Product · · 4 min read
From clay to photoreal in one click
Upload a raw massing model, pick a mood, and get a finished image back about a minute later. Here is what happens in between — and how to steer it.
A concept render used to mean a pipeline: clean the model, assign materials, light the scene, send it to the farm, wait. AlphaRender collapses that into a single click — you upload the same OBJ you were already working in, and the first photoreal frame comes back in about 68 seconds.
What you upload
Anything your 3D editor can export. Most projects arrive as an untextured massing model straight out of SketchUp, Rhino, 3ds Max or Blender — no UV work, no material library, no cleanup pass. The geometry is the brief: walls, slabs, openings and the camera you already framed.
- OBJ or FBX up to 500 MB, with the camera saved in the file
- Optional JPG or PNG references for mood, palette or a specific material
- Nothing else — no plugins to install, no render settings to configure
What happens in 68 seconds
The model is read as geometry, not as a picture. Your massing, proportions and camera are locked before anything is generated, so the result lands on the same footprint you modelled — that is the difference between a render and a lookalike, and it is the whole subject of how AlphaRender holds your geometry.
One run returns 10–20 finished directions rather than a single frame. They share the geometry and differ in light, materials and atmosphere, which is exactly the set you want in front of a client at concept stage — reading that set is a skill of its own.
- 1 credit
- per generation
- 10–20
- options per run
- ≈ 68 s
- to the first frame
Steering the result
Everything you would normally type into a prompt is a control here. Lighting is twelve presets, from early dawn to night. Materials are swatches you assign to surfaces. People, vegetation and cars are toggles with density, not a hope that the model adds them. Nothing is written in sentences, so nothing gets lost in translation.
The model is the brief. If the geometry is locked, the only thing left to explore is atmosphere — and that is the part worth exploring.
When to upscale
Base renders come back at 1080p, which is the right resolution for choosing. Once a direction is agreed, push that single image to 4K or 8K — the upscale is where print-ready detail arrives, and it costs credits only for the frames you actually keep. We inspected both at full size to see where the difference actually shows.
The short version
- Export the model you already have — no cleanup, no materials, no plugins
- One click, one credit, about 68 seconds to a full set of directions
- Presets steer light, materials and people; geometry and camera never move
- Upscale only the frames you keep, at 4K or 8K
That is the whole workflow. The pipeline it replaces took days, and most of those days were spent waiting for a machine to confirm a decision you had already made. The four steps in full are on their own page, and every tool that steers them has a lesson.
Questions we get
- Does my model need materials or UVs before I upload it?
- No. An untextured massing model is the normal input. Materials are assigned afterwards, as swatches on surfaces, so there is nothing to prepare in your 3D editor beyond exporting an OBJ or FBX.
- How long does one generation take?
- About 68 seconds for a standard-mode render at 1080p, measured as the average across production runs. Complex scenes and busy periods move that number; the full comparison against farms and studios is on the benchmarks page.
- What does one render cost?
- One credit per generation, and a generation returns 10–20 directions rather than one image. On the Basic plan an extra credit is $0.66, which works out at roughly three cents per option.
- Can I keep working while a render is running?
- Yes. Up to eight generations run in parallel, across different projects, so a long exterior does not block the interior you are working on next.
