can be used for is so powerful and it’s going to help you sell your designs a lot quicker.
Jason: It makes sense. This is an interesting question. Have you ever had a rendering outshine the final product?
Michael: It’s a tightrope that you’ve got to walk because the natural feeling when you know, when the room looks too dark is to brighten it up. You have to I have to put myself in check sometimes because my initial thought is, oh, I just I made a bad rendering and sometimes the house just doesn’t look good. So if. I would be doing my builder a disservice by misleading them and thinking, hey, this room is lit perfectly, right? In reality, it’s not. So I go above and beyond. I do light studies. I track where is the sun in the sky at certain times of day. I know where it’s going to be, when it’s setting, where it’s going to be, where it’s rising. And I will actually mimic that morning sun when I know they’re going to be getting ready for work. That’s no matter what, they’re going to be in that room when they’re getting ready for work.. So I want to know what that sun at that time is going to look like for them. I do not mislead and try and make, like I said, like that picture of me. If we go back to this design here, this picture of this kitchen, I could have brightened it up and you see how dark it is. That’s because I use real world values. And, you know, there are dark spots in that kitchen that mainly because we don’t have any skylights. He doesn’t know where the positions of the lights are going to be. But I could have easily just increased the exposure value and it would have looked like the most well lit perfect kitchen. But I intentionally kept it dark just to show him, hey, this is what it would look like if you only had those two pendant lights on with a little bit of sunlight coming in from the side. Whereas this rendering down here, I guarantee this kitchen will be dark as night. You’re not going to get that. Like heavenly, like lighting coming in here, it’s going to be very dark in there and those dark cabinets, the dark floors, you’re never going to know that looking at this because this looks like it’s perfectly lit. So to answer that question, no, I would I would never intentionally mislead. Sometimes I might mistakenly think that I made something too dark and adjust my values, but I always end up catching it in the end.
Jason: OK, and then just a follow up to that. Has rendering ever helped set a new direction for the project in a positive manner?
Michael: Yes, I have had builders abort on their project altogether because the design was not worth it for them when they saw it. It had nothing to do with me giving a bad render. They saw it and they were like, this is not what we thought this home would look like and they scrapped the design, they went back to the drawing board and to me that is the most positive outcome that this could have created. That would have been a three hundred fifty thousand dollar investment for them and only for them to hate it in the outcome and I think they spent like maybe fifteen hundred on getting the whole thing looked, mocked up and looked at and they saved three hundred fifty thousand dollars, went back to the drawing board and ultimately came up with a design that they love much more.
Jason: And that makes a lot of sense, and that ties back in to what you were saying earlier about rendering should be a part of the process. They shouldn’t be viewed as an add on, but it’s part of the process.
Michael: Yeah. If you think about it, that if you put in the cost is not going to fluctuate. If you use the rendering as a design evaluation as well as a marketing tool, know you can create the design with an architect and you can just, I know that it’s going to be amazing and a lot of times, you know, we probably have some experienced builders and realtors on here who know when, you know, when the project’s going to sell itself and they don’t need to kind of do a design evaluation. Michael: But if it’s going to cost you the same to do that, rendering right from the jump, you know, and then stack it when you when it comes time to sell, now you have that marketing material. Why not do that? I mean, it’s a no-brainer to me to just verify, even if your shirt is verified that the design looks the way you want. It could be as simple as getting a counter with a slight increase in the amount of veins that it has in it. You know, an experienced designer can really use one of these renderings to their advantage and they can micro tweak things that will take something from ordinary to extraordinary if it’s going to cost the same amount as, you know, waiting until you’re ready to sell the thing. Why not just do it from the beginning? A good designer will get you the final result the first time. To me, there’s no, just because the home is not built doesn’t mean that I can’t build it in my head and build it in 3D like the software. I don’t have to know how light bounces through, the software is doing that for me. It’s calculating the way the sun bounces. So if you I mean, if you don’t know what your furniture is. Yeah, absolutely. Let’s start it. If you don’t know what your materials are. For example, when we send you our design, she will say, fill in what you can. And we’ll do the rest, we’ll fill in the blanks with stuff that is similar to how we do the interior design, if you just give us hey, we want white counters and black backsplash, tongue twister, then, you know, we’ll work with you to find the perfect cabinet color, the perfect appliances. It’s a super collaborative process where no matter what stage. Absolutely. But I don’t get involved with the project, which I think is what he’s asking. So to answer your question, yes, it’s one of those things that can evolve with the project and no matter where you are in the design phase, it always makes sense to do it because it’s not like we’re going to say, you know, I hate nickel and diming. I know Jason hates nickel and diming.
Michael: Yes, we’ve become friends with it’s when I send you this, I want nothing more than a response of late elation and just, you know, I can’t wait to get started on the next project. That’s what we’re here for. That’s what we deliver. And so I hope that answers that question.
