7 Top AI Tools for Architectural Rendering and Visualization
Architizerâs Tech Directory is a database of tech tools for architects â from the latest generative design and AI to rendering and visualization, 3D modeling, project management and many more. Explore the complete library of categories here.
Architectural rendering is not a foreign concept. During the Renaissance, Italian architects such as Leon Batista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi and Donato Bramante used axonometric sketches and carefully hand-drawn perspectives to communicate their designs. In the late 20th century, however, the hand-drawn renderings gave way to computer-generated images. Suddenly, what took countless hours of careful color washing and shadow hatching became a task of playing around with sun values and texture mapping within a three-dimensional, digital environment. With the emergence of AI, the art of rendering has transformed into an act of guided wordplay: a new, innovative way of digital collage-making.
Still, the “original” artistry of architectural rendering is not lost. Even though the architect’s hand has been replaced by computer algorithms and machine learning processes, utilizing AI visualization tools requires the same amount of ingenuity, creativity and exploration. Architects can push architectural visualization’s boundaries through word prompt testing, digital collage exploration, and even hand-sketch-to-rendering experiments, producing more vivid and immersive designs than ever.
Without further ado, here are the top seven AI tools that unlock unprecedented architectural rendering and visualization capabilities.
Best AI Rendering Tool for Text-Prompt Imagery
Midjourney is perhaps the most well-known AI visualization tool in the architectural industry. It is currently available via the Discord server, where users collaborate with the Discord bot to generate conceptual imagery. Midjourney has three basic operational commands: the “/imagine” command uses text prompts to produce a set of renderings, the “/blend” command which enables architects to blend two images together and finally, the “/shorten” command which suggest alternative, shorter, prompts to achieve better results. It also offers additional text abbreviations such as image ratio control and negative prompting – i.e., elements that are excluded from the composition.
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Best AI Rendering Tool for Modifying Images
Stable Diffusion is also a text-to-image and image-to-image model released in 2022, based primarily on diffusion techniques, which — in the case of computer generated images — include tasks such as denoising, inpainting and super resolution. Apart from generating visual renderings through text prompts, Stable Diffusion is an amazing tool for image modification. More specifically, features such as inpainting involves selecting specific portions of an existing image (layer masks) for more precise rendering editing. Adding or removing noise and depth or enhancing specific image details through a combination of text and image prompts, allow architects to create sharper quality renderings.
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Best AI Rendering Tool for Cohesive Visualizations
DALL·E is an AI rendering tool developed by OpenAI, a research organization renowned for releasing the famous text-to-text model, ChatGPT. DALL·E’s immediate interrelation with ChatGPT, provides a great advantage regarding the tool’s text-to-image capabilities. More specifically, DALL·E is often able to “fill in the blanks” when generating an image, without necessarily relying fully on text prompts. For example, it might suggest additional reflections and shadows to make the composition more holistic or even remain consistent to a predefined visual style, distinguishing for example between painting or photorealistic imagery. Similarly to Stable Diffusion, DALL·E is able to alter specific parts of an image through text prompts.
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Best AI Rendering Tool for Fine-Tuning Images
Veras is a powerful AI-visualization app. The software can be used as a plug-in for popular architecture programs such as SketchUp, Revit and Rhinoceros, as well as a standalone web-based rendering tool. It is ideal for effortlessly manipulating BIM generated visuals, modifying their ambiance, style and lighting and even their geometry. Features such as the Geometry Override Slider, the Render Selection and the Render Same Seed allow architects to fine-tune their designs, while exploring multiple concept iterations in real-time rendering and without any 3d-modeling constraints.
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Best AI Rendering Tool for Early-Stage Concepts
LookXAI is an AI rendering tool that is ideal for early-concept iterations. As a highly customizable (and trainable) AI model, it allows architects to upload a series of reference images or precedents to generate initial design ideas. LookXAI includes features such as Style Adapter, Vocab Template and even a Prompt Assistant to aid architects in enhancing the quality, depth, architectural precision and style of their renderings. It also incorporates an Upscale Image feature to easily correct imperfections and enhance the quality of the image.
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Best AI Rendering Tool for Stylizing Images
mnml.ai is a revolutionary AI tool that eliminates the endless tinkering of lighting parameters in 3d visualization software. By simply uploading a rough image of the design, mnml.ai has the ability to convert it into numerous visualization styles: from day to night shots and from sketches to realistic imagery. In fact, the software has the ability to transform plain sketches into fully rendered shots and even use text prompts to control details such as colors, finishes and lighting in both exterior and interior visuals.
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Best AI Rendering Tool for Quick Visualizations
Similar to Veras, ArkoAI is also a plug-in for popular architecture software. Being, however, a cloud-based platform, its powerful rendering capabilities are ideal for quick and flexible material iterations on existing 3d models. Using simple text as well as added parameters to control the amount of effect the prompts will have on the model, architects can transform their clay renderings and shaded views into complete design proposals.
