3D Rendering · Dubai

3D Rendering in Dubai

The airport at Dubai South is the largest thing being built here, and probably anywhere. Seventy square kilometres, five parallel runways, capacity for more than 260 million passengers a year, with the first phase due in 2032. Thirteen billion dirhams of contracts are running now and more than ten million work hours went into the last fifteen months.

Elsewhere the picture is more mixed than the announcements suggest. Palm Jebel Ali has 723 villas under contract across Fronds K to P with first handovers starting this year. Dubai Islands, seventeen square kilometres across five islands, has a masterplan and no completion date. Creek Tower has a tender and no fixed schedule.

Knowing which of those is which is most of the job when you are selling something that does not exist yet.

Who we are writing to

The buyer here is often not the architect.

Master developers commission at volume, and since the 2024 consolidation that brought Nakheel, Meraas and others under one roof, a lot of that work sits inside fewer, larger procurement relationships. Below them is a layer that barely exists in other markets: property marketing agencies who take an off-plan launch end to end and buy CGI as a line item, alongside brokerages running project portals.

Then the practices, local and international, who need design-stage imagery rather than sales imagery, and who are usually working to a client review rather than a launch date.

The permit chain an off-plan render sits inside

An off-plan render in Dubai is not marketing material until somebody has a permit for it.

Real estate advertising in the emirate runs through the Land Department's Trakheesi system. The advertiser applies, the permit number goes in the advertisement, and the advertisement has to match the permit. The Department has fined companies for advertising without one, for reusing permit numbers, and for running expired ones. Separately, the 2007 escrow law bars a developer from advertising in local or international media without written authorisation.

So the image sits inside a chain, and the chain cares about accuracy. Which brings back the point from the top of this page. A render of a project that is announced should not look like a render of a project that is topped out. Getting that distinction right protects the person who has to sign the advertisement off, and it is the part most studios do not think about at all.

Relevant work

There is Dubai work in the portfolio and it is worth being exact about what kind.

A house at Dubai Marina, interiors. And a high-end residence delivered in 2025 as a five-hotspot virtual tour you can walk through rather than take on trust. Further down the Gulf, a mosque in Muscat, four exterior studies tracking the light across a single day, and an interior tour of the prayer hall.

That is residential and civic work, not an off-plan launch campaign for a master developer. Tower work at that scale sits in the Mumbai portfolio rather than this one, and we would rather say so than let the distinction blur.

Living and dining space under arched openings, cream plaster and marble with a pool beyond, Dubai Marina, visualised by 256 GRAYS — Dubai Marina

Mosque courtyard at first light, carved stone arcades under warm uplighting against a deep blue sky, Muscat, Oman, visualised by 256 GRAYS — Muscat, Oman, first light

The same mosque at dusk, one of four studies tracking the light across a single day, Muscat, Oman, visualised by 256 GRAYS — Muscat, Oman, dusk

Walk through the Dubai residence tour See the full portfolio

Ninety minutes, and it never moves

An hour and a half, and no daylight saving on either side, so it never moves.

A nine o'clock start in Dubai is half past ten in Mumbai. Five in the afternoon here is half past six there. There is no handover window to manage and no overnight lag: for practical purposes it is a shared working day, and a call can happen whenever suits you rather than at the one hour that works for both.

Both weeks run Monday to Friday, so there is no mismatched weekend to plan around. Our day opens at nine in Dubai time and closes at half past six, which is your working day almost exactly.

Invoicing in USD or AED. Milestones 50, 25 and 25.

Dubai questions

Do you have an office in Dubai?

No. We work from Mumbai and have done since 1999. The time difference is ninety minutes, so in practice you get a studio that is awake when you are, without paying for a Dubai overhead. If you need someone physically at a sales gallery or a print check, we will say so rather than pretend otherwise.

Can you produce visuals for an off-plan launch that has to clear a permit?

Yes. Real estate advertising here runs through the Trakheesi permit system and the advertisement has to match what was permitted, so we work to the project facts you give us and flag anything in a brief that would show something the approved scheme does not include. The permit itself is yours to hold.

Have you worked on Dubai or GCC projects?

Yes, residential. A villa and a house at Dubai Marina, and a high-end Dubai residence delivered as a virtual tour in 2025. In Oman, a mosque in Muscat, both exterior studies and an interior walkthrough. What we have not done here is a master developer off-plan launch campaign, and you should weigh that if it is what you are buying.

Why do your Gulf renders look different from a European studio?

Because the light is different and pretending otherwise is the tell. Dubai gets around 3,500 hours of sunshine a year, the sun is harder and warmer than northern European reference, and on an ordinary day there is enough dust in the air that distant towers sit behind a visible gradient. A crisp, cool, haze-free skyline reads as imported.

What does a project cost?

Priced per project against image count, animation and context modelling. Send the drawings and the launch date and you will get a fixed quote in dollars or dirhams.

The studio

256 GRAYS has worked in interior architecture and 3D visualisation since 1999, from Mumbai, for clients across six continents. The practice is principal-led: Hasnain Sikandar sees every project, and the person you brief is the person who does the work. That is a deliberate limit on how much we take on, and it is the reason the work is consistent.

We are a registered LLP, 256 GRAYS STUDIO LLP, which matters more than it sounds when an overseas client is deciding whether to send drawings to a studio they have not met.

Software and pipeline

Modelling and scene assembly in 3ds Max, rendered in Chaos V-Ray or Corona depending on what the project needs. Both are production renderers from the same house, and the choice is made per project rather than by habit: one suits controlled architectural exteriors and daylight studies, the other suits interiors where the light is doing most of the work.

We take DWG, RVT, SKP and IFC, and we would rather work from your model than rebuild it, because rebuilding is where errors enter.

How a project runs

Brief and fee agreed in writing before anything starts. Grey-scale camera tests for approval, so composition is settled before time goes into materials and light. Draft images for comment. Two rounds of revisions inside the fee, with further rounds quoted rather than absorbed silently. Final delivery at agreed resolution.

Milestones are 50 percent to start, 25 percent at draft, 25 percent on delivery. Invoicing in US dollars or dirhams by default.

Source files are not part of the standard deliverable. If you want the scene released after the project closes, it is quoted separately at that point.

Confidentiality and ownership

We sign your NDA. If you do not have one, we will send ours. Copyright in the finished images transfers to you on final payment, including for marketing, planning submissions and press. We do not publish work from a live project without written permission, and we do not use client work in advertising without asking first. Unbuilt and pre-launch projects stay off the site entirely until you say otherwise.

Start a project

Send drawings, a rough image count and the date it has to be in front of somebody. You will get a fixed quote and a schedule, usually within one working day.

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