Architectural 3D rendering
in San Diego
Coastal light, canyon lots and a city building up around its trolley lines.
Send the drawings: a fixed price, scope and delivery date come back by the next business morning. No deposit for registered businesses.
Working in San Diego
San Diego is one of the 31 US cities Aurum Render works across.
Planning context
Projects in San Diego’s coastal zone need coastal development permits, and coastal review pays close attention to public views and access from the shore. Away from the coast, much of the city’s recent housing has come through programs that allow more homes near transit — Complete Communities Housing Solutions and the ADU bonus program among them — while hillside and canyon-edge lots carry environmentally sensitive lands rules. In both cases, how a building meets its setting is what gets examined.
What gets built here
Spanish Revival and Craftsman bungalows in North Park, South Park and Mission Hills, mid-century modern in La Jolla and Point Loma, contemporary homes on the coastal bluffs, towers downtown and in Little Italy, and a life-science sector concentrated around Torrey Pines and Sorrento Valley.
Who commissions it
Residential architects working on coastal and canyon homes, developers of mid-rise housing near the trolley, and life-science developers marketing lab and office space.
One thing we get right here
The San Diego coast is often gray in May and June — the marine layer locals call May Gray and June Gloom — and clear and golden in autumn. A coastal home rendered under hard tropical sun misses what owners love about the place: soft, salt-hazed light and an ocean that is more silver than blue.
What’s changing · October 2026
California’s SB 79 took effect in San Diego on July 1, 2026, guaranteeing mid-rise housing within half a mile of qualifying trolley and bus stops — 74 of them in the city, by SANDAG’s June 2026 count. Under a phase-in ordinance adopted on May 21, 2026, about 24 percent of the eligible areas took effect on that date; the rest wait for the city’s Transit Village Plan, its own alternative plan, which is due before the City Council in early 2027, with low-resource areas deferred until 2031. For imagery, that means more mid-rise buildings beside single-family streets near the trolley — exactly where neighbors want to see the real scale.
Sources: City of San Diego: Senate Bill 79 and the Transit Village Plan
Typical San Diego projects
Coastal homes
Bluff-top and beach homes from La Jolla to Del Mar and Coronado, where the ocean view sells the house and coastal review asks how the building looks from the beach. We render both from one accurate model, with the view built from the real horizon.
Housing near the trolley
Mid-rise and townhouse projects using the city’s transit-oriented programs, where the new building is often the tallest on its block. Honest street views at eye height, with the neighbors in frame, are what a community planning group asks to see.
Life science and biotech
Lab and office buildings around Torrey Pines and Sorrento Valley, marketed to tenants who compare floor plates and amenities. Daylit interiors, terraces and arrival sequences rendered accurately do more than an aerial alone.
Services
What we make for San Diego projects
Exterior Rendering
Facades, elevations and streetscapes rendered at the fidelity a considered building deserves.
From $1,200Interior Rendering
Rooms rendered with the light, materials and styling that make a space feel lived in rather than assembled.
From $1,200Aerial & Master Plan
Whole-site imagery for master-planned communities, districts and phased developments — context, landscape and scale in a single frame.
From $2,400Architectural Film
Cinematic film that moves through a building the way a person would, not the way a camera on rails does.
From $7,500Interactive & Virtual Tours
Navigable 360° environments for sales galleries, leasing offices and pre-construction campaigns.
From $3,5003D Floor Plans
Each floor of your plan, every room furnished at true size, rendered from overhead in a single frame.
From $750Start a San Diego project
Send the drawings and a sentence about what the imagery has to do. Fixed price and a date back, usually by the next business morning.
Request a quoteWe work across San Diego, La Jolla, Del Mar, Coronado, Point Loma, Carlsbad and Chula Vista.
Compare every architectural rendering service we offer or read our plain guides to architectural rendering, architectural visualization and what 3D rendering is.
- $0
- Deposit for registered businesses
- Next morning
- A fixed, scoped quote by the next business morning
Start a project
Get a fixed quote
A fixed price, scope and delivery date by the next business morning. No deposit for registered businesses.
Received
Thank you — your inquiry is in.
We’ll come back with a fixed price, a scope and a delivery date by the next business morning. If anything is missing, we’ll ask in our reply.
Choosing a rendering studio for a San Diego project
Ask how the studio builds the views coastal review asks for. A coastal development permit turns on how a project looks from public places — the beach, the bluff-top path, the coast road — so those views should be built from survey and photography at true scale.
Ask how it handles coastal light. The coast is often gray in May and June and clear and golden in autumn; a bluff-top home rendered under hard tropical sun misses the soft, salt-hazed light and silver ocean owners love.
Check what is fixed before you commit: the views, the rounds of revisions, the delivery date, and whether the ocean view and the coastal-review views come from one accurate model. We write all of that into the San Diego quote, and one senior artist stays with the project from model to finished image.
What drives the cost of rendering in San Diego
Setting is the biggest variable. A La Jolla or Del Mar home needs the real horizon and the view from the beach; a mid-rise near the trolley needs honest street views with the neighbors in frame, because it is often the tallest building on its block.
Life-science buildings sell on daylit interiors, terraces and arrival sequences, so they need more than an aerial — all from the same scene. Further views drawn from the same scene cost much less than the first.
San Diego projects get a fixed figure before any work starts, usually by the next business morning, with no deposit for registered businesses.
Published prices: exterior and interior stills from $1,200 per image, aerials from $2,400, film from $7,500 per finished minute, 3D floor plans from $750 per plan and interactive tours from $3,500. See pricing or ask for a fixed quote.
How this compares with other cities: how long a building’s winter shadow runs in 15 US cities.
FAQ
San Diego questions
Do you work on projects in San Diego?
Yes — we produce 3D renderings for projects in San Diego, La Jolla, Del Mar, Coronado and across California. We work from your drawings, survey and site photography, and match the light, materials and planting to the place.
Can you render the views a coastal development permit needs?
Yes. Coastal review asks how a project looks from public places — the beach, the bluff-top path, the coast road — so we build those views from survey and photography at true scale. The proposal sits in its real setting, not a flattering one.
How do you render San Diego’s marine layer?
Deliberately. A soft, overcast morning is how the coast looks for much of early summer, and it suits interiors and quiet exteriors; for a hero image we usually choose late-afternoon light in clear weather. Either way the sky is a real San Diego sky, not a generic one.
Do you work across San Diego County?
Yes — La Jolla, Del Mar, Coronado, Carlsbad, Chula Vista and the rest of the county. Coastal sites and inland valleys get different light and planting, taken from your site photographs.
Also working in