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How to Better Leverage AI Rendering Tools in Architecture
The following tips and considerations will help you maximize the potential of AI in architectural visualization, as well as avoiding common pitfalls associated with this fast-emerging technology.
Watch out for the elephant in the room: It is true that AI rendering software holds an impressive ability to transform ideas into very “convincing” realities. Text prompts, image-to-image models and sketch-to-rendering features enable architects to quickly reach to a finished design. Oftentimes, however, these designs may lack refinement, consideration and partially the human touch leading to proposals that may not be plausible or realistic. AI rendering tools are ideal for inspiration, experimentation and early idea representations. Nevertheless, it is important to retain creative control over an AI generated image, paying close attention to details such as material textures, lighting effects, and spatial proportions.
Beware of the plagiarism trap: It is widely known that AI technology is trained through an array of information found on the web. In the case of AI-generated renderings, architects may use preexisting images to feed into the AI tool in order to reach the desired result. Even though there have not been any clear guidelines so far on how to approach this subject, being mindful of image copyrights and licensing principles might spare users future complications and ethical considerations. In fact, using originally produced sketches and other forms of imagery to feed the AI tools may not only prove to be more ethically sustainable but also generate far more authentic and unique results.
Don’t reinvent the wheel in every rendering: Similar to any other creative process, using AI tools to produce rendered visualizations is a matter of trial and error. Writing prompts, setting AI parameters and experimenting with different image combinations are some of the skills architects need to cultivate in order to master AI visualization. Still, since the AI Spring – and as it happens in any major technological bloom – there have been numerous courses, communities and even cheat sheets for successfully operating AI technology. Architizer’s Ultimate AI Cheat Sheet for Architects and Designers! as well as its Instagram midjourneyarchitecture page provide great tips, insights and inspiration for every aspiring architect who wishes to enter the world of AI architectural visualization.
Architizerâs Tech Directory is a database of tech tools for architects â from the latest generative design and AI to rendering and visualization, 3D modeling, project management and many more. Explore the complete library of categories here.
A new solution to this workflow problem has arrived in the form of the Bridge between Enscape and V-Ray. 
The best illustration of the Bridge’s benefits can be seen in V-Ray’s hyper-realistic lighting and material rendering capabilities. When opened in V-Ray, lights defined by designers in Enscape feature a far greater degree of control over intensity, color, and physical accuracy. Materials in V-Ray likewise exhibit more realistic interaction with light than they do in Enscape, enhancing the ability to depict translucency, subsurface scattering, tinted glass surfaces and mirror surfaces. In the hands of a professional visualization artist, these capabilities make the difference between a compelling rendering and a jaw-dropping, life-like image.
3. Customize your project materials.
5. Fine-tune in post-production.
The design of the new Orange County Museum of Art addresses the need for museum space to be both flexible and functional as well as inviting and memorable. With flexible exhibition galleries, dedicated space for educational programming, and areas for public gathering, the new building was made to provide expanded access to the museum’s permanent collection and its world-class special exhibition program. The main floor is dedicated to reconfigurable open-span exhibition space, complemented by mezzanine, black-box, and jewel-box galleries that can accommodate temporary and permanent collection exhibitions spanning scales and mediums.
Giving shape to concrete, Morphosis Architects explored the material’s potential through the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. Built to bring a simple cube and plinth into high relief, the Perot Museum showcases a precast-concrete panel façade. As a material investigation integrating structure and formwork, the elegant cladding solution was made possible through computer aided modeling and a collaboration with Gate Precast of Hillsboro, Texas.
Designed to become a net-zero building, The Bloomberg Center forms the heart of the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island. The Bloomberg Center was made to reflect the school’s joint goals of creativity and excellence by providing academic spaces that foster collective enterprise and collaboration. The four-story, 160,000-square-foot (14,865-square-meter) academic building is named in honor of Emma and Georgina Bloomberg in recognition of a $100-million gift from Michael Bloomberg, who was responsible for bringing Cornell Tech to New York City while serving as the city’s 108th Mayor. The four-story building is set beneath a photovoltaic canopy with a low and narrow profile framing views across the island.
Emerson Los Angeles has emerged as a significant landmark in Los Angeles. As a backdrop for student filmmakers, the building weaves an urban fabric of outdoor and indoor spaces together with two slender residential towers bridged by a multi-use platform. With over 180 student rooms, four faculty apartments, film and video production labs, and classrooms, the project combines both a sculptural central mass and an undulating, textured metal scrim. At over 100,000 square feet (9,290 square meters) and ten stories high, the project spurred redevelopment as part of a larger transformation in Hollywood.