Jason: If you can briefly just head back over the, they may have jumped on late on that one, but they were just asking what are the typical costs? And then you can see it on the screen there.
Michael: Yeah. So, you know, if you’re going to what I like to do and it’s going to obviously depend on what, who you are, are we able to have a dialog with them where I can ask what, what type of service do you do or what is the profession? Are you a builder? Are you an interior designer? Because for namesake, a custom home builder, I do a complete package, which is a exterior rendering and then the interior renderings and in one minute long interior animation of the five main rooms of the home is typically the kitchen, the owner’s bedroom, the owner’s bath, dining room and then the outdoor patio space. If something was there like that, that is going to run right around five hundred a room, which, like I said, if this is a custom home that you’re selling, that home is going to increase. Three, six, 10 percent in value. And that five hundred per room usually comes out to about twenty five hundred to three thousand dollars, that’s depending on the cost of your house. That’s half a percent to a percent. You’re making money on these every time. You’re never going to lose money doing a rendering. You’re always going to sell the home faster. You’re always going to sell the home for more money. And I would be willing to put my money, that it’s going to happen every time.
Michael: So for the pricing, like I said, it’s not an expense, it’s an investment. Yes, you are. Maybe you don’t have the money upfront. You’re already maxed out on the loan. Don’t do a rendering. Wait until you have a little bit of extra cash, just like I wouldn’t recommend that you go, do a flip if you’re eighty thousand dollars in debt already. But if you have that cash lying around, it’s only going to make you money in the long run. And it’s only going to make you seem like a higher quality builder. It’s only going to attract more business. It’s just an investment in your business and in yourself, no matter what you’re doing, whether you’re a realtor, whether you’re an interior designer, if you’re a realtor and you’re showing to your clients that, hey, if you work with me, you’re going to get this service in return. Oh, my God, you’re going to. I have to put your phone on silent and go on a vacation like Jason, because that’s something that people are looking for now, especially with covid. They want that. They want someone who can create that for them, create that experience around their home that even they can’t even imagine. And they’re the builders. So interior designers, you can say, hey, I’m not just giving you a mood board, I’m giving you complete interior walk through, an animation of what your design is going to look like. They’re going to recommend you to everyone they know.
Jason: OK! And then the last question we have here, one designer asked. Have you ever worked with a designer that has never used renderings or animation before and then the client loved them and then that was what they would use from here on out?
Michael: I have had a lot of clients that I’ve worked with, and they loved it so much that they learned it themselves. And I actually helped them. You know, I guided them to the software. And that’s what I love when people just love using this. How I lost business to me is not a big deal. But getting people excited about this is the main goal because this is going to be the future. But yes and no. I have definitely had builders who as soon as they did one project with me, turn around and there’s three more floor plans in my inbox and there are some that already have been doing it. And they’re just looking for higher quality. And as soon as they get a taste of that higher quality and how simple it was to work with an experienced designer who’s communicating effectively and delivering on promises, then they can’t get enough and it’s worth every penny to them.
Jason: She just had a follow up that she says she’s been in the design industry for about 15 years and she’s never really use renderings or animations. But this has helped her see how she may want to look this in in the future.
Michael: Yeah, definitely. I’d love to hear that.
Jason: Michael, did you want to add anything in before we leave?
Michael: No, I think I’ve talked enough. Like, I said, I just want to keep reiterating the fact that this is an investment, not an expense, and that’s why it’s so inexpensive these days. But the real time software and animation, like the ones we’re creating, used to cost fifteen thousand dollars because it would take them seventy two hours to render it out just to realize there’s an error and have to redo it. Now with the technology available and the fact that we started our company with that technology that costs, that you see is fractions of what people were paying for this type of stuff.
Michael: And we’re now seeing it feasible for the residential market used to be very limited. It was either commercial projects or the big developers like Lennar Homes. And they were doing this kind of stuff. But it was always a little bit out of reach for the smaller designers and the smaller builders. But now it’s a no brainer. The costs are so low, you don’t need to build the same house twice to get your money back. You’re going to get it back on that first home you do on that first interior design. If you’re just, if you just want to show your client a single room that could cost you as low as two hundred to four hundred dollars and you just gave them a mind blowing image that is going to make them work with you for the rest of the career. And you can subtract the cost that you would normally have doing the mood board. This replaces the mood board and in its entirety. And whatever hours you spend doing that, whatever hourly rate you bill yourself at, take that out of it. And now that four hundred dollars might only be fifty dollars. And you don’t, can you do less work, so it’s opening you up to expand your business. We’ve become a partner to help you grow and focus on other facets of your business. And we take care of the marketing for you. Once you make something like this, you don’t have to worry about marketing ever again. You just keep posting those images. You keep posting those videos and the business will come.
Jason: Love it. That’s a good way to end. Everyone, you have a good end of your day and a great weekend. We’ll talk to you soon. All right. Bye bye.
Michael: Thanks, everyone.