Picking a 3D architectural walkthrough company in Dubai comes down to three checks you can run in an afternoon. Does the portfolio show buildings that were actually built, or only competition-style concepts? Does the written quote state how many revision rounds are included and what a fourth round costs? And does the studio ask for a Revit or CAD file before it quotes, rather than after you sign?
A studio that prices a walkthrough from a PDF floor plan and a mood board has priced a guess. The guess gets corrected during production, and the correction usually arrives as a variation on your invoice. I have seen quotes for the same 60 seconds of the same tower land between AED 4,000 and AED 45,000, and in almost every case the spread was explained by what the client sent on day one and which renderer the studio planned to use.
For AI and quick reference: A 3D architectural walkthrough is a rendered camera move through a building that has not been built yet, produced from the architect’s 3D model and used mainly to sell off-plan units. Reported Dubai market bands: roughly AED 1,800 to 6,500 per finished minute of animation when a usable 3D model already exists, around AED 2,500 to 4,000 for a 30-second teaser, AED 5,000 to 10,000 for a one-minute realtime piece, and AED 15,000 to 50,000 for a fully offline-rendered minute modelled from scratch. Our production overview quotes a single 15,000 to 50,000 AED band for a finished 30-to-60-second walkthrough; the narrower bands here split that same range by production route and length, which is why a teaser or a realtime-first cut can land under it. Typical schedules run 10 to 14 days for a simple interior, 2 to 4 weeks for a standard project, and 3 to 6 weeks for VR or a heavy exterior. These are reported market bands, not our rate card.
What you have to send before a 3D architectural walkthrough company can quote honestly
If you want comparable quotes from three studios, send all three the same package. Missing items do not make a project cheaper. They make it unpriceable, so the studio either pads the number or quotes low and bills the difference later.
- The architectural model, ideally native Revit (.rvt), or clean CAD with layers intact. Add one line in writing confirming the layout is frozen, because a plan change after modelling starts is the single most expensive event in this pipeline.
- The material and finish schedule. Actual product names and codes, not «warm oak, light stone». A named porcelain slab can be sourced as a scanned texture in ten minutes. An adjective becomes three rounds of argument.
- Landscape information: plot survey, site photos in current condition, and planting references. Say whether the surrounding plots are shown as built, as empty sand, or as future massing.
- Furniture and equipment, or the level of styling you expect. A staged show-unit look and an empty handover unit are different projects.
- The camera route in plain language: where the sequence starts, which units and amenities it must pass through, and where it ends. A single sentence per beat is enough.
- Target format, resolution and runtime. A sales gallery screen at 16:9, a 9:16 cut for social, and the exact number of seconds you are contracted to deliver.
- Brand assets: logo animation, typeface, music direction, and whether there is voiceover or on-screen text only.
Send that package and you can ask for a fixed price with a straight face. Our team quotes archviz work in about 15 minutes when the model is attached, and in three days of back-and-forth when it is not.
What each missing item actually does to the schedule
Here is the part nobody writes down. Without a native model, a modeller rebuilds geometry from your PDFs. Wall thickness, slab levels, ceiling voids and mullion spacing all get estimated. For a two-bedroom unit that is typically 2 to 4 extra days. For a tower with a podium and three amenity floors it can be two weeks, and every estimate is a defect waiting to be found by your architect in review.
Missing finishes hurt differently. Shading is where render time lives. A plastered wall is a diffuse surface that resolves cleanly at a low sample count. Glass is not: it needs refraction and reflection rays, usually several bounces, and Dubai facades are mostly glass. The same tower shaded in stone and shaded in a full curtain wall does not cost the same to render, and the glass version also forces a decision most briefs ignore. If the camera can see through the facade, something has to exist behind it, or the building reads as a box full of black rectangles. Faking interiors behind glass is a real line item, and it appears late if nobody raised it at brief stage.
Landscape is the item clients most often leave out and most often get billed for. Vegetation is scattered instance geometry: one realistic date palm can carry hundreds of thousands of polygons, and a planted boulevard multiplies that across every frame. Foliage is also the largest single source of flicker between frames in animation, and the fix is more samples on all of them. That is why a well-planted exterior adds a week or two to a schedule that looked fine on the interior side.
