The Most Common Question We Get
"Do we need renderings, or animation, or both?"
The honest answer: it depends. But let's give you a framework for making that decision.
What Renderings Do Well
3D renderings are still images. At their best, they're photorealistic — indistinguishable from a photograph of a finished building or interior. They're the workhorses of pre-leasing marketing because they're:
Flexible. A single render can appear on your website, in a leasing brochure, on a billboard, in an investor deck, and on Instagram — all at the same time.
Iterative. You can produce 4 renders in a first round, see what resonates with prospects, and commission 8 more of the spaces that are driving conversations.
Affordable. A good rendering from an experienced studio typically costs a fraction of what animation does at comparable quality.
Fast. A focused rendering package can be turned around in 2–3 weeks. Animation takes 4–8 weeks minimum.
What Animation Does That Renderings Can't
Animation creates an experience. It communicates scale, flow, and ambiance in a way that static images simply cannot. When a prospect watches a 90-second animation, they can imagine themselves living in the property. That's a fundamentally different conversion trigger than looking at a rendering.
Animation is particularly powerful when:
- Your property's competitive advantage is the flow between spaces (lobby to amenity deck to units) - You're in a market where luxury expectations are high and you need to compete with the best - You have a rooftop, view corridor, or outdoor space that needs to be experienced in motion - You're driving a significant digital ad campaign where video completion rates matter
Our Recommendation
For most projects, we recommend starting with a core rendering package (8–12 images) that can go to market in weeks, then layering in animation once the renderings have established the visual language. For larger projects with significant pre-leasing runway, doing both simultaneously is almost always the right call.
The one thing we'd push back on: doing animation without renderings. Animation files are large, can't be easily repurposed for print, and require high-quality individual frames for social content anyway. Renderings should almost always come first.
