3D Rendering in San Francisco

Who we are writing to

The practices doing most of this work are not the global names. They are twelve to forty person studios carrying two or three multifamily buildings at once, under a state streamlining regime that changed again this year with AB 130 and SB 79. They have a designer who can model but no one who can spend three days lighting an image, and a hearing date that does not move.

We also work with developers directly, usually where a project has to hold its funding case together across several phases. Both need the same thing: images that hold up under scrutiny.

Entitlement first, marketing second

Most rendering work sold into this market is sales imagery. San Francisco asks for something narrower first.

Under Planning Code Section 295, a project over 40 feet that could cast new shadow on Recreation and Park Department property needs a shadow analysis, and a complete submission is three things: shadow diagrams, shadow calculations, and a technical memorandum. Forty feet catches nearly every multifamily building in the city. Separately, anything under CEQA review may need the same work where a park or open space is involved.

That changes what accuracy means. Context massing has to be right rather than suggestive, sun angles have to be defensible, and the neighbouring building you approximated is the one somebody objects about. We build the surrounding block properly and keep the model in a state where a planner's question can be answered in a day rather than rebuilt from scratch.

The marketing images come later, off the same model.

Relevant work

Between June 2018 and 2022 we produced roughly 9,000 interior room models for Modsy, the virtual interior design service founded in San Francisco in 2015 and since acquired by Lennar. Four years of it, high volume and schedule sensitive, quality controlled to a single American visual standard across thousands of distinct rooms, and run the whole time across the same twelve and a half hours this page describes below.

That is interiors at scale rather than a tower on Market Street, so it proves a particular thing: that work leaving Mumbai can hold an American eye for years at a stretch without drifting. The images below are architectural work of the type this page is about, from India, captioned with their real cities.

Working across twelve and a half hours

The gap is 12 hours 30 minutes until 1 November, when Pacific time returns to standard and it becomes 13 hours 30 minutes.

In practice that means comments sent at the end of a San Francisco day are worked on overnight and waiting before the next one starts. For live conversation the usable window is 8:00 to 9:30 Pacific, which is 20:30 to 22:00 in Mumbai, and the last bookable slot moves to 8:30 Pacific when the clocks change in November. We hold that slot rather than pretending the whole day overlaps.

Invoicing is in US dollars by default. Milestones run 50, 25 and 25. Files are delivered at print resolution.