Premium 3D rendering
in Melbourne

Ask how the studio lights for your shadow diagrams. ResCode assesses overshadowing and overlooking explicitly, and a shadow study for it usually covers 22 September between 9am and 3pm, so the render should be lit for that date and those hours or it hands an objector their argument. Ask too whether neighbouring buildings are built from survey and camera positions are recorded, so your planner can explain how each image was made if the scheme reaches VCAT.

Ask how it handles period fabric and Melbourne light. The defining commission here is a Victorian, Edwardian or interwar house with a contemporary addition, and the image usually turns on the junction between old and new: bluestone in its sawn, honed or pitched finish and polychrome brick with its real banding, matched from samples or site photographs rather than a library texture. Melbourne light is lower and softer than Sydney’s or Brisbane’s, and a period street under hard tropical sun looks wrong to anyone who lives there.

Ask what the quote commits to. Ours sets out every view, the revision rounds you get and the date the images arrive, and one senior artist answers for the work from first model to final grade.

The kind of project is the biggest variable. A period home extended at the rear or upward in Fitzroy, Carlton, Hawthorn or Kew usually needs two views from one scene — the street, where the addition should barely register, and the garden, where it can read as confident new work. A design-led apartment interior needs its joinery modelled to documentation and each room lit from its real windows, because Melbourne buyers compare joinery, stone and lighting from one project to the next.

Planning context is the second. Townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings now go through Victoria’s Townhouse and Low-Rise Code, where meeting every standard makes a design deemed to comply, so for those schemes the images work harder for buyers than at a hearing. A design that goes beyond the code still has to make its case, with street and garden views at true height; each added camera in a finished scene is a fraction of the first image’s price.

Melbourne quotes come back as one written figure covering the views, the revisions and the delivery date, usually within two business hours of receiving drawings, and a registered business starts without paying a deposit.

In the central city, the Melbourne Planning Scheme names the images. The overlay for urban design in central Melbourne (DDO1) lists, among its application requirements, photomontage studies of the proposal in its streetscape context from pedestrian eye level within the street, including relevant proposals and approvals. It also asks for a 3D digital model of the development and its immediate surrounds, as appropriate, prepared to the City of Melbourne's guidelines for buildings and works above 20 metres or to the State's advisory note on 3D digital modelling.

The built-form overlays for the Hoddle Grid's special character areas (DDO2) and the central city's general development area (DDO10) say an application must be accompanied by a 3D digital model, which may be used to assess overshadowing and visual impacts. In heritage precincts, the Heritage Overlay schedule asks for sightlines, streetscape elevations, photos and a 3D model as necessary. The City of Melbourne is the usual responsible authority, but the Minister for Planning takes projects with more than 25,000 square metres of new floor area.

The words "including relevant proposals and approvals" shape the work: the photomontages are to show the relevant proposed and approved buildings around the site, not only what stands today. We build the proposal from the drawings being lodged, set it into photographs taken at eye level from the street, model those neighbouring schemes in, and keep the scene consistent with the 3D model assessors will use to test overshadowing. Our guide to renders for planning submissions covers the rest of what assessors check, and our page on photomontages sets out how each view is matched and documented.