The archviz workflow, stage by stage

The short answer

An archviz job runs in seven stages: inputs, model, clay and cameras, materials and lighting, first draft, feedback rounds, finals and delivery. Each stage ends with a gate, a written yes from the client or a checked list from you, and the next stage does not start until the gate is closed. Most of the trouble in archviz comes from starting materials before the cameras are approved, or rendering finals while the architect is still moving windows.

Run each view as its own small job inside the project, because views move at different speeds. The aerial is usually signed off first and the show apartment last.

Why archviz needs its own workflow

Archviz looks like product rendering with a bigger model, but three things make it different:

• The design is still changing while you work. The building you model in week one is rarely the one in the planning submission.
• There is more than one client voice: the architect, the developer, the marketing agency and sometimes the planning consultant.
• The deadline is set by something you do not control: a planning submission, a sales launch, a hoarding print date.

A workflow that works for archviz has to absorb design changes without restarting, collect one set of notes from several people, and protect a date that will not move.

The seven stages

The percentages are an example from a four-view residential job, not a rule. Interiors shift more hours into stage 4 and 5, masterplans into stage 2.

Stage 1: inputs

Write the input list before you open any software. For a residential job it usually reads:

• Architectural drawings: plans, sections, elevations, with the revision letter
• The architect's model, if there is one, and what software it is in
• Finishes schedule or material board
• Landscape plan
• Camera positions or a marked-up plan showing what the client wants to see
• Reference images, with a note on what to take from each
• Deadline, and what it is for

Send the list back to the client with the missing items marked and a date by which you need them. Everything else in the schedule hangs off that date. If the finishes schedule arrives two weeks late, the materials stage starts two weeks late, and you have it in writing.

Stage 2: model

Model to the revision on the drawings, and write that revision letter on the job. When the architect sends revision D in week three, you can see at once what changed and price it as a design change rather than absorbing it.

Model only what the cameras will see, but wait until stage 3 to know exactly what that is. Before then, model the massing and the main facades properly and leave the detail for later.

Stage 3: clay and cameras

This is the most important gate in archviz and the one most often skipped. Send grey renders from each proposed camera, with the lens and height noted, and ask for written approval of the angles.

A camera change after materials and lighting means redoing most of the per-view work. A camera change after the first draft can cost half the view's hours. If the client approves the cameras in an email, copy that approval onto the view with the date. The guide on client feedback rounds explains why this approval is the one to insist on.

Stage 4: materials and lighting

Pick one view, usually the hero exterior, and do a look test: materials, time of day, sky, mood. Get that approved before you roll the look out to the other views. Five look tests in parallel produce five rounds of notes that contradict each other.

Stage 5: first draft

Render every view fully, with entourage and post, at a resolution good enough to judge. Send all drafts together with one request: one consolidated set of notes per view, from one person on the client side, by a date.

Stage 6: feedback rounds

Turn each set of notes into a numbered list on that view. Each line is something you can change and tick off. Anything vague goes back as a question before you start. Count the rounds per view against what the quote included. When a note is really a design change (a different facade material, a moved balcony), say so before you make it and give the price.

Stage 7: finals and delivery

Agree the final formats before you render: resolution, file type, crops for print and web, versions with and without people. Deliver through a download link rather than an attachment, and send the final invoice the same day. Finals sitting on a server for a week while the invoice waits are the most common reason archviz studios get paid late.

Running several views at once

A twenty-view job is not twenty times a one-view job. The model is shared, and in practice the views split into groups: exteriors that share the site, interiors that share a furniture set, aerials that share the context. Schedule the groups, not the individual views, and let the views within a group move together through stages 4 to 7.

On any day, a mid-sized job looks like this:

That table is the whole status report. If you can produce it in thirty seconds, the job is under control.

The workflow on a real job

Halden Visual, a four-person studio, takes six views of a mixed-use building for a developer, deadline set by a sales launch in eight weeks. Inputs come in on day three, missing the landscape plan, which arrives on day ten. The model is done by the end of week two. Cameras are approved on day sixteen, but the developer wants a seventh view, a rooftop terrace, which is priced as an addition the same day. The look test on the corner exterior goes through one round. Drafts go out at the end of week five, two rounds follow, and finals go out three days before the launch with the invoice. The landscape delay cost a week of float, which was in the plan because the input list had named the risk on day three.

For the pricing side of the same job, see how to price archviz images.

Doing this in OIO

In OIO the development is one project and each view is a ticket. The stage goes in the ticket's status and checklist, the dates go on the timeline, and the camera approval and each round's numbered notes go on the ticket so the record is there when a change comes up. Freelancers doing the furniture set or post work get a link to their ticket and work there without an account or a seat.

The architect and the developer get a password-protected status link that shows each view, its status, the deadline and the updates you post, and never your hours or ticket contents. Finals go out on download links, and the quote per view and the invoice come from the same project. OIO has no markup on images and no file versions, so drawn notes come in as screenshots on the ticket. More on OIO for archviz studios.

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