Freedes Studio is a 3D rendering studio whose work is almost entirely real estate: buildings that are being sold, leased or approved before they exist. Since 2010 our in-house team of 30+ CGI artists has produced photorealistic architectural visualization for developers, architects and property brands — exteriors, interiors, animation, tours, plans and staging — more than 10,000 works for 500+ clients in 30+ countries, among them CBRE, DLR Group, Compass, Douglas Elliman, Keller Williams and Marcus & Millichap.
Because nearly every image we make is destined for a sales campaign, the studio grew a second capability around the first: real estate development marketing — the agency side of a rendering studio. A render is rarely the end product for a developer — it becomes the hero of a brochure, the first frame of a launch film, the background of a hoarding, the listing photo on a portal — and developers kept asking us for those pieces too. So we build the 3D model once and produce every asset of the launch from it, and where a project needs a name, an identity and sales materials, we make them alongside the images. The rendering is still the core; the marketing is what the rendering is for.
What We Render, and for Whom
Real estate developers are our first audience. Most projects arrive as a set of drawings and a launch date: a residential or multifamily building that needs to pre-sell, a commercial development that needs a tenant deck, a master-planned community that needs a name before it needs a website. We work with in-house marketing teams and with the agencies developers hire, and we are comfortable being either the whole visual department or one supplier in a larger launch.
Architects and interior designers come to us for architectural rendering that wins competitions, secures client approval and gets a scheme through a planning committee. The brief here is different — the image has to explain the design honestly, not sell it — and we treat it differently: accurate materials from the specification, real sun studies, no artistic license that a reviewer would catch.
Brokers, agencies and property brands use us for listing content, virtual staging and campaign visuals where the building already exists and the job is to show what it could become. Brokerages such as Compass, Douglas Elliman and Keller Williams order in volume — a staged listing today, a penthouse render next week — and need a studio that answers the same day and keeps a consistent look across an office's listings.
Home builders are a segment of their own: repeat clients who bring a new plan every few months and need 3D house renderings that keep the same look across a catalogue of models.
Most 3D rendering companies specialize — architectural visualization, product CGI or real estate marketing. We sit in the last group, and every asset class sells differently, so the visuals follow the sale.
Multifamily and build-to-rent. The buyer or tenant is choosing a lifestyle, not a floor plate, so the set leans on amenities and unit interiors: the lobby, the rooftop, the co-working lounge, a typical one-bedroom at dusk. Exterior views place the building on its actual street with real neighbours. Floor plans are rendered per unit type for the leasing website, and a short film of the amenity floor does the work of a site visit for out-of-town renters. For build-to-rent operators launching several buildings a year, we keep a library of the brand's finishes and furniture so each new building is rendered in the house style without starting from zero.
Mixed-use and master-planned communities. Here the story is the whole: an aerial view that shows phasing, a rendered site plan with lots and amenities labelled, street-level views of the retail frontage, and a film that walks the viewer from the highway exit to the front door. Naming and identity usually start here too, because the community will be marketed for years and the first images set the visual language for every phase that follows. The masterplan model is the asset that pays for itself: each new phase is a new camera on the same model, not a new commission.
Luxury and branded residences. Fewer images, more of everything in each one: bespoke furniture modelled from the designer's specification, art on the walls, a view that matches the actual floor and orientation. These projects often add a virtual reality presentation for the sales gallery.
Hospitality and resorts. Guest rooms, the arrival sequence, the pool at golden hour, the restaurant at night. Investors and operators need to feel the brand standard before the flag is signed, so we work from the brand's design guidelines rather than generic references.
Commercial: office, retail, industrial. Tenant and investor audiences want the building explained: floor plates, ceiling heights, loading, daylight. We render the spec suite and the lobby, and produce the exterior views a leasing deck needs — often with a 3D architectural model that the leasing team keeps using for test fits.
Single-family communities and custom homes. Elevations, streetscapes and a handful of interiors per model type; the same house in three colour schemes; the model home before it is built. Speed matters here more than anywhere, because sales start the week the plan is approved, and consistency matters almost as much: a builder's website with forty models rendered by four different suppliers looks like four different builders.
What a Development Launch Includes
A launch needs a handful of these, not all of them, and a single image is a perfectly normal order. The stages below follow the order in which a development is usually marketed — pick the stage your project is at, or the one asset it is missing. The full list is on our 3D rendering services page.
The project as a whole
Before a single view is rendered, a development needs to be understood from above and named. Real estate branding — the name, identity, palette and typography that every later asset will carry. The site plan and the aerial view that explain where the project sits and how it is phased. For larger sites, a 3D model of the entire masterplan that stays in use for years as blocks are released.
