Questions people actually ask before they render

AI architectural rendering turns a drawing or model view of a building into a photorealistic image using a generative model rather than a physical light simulation. You upload a sketch, a CAD screenshot or a plan, describe the materials and the light in ordinary language, and an image comes back in seconds.

A general image generator invents a building from a description. An architectural rendering tool starts from your drawing and renders that specific building, with controls for how closely the output must follow the geometry you supplied. The difference matters the moment somebody asks whether the picture shows the actual scheme.

No. If you can screenshot a viewport or photograph a sketch, and you can describe a material in a sentence, you have the entire skill set. There is no scene setup, no lighting rig and no render settings panel.

No. It runs in a browser tab, so there is no licence server, no plugin tied to a host application version, and no GPU requirement on your machine. This also means it does not break when your CAD software updates.

Seconds for a standard render, and longer for a large upscale. The more useful number is the total time from drawing to usable image, because there is no scene build in front of the render. Most people finish a first image inside a minute of signing up.

Hand sketches, SketchUp and Revit viewport screenshots, Rhino and ArchiCAD exports, white clay models, floor plans, elevations, sections, site photos and PDF drawing pages. You upload a view of the design rather than the CAD file itself.

Yes. A black and white plan is the ideal input, and the output is a furnished, lit interior view or a rendered plan. Keep colour fills off the plan you upload, because filled areas tend to be read as material information rather than as drafting convention.

Up to 1024 by 1024 pixels on the free plan and up to 4096 by 4096 pixels on paid plans. Compose at working resolution and upscale only the frames you have chosen, which is faster and uses fewer renders than working large from the start.

No. Output is still images only. If you need an animated walkthrough or a flythrough, a traditional pipeline or a rendering studio is the right route, and we would rather tell you that than sell you a workaround.

Yes. Lock a scheme once and carry its materials, light and season across the other views, so an elevation and a courtyard shot read as the same building on the same afternoon rather than as two unrelated images.

Only as much as you allow. The geometry strength control decides how literally the render follows your line work. At high strength the openings, roof pitch and proportions stay where you drew them. At low strength the model is free to suggest form, which is useful in early exploration and dangerous in a client meeting.

Almost always because the brief did not specify light. Add a time of day, a season and a weather condition, then re-run the same prompt. Light is the largest single variable in the output and it is the one people leave out most often.

Yes. Mask the region and describe the change, and only that region is regenerated. Use it to correct a door, remove a parked car or change a single facade panel without losing the parts of the image that were already right.

Accurate enough to communicate a palette and inaccurate enough that you should not treat the image as a specification. Name real materials in the brief and the render will read as those materials. It will not reproduce a specific manufacturer product to sample level fidelity.

The free plan gives 5 renders a month with no card. Paid plans are 29, 79 and 199 US dollars a month. Every price is published in US dollars on the pricing page, and that is the whole price list.

There is a permanent free tier rather than a time limited trial, because a countdown pressures you into a decision instead of letting you test the tool on a real project. Free renders carry a watermark and are licensed for personal and evaluation use.

Yes on every paid plan. The commercial licence covers client presentations, planning packs, marketing material, property listings and competition entries. The free plan is for personal and evaluation use only.

Images you already downloaded are yours and the commercial licence on work produced during a paid period survives cancellation. Account access ends when the paid period you already paid for ends, so download anything you still need before then.

No. Paid plans run in private mode by default, which means uploads and outputs are never used to train any model. Unbuilt schemes are commercially sensitive and ARAI treats them that way.

Only you, and any team members you invite on a plan with multiple seats. Projects are private by default and nothing is published or shared to a public gallery without an explicit action from you.

Yes. You can delete individual images or an entire project from inside the account, and deleting your account removes the associated files. Details of retention periods are set out in the privacy policy.

When the deliverable is an animation, a stamped submission, construction level detail, a photometrically accurate daylight study, or a large coordinated package where a person needs to own the outcome. A studio charges roughly 250 to 700 US dollars per image with a three to ten day turnaround (surveyed 2026-08), and for that work it is money well spent.

In most jurisdictions planning imagery is illustrative and no particular pipeline is required, so AI renders are commonly acceptable. Render at high geometry strength and check the output against your drawings, because the image has to represent the scheme honestly.

No. Those are design and documentation tools and this is a rendering tool. You keep modelling where you already model, and you use a view out of that model as the input here.

It removes the low margin volume work, which is the part most visualisers already dislike, and it leaves the parts that need judgment: composition, art direction, animation and the difficult frames. Several professional visualisers use generative passes to settle materials and light before committing to a full scene build.

Ask any vendor four questions: does it publish a price in your currency, can you control how closely the render follows your geometry, do you get a commercial licence, and does it train on your uploads. The comparison table on the AI rendering software page records what each of the six leading tools published on its own site as of 2 August 2026.