Sited in Seoul, Kolon’s new flagship research and development facility brings together researchers, leadership and designers in one location. The building combines flexible laboratory facilities with executive offices and active social spaces that encourage greater interaction and exchange across the company. The four-acre project site sits adjacent to Magok’s central park — a prominent location for what will be the district’s first major completed building. The building folds towards the park, providing passive shading to the lower floors.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Hall brings together the faculty and students of Cornell University’s Computer Science and Information Science departments. Housed within a single structure, the project was designed to facilitate collaboration and spontaneous discourse between disciplines. Projecting westward from the building, a two-story cantilever creates a dramatic canopy over the elevated Entry Plaza to establish a new visual gateway to the campus. Advanced digital modeling tools are used to map a double skin of undulating, perforated stainless steel panels, which envelop the reflective glass curtain wall on the second and third levels.
Made of black granite (Negresco) and dark wood (Oak), this sauna was designed to be a camera obscura, a box drawn to shape views of the landscape. Located in the middle of Stockholm’s archipelago, a narrow pathway brings the visitors to the sauna: a black box embedded in the rocks. The matte finish can be seen both inside and as part of the structure’s façade. As the team outlines, inside is a monolithic stone bench that faces the water through a large sliding window. On the back, a thick wall contains all the services: a small kitchen hidden behind the sliding doors and a bathroom illuminated by a skylight. At night, the small sauna resembles a lighthouse, a warm and cozy space illuminated from the inside.
Tillicharchitektur designed this building to host production and office spaces for a textile finishing and vending firm. Its iconic feature is the folded façade, which reimagines the simple cube. The matte bright surface of the anthracite pigmented concrete responds to its environment. Depending on the season, time of day, weather, and lighting, the façade continuously changes its character. In contrast to the expressive façade, the interior design leaves more space for the production process and the products in the showroom. The team explains that the limitation on few, but high class materials, is the main factor driving the interior.
On the fringe of the Vienna Woods sits this compact single-family house LOU. Resting on a steeply sloping site, the designers wanted the first impression to be reinforced by the matte black skin of the building. Inside, the project offers a spacious and varied living environment on staggered half-story levels. As the team notes, at each level, the house opens differently to the outside world. The main residential levels are nestled against the slope, separated from the garden only by an all around-strip of windows which allows looking and stepping out in every direction.
This compact wooden house was designed by architect Joris Verhoeven for himself. Located within the Drijflanen nature reserve in Tilburg, the matte building is designed to be a part of nature. With its rough black façade, it was made to fit within the context of surrounding tree trunks. The cottage house is prefabricated and constructed out of wooden cassettes filled with flax insulation. In turn, the interior of the cassettes is made of birch plywood. Other parts of the interior, such as the interior door, kitchen and stair railing, are finished in matte black, just like the exterior window frames. In this way the inside and outside of the house were made to relate to one another.
Located in Muang Thong Thani, this project is the expansion of a car care center. The building is located on a 3230-square feet (300-meter) plot of land, with a long and narrow plot that required an in-depth organization of the building. Since the space of the car care center was too limited, a new space was necessary for project extension. The building consists of four small containers and four large containers. The design team made the building exterior to be painted in matte black but the interior is white. The external envelope includes the west façade and the roof, which have metal sunshades to reflect sunlight and protect the building from the heat.
The ‘Les Marais’ project started with the design team’s fascination for the built landscape of the empty space that characterizes North American rural areas. For this design, depending on the observer’s location in the neighboring forest, the scales of the buildings are relative. The team explains that the wetland nature of this lakeside property was preserved and then the collective landscape of the built complex was designed. A large ‘plate’ of black wood links the three structures to establish a common base, while large cutouts were made in each ‘shape’, also of black painted wood, to reveal the interior materiality of the red cedar buildings.
Sited at the future land-air transport hub of Henan, this hotel was made as a “paradise city with national customs” in Zhengzhou. Ideas of Chinese ancient garden construction were introduced into the “south garden” that make the most important building the starting point of the entire array. Moreover, the matte building façade is presented in the shape of arc to match the main garden in the front. The team choose a range of matte-finish materials like frosted earthenware tile, matte composite aluminum-plastic sheet and brushed stainless steel. It is the first floor of the building that is composed of external matte façade built from 100,000 earthenware tiles.
While the gaming and entertainment industry were early adopters of VR, it has been used across project types in architecture. The Suspension House was created by Kilograph to work with the natural environment around it, rather than fighting against it. To illustrate this relationship, their Virtual Reality experience portrays the house in nature’s many states. The user is taken on a trip through different key locations as the weather time of day changes. They created hand-sketched storyboards and a cinematic trailer rendered in real-time in Unreal Engine.
Mixed Reality (MR) integrates both VR and AR. It blends real and virtual worlds to create complex environments where physical and digital elements interact in real time. Here, both kinds of elements and objects are interacting with one another, and it usually requires more processing power than VR or AR. Mixed reality is gaining traction alongside wearable technology to create immersive environments in a whole new way.