Getting it right, not just pretty

The temptation with CGI is to make everything golden hour and hope nobody looks too closely. We'd rather the image survives being held up against the finished building.

That means real materials rather than approximations, sun angles worked out for the actual site and time of year, and the surrounding context modelled properly instead of blurred into a haze. If a planning officer compares your image to a photograph taken from the same spot, it needs to hold up — and if a buyer walks into the finished flat, it needs to look like the picture that sold it to them.

PAOK — Project Theta — CGI by Visual Lane

Working from what you've got

We can work from a Revit or SketchUp model, from CAD drawings, or from PDFs and a site visit if that's genuinely all there is. None of those is a problem; they just change how much modelling sits at the front of the job.

Earlier is better. Being involved before the design is locked usually means fewer surprises for everyone, and it's far easier to flag that a material won't read well, or that the only good camera position is from a neighbour's garden, while there's still time to do something about it. But we're well used to coming in late, and to turning things round when a deadline has already been set by somebody else.

What you get

High resolution stills for print and web, usually a set of exteriors plus the key interiors. We can supply verified views for planning, where the camera position and lens are matched to a surveyed point so the image can be compared directly with the real view.

Everything is delivered at full resolution with no watermarks, and you own the images to use however you like — brochures, boards, press, the lot. Revisions are expected rather than penalised; nobody gets the brief perfect first time.

Where it usually ends up

Planning applications and consultations, off-plan sales suites and brochures, investor and funding presentations, competition entries, and press.

We've done stadium visuals for Dundee FC and PAOK with Holmes Miller, retail and training facilities for Celtic FC, residential schemes with Redwood Marketing, Ambassador Homes and Ediston Homes, and public buildings like Meadowbank Sports Centre. Most of it is in Scotland, though the work travels.