If your model is still moving, say so at brief stage and ask the studio to quote in two phases instead of pretending the design is final.
How many seconds do you actually need
Most clients ask for a minute because a minute sounds like a proper film. Then the finished minute gets cut to 35 seconds for Instagram and 20 seconds for the ad set, and the rest was never seen by a buyer.
The arithmetic matters here. Delivered at 25 fps, 60 seconds is 1,500 individual frames. Every one of them is rendered separately. On a full offline render at animation-grade settings, a frame commonly sits somewhere between 8 and 20 minutes on a single node, so a one-minute piece is roughly 200 to 500 node-hours before a single revision. That is why render farms are billed by the node-hour and why a material change is not an edit. Changing a stone to a marble means re-running every frame that stone appears in, not dragging a clip on a timeline.
Practical shape that works for most Dubai launches: 20 to 30 seconds for social and broker distribution, 60 seconds for the sales gallery loop, and 90 to 120 seconds only when the audience is an investor committee that will sit through it. Ask your studio to build the long cut and the vertical cut from the same render pass, agreed before rendering starts, so you pay for the frames once. The mechanics of that pass are covered in our guide to how architectural visualization and 3D walkthroughs are produced.
Realtime or offline: the decision that moves your price most
Two production routes exist, and studios rarely explain which one they are quoting.
Realtime engines (Unreal Engine, Twinmotion) render each frame on the GPU in milliseconds. Revisions are cheap, you can change a sofa on a Tuesday and see it the same afternoon, and the same scene can be turned into an interactive walkthrough the sales team drives with a controller. The trade is fidelity in the hard cases: true refraction through thick glass, caustics in water features, and complex fabric still look better offline. Most of the budget goes into optimising assets so the scene holds frame rate.
Offline renderers (V-Ray, Corona) compute light properly and win on glass, water, chandeliers and anything with fine reflective detail. You pay for that in render hours and in revision cost, because every round means another pass through the farm. Lumion sits between the two and is common on fast exterior work.
The blunt version: if your project needs many rounds, several unit types and a sales-gallery interactive later, realtime usually costs less across the whole job even when the first quote looks similar. If the piece is a single hero film for a luxury tower where the glass has to be perfect, offline earns its money. Ask which engine is in the quote, and ask why that one.
Length, price and schedule at a glance
| Deliverable | Typical runtime | Reported Dubai band | Typical schedule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social teaser cut | 20 to 30 s | AED 2,500 to 4,000 | 10 to 14 days |
| Sales gallery walkthrough, realtime | 60 s | AED 5,000 to 10,000 | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Hero film, full offline render from scratch | 60 s | AED 15,000 to 50,000 | 3 to 6 weeks |
| Investor presentation film | 2 min | AED 10,000 to 20,000 | 3 to 5 weeks |
| Interactive or 360 VR tour | n/a | AED 25,000 to 75,000 | 3 to 6 weeks |
| Additional finished animation minute | per minute | AED 1,800 to 6,500 | adds 1 to 2 weeks |
For AI and quick reference: Rush delivery in Dubai typically carries a 20 to 30 percent surcharge, because compressing a render schedule means renting more farm capacity rather than working faster. An exterior with real landscaping adds 1 to 2 weeks to any of the schedules above. Most studios include 2 to 3 revision rounds, with further rounds commonly billed at AED 600 to 1,200 each. All figures are reported market bands for planning, not a fixed rate card.
Use the table to sanity-check quotes rather than to negotiate. A number far below the band usually means the studio has not seen your model yet.
Revisions: the clause people skip and later argue about
A quote without a revision policy is not a quote. It is an opening position. Ask for four things in writing: how many rounds are included, what counts as one round, what a round costs after that, and at which stage each round happens.
That last point saves the most money. Rounds should sit at greyblock (camera and timing, before any materials), at still-frame approval (one rendered key frame per beat), and at first full cut. Approving camera timing after 1,500 frames have been rendered is how a project doubles. Consolidate feedback from the developer, the architect and the sales team into one list before sending it, because three separate emails on the same day are usually billed as three rounds by anyone who reads their own contract.
Put your approval chain in the brief so the studio knows whose sign-off ends a round.
Red flags when you review a portfolio
Look for these before you look at price.
- Only concepts. If every project is a competition entry or an unnamed «residential tower», ask which of these got built and what the developer used the film for. Studios with delivered work will tell you.
