Learn · Homeowners and renovators · Lesson 5 of 9
Make a photo render of a room
You willTrace the light in a 3D view to get a photo-like still: daylight through the windows, real glass and metals, soft shadows.
Time5 min
Why it mattersA photo render shows how a room will feel in daylight, with the finishes and fittings you chose, before anything is built.
Try it in Plotlay → Opens an example project with this lesson beside it. Nothing to install.
Steps
- Open 3D, then Walk into the room, or orbit until the view is the one you want.
- Open Export in the 3D toolbar and choose Photo render.
- Pick a Quality: Draft (about 64 samples a pixel) for a quick look, Good (256) for most pictures, Best (1024) for the final one. Pick a Size and Format (PNG or JPEG).
- Under Sky and light, the project’s sun and sky puts the sun where it is at the project’s place, date and time (set them with Sun in the 3D toolbar). The photo skies give a clear day, an overcast day, golden hour or a soft studio light. Light fittings on Auto are on inside and after dark, or choose On or Off.
- Choose Start. The picture appears grainy and clears as it traces, with the samples, the time so far and about how long is left. Stop keeps the picture as it is; a Time limit stops it for you.
- When it finishes, the grain is smoothed. Change Brightness, White balance or Tone under Exposure, colour and grain without tracing again, then choose Save. The picture downloads and is kept in Documents.
- For a room pack, tick Photo render the render sheets in the room pack dialog to trace the views inside, with a quality and a time limit for each view.
How long a Best render takes
A 1600 × 900 picture at Best. Estimated from each chip’s graphics performance, not measured. Your times will vary. The Apple M1 Max time was measured.
| Machine | Best, 1600 × 900 (estimate) |
|---|---|
| Apple M1 Max (measured) | about 21 min |
| Apple M1 / M2 (base) | 60 to 90 min |
| Apple M3 (base) | about 50 min |
| Apple M1 Pro / M2 Pro | 35 to 45 min |
| Apple M3 Pro | about 35 min |
| Apple M3 Max / M4 Max | 10 to 14 min |
| Windows laptop, integrated graphics | over 90 min |
| PC with a mid-range card (e.g. RTX 3060) | 15 to 20 min |
| PC with a high-end card (e.g. RTX 4070 or better) | 8 to 12 min |
| Recent phone or tablet | over an hour, and slows as it warms |
Good quality takes roughly a quarter of the time, Draft roughly a sixteenth. Short on time or on a slower device? Use Draft or Good. Print quality in the cloud is coming to paid plans.
Tips
- Times on a recent laptop with a good graphics card (an Apple M1 Max): a 1920 by 1080 picture of a kitchen takes about 1.5 minutes at Draft, 5.5 at Good and about 20 at Best; 4K takes six to eight times as long. Older or built-in graphics are slower.
- It runs on your own device and needs a connection the first time, for the tracer and the real textures (about 10 to 30 MB for a room, kept by the browser afterwards).
- The geometry and finishes are exactly those in the 3D view: floors, tiles, timber and stone keep their own pattern and colour, with real grain, glaze and surface added from open (CC0) texture libraries. My finishes get relief made from their photos.
- Inside, the windows near the camera let in the sky as soft panels, so a room is lit cleanly even where the sun doesn’t reach.
- On a phone it works but is slow and warms the phone up: start with Draft.
- If the browser can’t trace (no WebGL 2 with float targets), Photo render makes a High quality render instead.
Common mistakes
- The picture is very grainy: it is still early. Let it run to the end, or pick Good or Best, and keep Smooth the grain at the end ticked.
- The room looks dark at night: the light fittings are off. Set Light fittings to On.
- The sun comes from the wrong side: the project’s north and location set the sun. Check the scale and position of the plan, and the date and time under Sun.
Words in this lesson
- Room pack
- A PDF about chosen rooms: each plan at scale, every wall, views inside and the finish and fit-out schedules. Can show before and after side by side.
- My finishes
- Tiles, boards, stone, render, paint and fabric you add from a photo, at their real size and laying, for floors, walls, benchtops and furniture. Keep them in the project, your library or your team’s.
Related lessons
Walk through your plan in 3DTurn the plan into a 3D model, walk through it at eye height, tour the rooms, compare design options and save a picture.4 minShow options and the before rooms in a room packMake a room pack that shows the rooms before and after, side by side, with each design option and a comparison.4 minChoose finishes and add fit-out to a roomSet a room’s floor tile and paint, and place a fitting such as a towel rail against a wall to the millimetre.5 minCompare design optionsKeep two versions of a room in one project and show one at a time.4 min
Steps checked in the app on 18 October 2026.