The building from outside
3D exterior visualization is the 3D rendering service most projects start with: the façade in context, at the hour of the day that flatters it, with the real trees, cars and people of its street. A launch set usually holds three to six exteriors — the hero view for the hoarding, a street-level view, a dusk view, a courtyard or amenity deck — and each is delivered at print resolution for billboards and at web resolution for the portal.
Inside the apartments
3D interior rendering for the unit types that sell the building: the kitchen–living space, the master bedroom, the bathroom, the terrace. 2D and 3D floor plans for every layout, furnished and dimensioned for the listing. Where the building already stands, virtual staging furnishes the empty rooms in your own photographs — the fastest way to turn a vacant unit into a listing.
The sales office and the launch
This is where the model earns its keep. An architectural animation of 60–180 seconds for the launch event and the campaign; a 3D walkthrough at eye level through the lobby and a typical unit; 360° virtual tours that buyers open on their phones from the listing; and a VR presentation for the sales gallery where the buyer stands on the balcony of the unit they are considering. All of it comes from the same model as the still images, which is why it costs a fraction of what separate suppliers would charge.
Not only real estate
The same team produces 3D product rendering and 3D furniture rendering for manufacturers and e-commerce, with product and furniture modeling from CAD or drawings. Developers use this for the branded furniture packages and finish options that come with a unit; manufacturers use it instead of a photo studio.
What the Visuals Are For
Pre-sales and off-plan marketing. The largest share of our work. A development that sells before completion sells on images, and the set has to carry a buyer from the first portal listing to the reservation form: exteriors, interiors, plans, a tour. The brief we ask for is the sales plan — which units go first, who the buyer is, what the competing project down the street looks like — because a set that opens with the penthouse sells differently from one that opens with the two-bedroom the bank wants absorbed first. We also stage the set for the channels it will run on: a hoarding needs one image that reads from a moving car, a portal needs a dozen that read at thumbnail size.
Planning approval and public consultation. Councils and community boards respond to accurate architectural visualization — unflattering if necessary: the building from the neighbour's garden, the massing at the end of the street, the shadow at 3 p.m. in December. Where the process requires it, views are set up from agreed camera positions so they can be checked against the site.
Investor and lender presentations. A deck for a fund or a bank needs fewer, stronger images and a clear masterplan; a film helps when the committee will never visit the site. We deliver these in the deck's format and, when asked, present the visuals in the room.
Design decisions before construction. Two façade options rendered side by side settle in an afternoon what a drawing set argues about for a month. Architects use our architectural renderings to choose finishes with their clients and to catch what a plan hides — a sightline, a low ceiling, a dark corridor.
Listing and campaign content. Once the launch is live, the model keeps producing: seasonal exteriors, a new amenity, the penthouse when it finally goes on sale, social cut-downs of the film.
How We Work
The process is the same for a single image and a full launch; only the number of people changes.
- Brief. You send drawings, references and the deadline — a full set or a site plan and a floor count. We come back with questions, then with a fixed price and a delivery date.
- Model and camera angles. We build the 3D model and send grey, untextured views from the proposed cameras. Agreeing the angles first is the single step that prevents most surprises later: it costs nothing to move a camera on a grey model and a great deal after the image is finished.
- First colour preview. Materials, lighting and context in place, at working resolution. This is where you comment on mood, time of day, how much life on the street, which furniture.
- Revisions. Included in the price. We collect your comments in one round where possible, apply them and send the corrected preview.
- Final delivery. Full-resolution images, films and tours in the formats your channels need, with the source model retained for the next order.
A dedicated project manager on every job, so the person you write to on day one is the one who sends the finals. Timelines, software and what to send are answered in the FAQ below; the process is the part that does not change.
For a full launch the sequence is the same but staggered: the masterplan and hero exterior go first, because the campaign needs them first; interiors and plans follow as unit types are confirmed; film and tour are cut last, from the model that by then has been approved view by view. That order keeps revisions cheap — a change to the façade in week one is a camera re-render, not a film re-edit in week four — and it lets marketing start with the hero image while the rest of the set is still in production.
What You Get
Still images at up to 8K, in layered files on request, colour-managed for print and web. Films in 4K at the length the campaign needs. 360° tours as web-embeddable panoramas linked into a walkthrough. VR presentations for standalone headsets. Floor plans as vector and raster. The model stays with us for reorders, so a seasonal update or a new unit type is a new camera, not a new commission.
Recent Developments
Four projects that show what a real estate 3D rendering studio does day to day — and how the marketing layer grows out of the images.