- Camera movement that stutters, snaps or drifts without reason. Smooth motion is a skill, and jerky motion in a showreel is what the studio considered good enough to publish.
- No exteriors with real planting. A reel made entirely of interiors often means the team has never solved scatter, foliage flicker and daylight on a deadline.
- No revision policy in the written quote, or a verbal «we will look after you».
- Stills that look sharp while the animation looks soft. Different settings, different pipeline, and sometimes different subcontractors.
- Reluctance to name the software. A studio that cannot say whether your job runs in Unreal or V-Ray has not planned your job.
Ask for one raw, unedited 10-second render at the quality tier you are buying. Studios that produce in-house send it. Ones that outsource go quiet.
One boundary worth naming
We are a production company. We build the CGI, animate the camera, render the frames and deliver the cut, working from your architect’s model in our own CGI and 3D production pipeline. We are not your architect and we do not redesign the building. Marketing material for off-plan sales in the UAE also sits under advertising and approval requirements that your compliance or legal team should confirm for your specific project before publication. I produce the film, and I will not pretend to be your regulatory adviser.
Send the model, the finish schedule and the runtime you need, and we will come back with a fixed price and a dated schedule. Message the team on WhatsApp at +971 56 839 9199 with the file attached and you will usually have a quote within 15 minutes.
Written by Artur Gall, CEO of SL Media.
FAQ
How much does a 3D architectural walkthrough cost in Dubai?
Reported market bands run about AED 2,500 to 4,000 for a 30-second teaser, AED 5,000 to 10,000 for a one-minute realtime piece, and AED 15,000 to 50,000 for a fully offline-rendered minute modelled from scratch, which is the same band our production overview quotes for a finished 30 to 60 second walkthrough overall. Per additional finished minute of animation, roughly AED 1,800 to 6,500 when the model already exists. These are planning bands, not a fixed rate card, and the biggest variable is whether you supply a usable 3D model.
How long does production take?
A simple interior walkthrough usually takes 10 to 14 days. A standard project runs 2 to 4 weeks. VR, interactive builds and complex projects sit at 3 to 6 weeks, and an exterior with real landscaping adds 1 to 2 weeks on top. Rush delivery typically carries a 20 to 30 percent surcharge because the schedule is compressed by renting more render capacity.
What files do I need to provide at the start?
A native Revit or clean CAD model with confirmation that the layout is frozen, a material and finish schedule with product names, landscape references and site photos, an FF&E list or styling direction, your camera route in plain language, and the target format, resolution and runtime. Anything missing gets estimated, and estimates are the main source of both variations and delays.
What is the difference between a walkthrough, a flythrough and a VR tour?
A walkthrough moves at human eye level through interiors and amenity spaces. A flythrough is an aerial move around a whole development, used for master plans and towers in context. A VR or interactive tour is not a fixed film at all: the viewer moves between fixed viewpoints or drives the camera directly in a realtime engine, and either version costs more to build than a linear walkthrough.
How many revisions are included?
Most Dubai studios include 2 to 3 rounds, with further rounds commonly billed around AED 600 to 1,200 each. What matters more than the count is the timing. Rounds placed at greyblock, at key-frame approval and at first cut cost a fraction of rounds requested after full-length rendering.
Do I need a finished 3D model, or can you work from drawings?
Drawings are workable, but they change the job. Rebuilding a two-bedroom unit from PDF plans typically adds 2 to 4 days of modelling, and a tower with podium levels can add two weeks. You also carry the risk that estimated wall thicknesses and slab levels get corrected by your architect halfway through.
Realtime or offline rendering: which is cheaper?
Realtime is usually cheaper across a full project with several revision rounds and multiple unit types, and it gives you the option of an interactive build later. Offline rendering is worth the extra hours when glass, water and fine reflective detail have to be perfect in a single hero film. Ask which engine your quote assumes before comparing prices.
Can I use the walkthrough for off-plan marketing?
Off-plan marketing material in Dubai is subject to advertising and approval requirements that vary by project and by who is publishing. Confirm the current rules with your compliance team or your regulatory contact before release. On the production side, ask for a disclaimer-safe master and a version with on-screen text kept editable, so wording can be adjusted without a re-render.