Off-Plan Marketing with CGI: A Developer's Guide

Stage one: planning and pre-application

The first images of a scheme are usually made for planning, not for sales. Street-level views and an aerial help the LPA and the neighbours understand the proposal. They are built from the planning drawings, and they need to be accurate rather than glamorous. A planning officer wants to see the scheme honestly in its street, not on a perfect summer evening.

It pays to think ahead at this point. The 3D model built for planning can become the base of the sales imagery later, so ask for it to be kept and say early that marketing images will follow. The design will move between planning and launch, but most of the modelling carries over, which saves weeks when the campaign starts. Our guide to CGIs for planning applications covers this stage in detail.

Stage two: funding and investor decks

Before construction finance is agreed, lenders and investors want to see what they are backing. A funding deck usually leads with one hero exterior, one aerial that explains the site and its surroundings, and one or two interiors aimed at the target buyer or renter. These images often come before the specification is final, so brief them as indicative and keep the materials close to what planning approved to avoid awkward questions later.

For build-to-rent schemes the audience is slightly different. Institutional investors want to understand the resident lounge, the gym, the co-working space and the roof terrace as much as the flats, so weight the deck towards shared spaces and the arrival experience. An image of a busy, well-run amenity floor often does more for an investor than another bedroom.

Stage three: the launch campaign

Launch is where most of the image budget goes and where the order of work matters most. The items below are usually needed at the same moment, so brief them together.

On an apartment scheme that normally means property CGIs of the building, its entrance and two or three typical flats.

On a housing development, housetype CGIs do the same job, with each design rendered once and then shown across every plot where it is built.

• Brochure: a hero exterior, a street scene, two to four interiors and a plan for each flat or housetype.
• Hoarding: one or two wide views that read from across the road, often cropped from the hero exterior.
• Property portals: listings on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket need a strong lead image and a consistent set behind it, cropped to work in each gallery.
• Agent packs: images, plans and a short specification so estate agents can answer buyers' questions without waiting for the marketing suite to open.

Stage four: sales progression

Once the launch is done, the work shifts to helping individual buyers decide and keeping later phases moving. These are the images that do that work, usually commissioned in smaller batches as each phase is released rather than all at once.

• Plot-specific variants: handed versions, alternative brick or roof colours, corner-plot elevations and garden orientations, so a buyer sees their own plot rather than a generic one.
• Floor plans: furnished 3D floor plans for each type, with room dimensions, answer the questions buyers ask most often about space.
• Animation: a short architectural animation, cut into a portal-length clip and social edits, conveys arrival and flow in a way stills cannot.
• Show flats: once a flat is built but empty, virtual staging furnishes the photographs without the time and expense of dressing the rooms.

Build-to-rent lettings imagery

Build-to-rent schemes are let rather than sold, and the imagery reflects that. Renters care about the building as a place to live: the reception, the co-working space, the gym, the roof terrace and the parcel room. The flats often share a small number of layouts, so a few well-dressed interiors can cover most of the stock. Lifestyle details, such as a bike store or a pet-washing station, are worth showing if the scheme offers them.

Lettings teams also need images that stay true over time. A sale ends at completion, but a build-to-rent scheme is marketed continuously, so the CGIs should show finishes and furniture packs the operator will actually supply. Once the building opens, photography takes over for most uses, and staging of photographed but unfurnished flats fills the gaps between lettings.

What to commission, and in what order

Budgets are finite and programmes slip, so it helps to know which images matter most at each point. A sensible order for most schemes looks like the list below. Each step reuses the model from the one before it, which is where both the efficiency and the consistency come from. Skipping a step is fine; commissioning them out of order usually means paying to model the same building twice.

• Planning views, built from a model that is kept for later use.
• A funding pack: one hero exterior, one aerial and one or two interiors.
• The launch set: hero exterior, street scene, typical interiors and floor plans for every type.
• Hoarding and portal crops taken from the launch set rather than new views.
• Plot variants, animation and staged show flats as sales progress and new phases are released.

Keeping a campaign consistent

Buyers notice when the brick in the brochure is a different colour from the brick on the portal, or when the sky changes from one image to the next. Consistency comes from a single model and a single specification held by one studio, with a short style guide covering time of day, season, people, cars and furniture.

Agree that guide with the marketing agency at the outset and reuse it for every later phase. When the specification changes, which it will, update the model once and re-render the affected views rather than patching images by hand. Every new image follows the same process, a draft render with materials and lighting close to final, then revisions of your mark-ups, with up to 4 revision rounds included. Keep a record of which version of each image is live on which channel, so an old CGI does not linger on a portal after the design has moved on.

Getting started

The best time to talk to a studio is before the planning images are made, so the model is built once with the whole campaign in mind. Send the planning drawings, the specification as it stands and the dates that matter: submission, funding, launch and first completions. We come back with a fixed quote within one business day, and a schedule that works back from your launch.

If the campaign is already under way with images from elsewhere, the same applies in reverse. Send what exists and the studio can match it, or rebuild the set to one specification before the next phase is released.

Looking for prices? Every published figure is on one page: 3D rendering cost in the UK.