Mavrek Development, Chicago. A long-running relationship with a developer building across the North Side: The Saint Grand, TREO and the Portrait Building, among others. For each, exteriors on the actual streets, unit interiors, floor plans and — for the larger buildings — animation for the launch. It is the clearest example of how a set grows from one hero view to a full campaign when the same team renders a developer's buildings year after year.
Sunlight Development, 95 Madison, New York. A Manhattan residential conversion where the exterior had to sit convincingly among landmarked neighbours: photographic context, matched lighting, the street as it is on a weekday morning.
Barrett Homes, Chicago. A home builder who orders renderings for every new project — dozens over the years — and whose owner's Clutch review says the quality is such that buyers take the images for photographs of finished houses. The kind of client relationship an in-house team makes possible: the same artists, the same look, project after project.
Van Parys Architecture + Design, California. Custom homes in Westlake Village and beyond, rendered for the architect's clients before construction: exteriors at golden hour, the pool terrace, the interior view that decided the window schedule.
More projects, sorted by client and location, are in the portfolio.
Where We Work
From Los Angeles for the United States — most of our developer clients are American, with recent projects in Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Brooklyn and Newark — and from London for the United Kingdom and Europe. The work is remote by design, drawings in and images out, and we render for the market the development sells in: a buyer in London and a buyer in Los Angeles expect different things from an interior. The full list of markets and projects is on our where we work page.
Why Developers Choose Freedes
An in-house team, not a marketplace. All 30+ CGI artists are on staff — unlike many a 3D rendering company that is a project manager and a pool of freelancers. A launch set of twenty images comes from one team with one standard, and the person who rendered your exterior in March renders the penthouse in September. That consistency is what an architectural rendering studio owes a developer, and it is the first thing lost when images are bought one at a time from wherever is cheapest.
One model, every asset. The 3D model is the expensive part. Exteriors, interiors, plans, film, tour and VR — every service of a launch — are views of it — which is why a full scope from us costs less than the sum of separate suppliers, and why the building looks the same on every channel.
A fixed price and a fixed date before we start. The estimate you approve is the invoice you receive, revisions included; no hourly surprises.
Real estate, not just 3D. We know what a leasing deck needs, what a planning officer looks for and what a portal listing crops. That knowledge shapes the brief we ask for and the set we propose.
Speed without a night shift. Two offices and a team of 30+ mean a brief sent from Chicago at 5 p.m. is being modelled by the next morning, and a launch set of twenty images is a matter of weeks, not months.
Clients who come back. 98% of our clients return with the next project; 200+ developers and 500+ launches since 2010. Named clients you can check — CBRE, DLR Group, Compass, Douglas Elliman — and reviews on Google and Clutch that you can read below. It is the record of a 3D rendering studio that has been doing this since 2010, not a marketplace that opened last spring.
Pricing
What a render costs depends on what has to be built and how much of the frame it fills. A virtually staged photograph — furniture added to an existing room — sits at the low end; a marketing exterior of a multifamily building with its street, its neighbours and people at the high end. Between them, interiors, single-family exteriors and floor plans each have their own range, and animation is priced by length rather than by frame. As a guide: interiors $300–2,000, residential exteriors $500–2,000, commercial exteriors $1,000–3,000+, 3D floor plans $200–800, virtual staging $100–500, a single 360° panorama $500–1,200, a 30-second flythrough from about $2,000. The minimum project is $1,000. A launch set ordered together is priced as one model with many views, which is why it costs less per image than the same views bought one at a time. The full breakdown, with what moves a price up or down, is in our 3D rendering cost guide.
3D Rendering, Architectural Visualization, CGI — What Is the Difference?
The terms overlap, and studios use them interchangeably; here is how we use them. 3D rendering is the process — turning a 3D model into an image with light and materials — and, loosely, the image itself. Architectural visualization (archviz) is the discipline: rendering applied to buildings and spaces, including the judgement about camera, light and context that makes a render read as a place. CGI is the broadest term, covering every computer-generated image and animation, from a product packshot to a film. When a developer asks for "renders", they usually mean architectural visualization delivered as a marketing set — and that is what a 3D rendering studio like ours produces. Real estate development marketing, finally, is the wider job: taking those visuals to market together with a name, an identity and the sales materials. Some clients call that a 3D rendering agency; we call it the capability we added because our clients are developers — not the reason the studio exists.
Start With What You Have
Send us the drawings, the references and the date you need the images by — or just the site and a working name if that is all there is yet. We come back with a fixed price and a schedule. Write to [email protected] or use the form on this page.
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