Tips for generating better renderings

A render isn't a photograph of your 3D model. It's a brand new image, generated from scratch each time, guided by the view you framed and the words you wrote.

Which means it's never quite repeatable. The same prompt twice gives you two different — though similar — pictures, and nothing you write is guaranteed to come out exactly as you pictured it. Getting something unexpected isn't a bug.

A traditional architectural render takes hours of setup and hundreds of dollars, and seeing the same room in evening light means paying all over again. Here another version costs you a couple of minutes.

Rendering always works in the same order: set up the view, then render what it's looking at.

There are three views to render from:

The render bar sits at the bottom of every view, so you can render whatever you're looking at without leaving it.

What's in the frame is what you get the most control over. A prompt can add or remove things, but it's far more reliable when what you want is already in shot.

And because it's generative, even a well-framed shot will occasionally come back with something odd: a door in the wrong place, a wall that drifted. That's normal. Render it again.

So move the camera until the view looks close to the photograph you want, then start writing.

Your render is built on the view you framed, and the model is told to preserve it. But that's guidance, not a hard rule. How much you can change comes down to how specific you are.

How things look: just describe it

Colours, materials, textures, finishes, lighting, time of day, styling. This is what renders are for, and an ordinary prompt gets you there.

What's in the scene: be specific

You can swap a piece of furniture, restyle one, or add and remove things. It works, but you have to name what you mean and protect the rest:

"Replace the dining table with a round walnut one. Keep everything else in the room exactly as it is."

Vague instructions leak here — ask for a new table and you can get a different kitchen. And anything already in the frame is far more reliable than something you're asking it to invent.

Attaching a picture beats describing one. Screenshot the sofa you're considering, attach it, and ask for it in the scene. That's more precise than any description you could write. (See examples below)

Four parts. A flat render is usually missing one.

The space: one line. "An open-plan kitchen and dining area." The geometry's already in frame; this just says what it is.

Materials: name the surfaces people look at: floor, walls, counters, hardware. "Wide-plank white oak floors, limewashed walls, honed marble island, unlacquered brass hardware."

Light: where it comes from and what time it is. "Late afternoon sun through the window, long shadows across the floor." If you only add one thing to a weak prompt, add this.

Details: three or four actual objects. "A bowl of lemons on the island, a stack of cookbooks, an olive tree in a clay pot." Not "decorated nicely."

Add a word of atmosphere if you like — calm, lived-in, moody. And if you're changing one specific thing rather than restyling the whole room, add the protection line from above: "Keep the layout and cabinetry exactly as they are."

Put together:

"An open-plan kitchen and dining area. Wide-plank white oak floors, limewashed walls, a honed marble island and unlacquered brass hardware. Late afternoon sun through the window with long shadows across the floor. Calm and lived-in. A bowl of lemons on the island, a stack of cookbooks, an olive tree in a clay pot."

A skeleton to reuse:

[the space]. [floor], [walls], [counters], [hardware]. [Light and time of day]. [Atmosphere]. [Two or three objects].

Fill it in, render, then change one part at a time to see what moves.

Click into the prompt field and the bar expands to show the attachment button (the paperclip). People attach two quite different things, so say what the image is for — the model can't tell whether you've handed it a mood or an object.

Attach a room whose feel you're after. Maket renders your space matching its materials, palette and styling — your layout, its look.

"Use the materials and lighting from the attached image." & you can even add more details to it to: "Use the materials and lighting from the attached image. Mount the tv to the wall, add art some to fill the space, floor to ceiling curtains"

Found a sofa, a light or an island you're considering — in a shop, a catalogue, on a website? Screenshot it, frame your shot so the piece it's replacing is in view, attach it, and say what to do with it.

"Replace these exact pieces of furniture with the ones attached."

This is the quickest way to see whether something you're thinking of buying actually works in your space.

Writing sixty words about limewash and afternoon light isn't how most people want to spend their time. Ask an AI assistant to do it.

Describe the room in plain language and ask for a prompt back:

"I'm rendering a 3D interior of a home I'm designing. It's a living room, about 300 square feet, with a large window on one wall. I want it warm and lived-in rather than minimal — natural wood, earthy colours, late afternoon light. Write me one paragraph for an AI render, covering materials, lighting and styling. Don't describe the layout, the geometry already exists."

Turn a photo into words. Found a room online that's exactly the feeling you want? Paste the image in and ask:

"Describe the materials, lighting and styling in this image as a prompt for an AI interior render."

You'll get vocabulary you'd struggle to come up with yourself — the grain of the wood, the quality of the light, the finish on the metal.

Two things that make it work better:

Maket's 3D model doesn't include roofing or exterior landscaping yet. You can render an exterior from Massing view, but the render is inventing much more than it does indoors — so expect more attempts, and less consistency between them.

Because the model gives it less to work from, your prompt carries more weight outside.

Describe the roof explicitly — gable, hipped, flat, standing seam metal, dark shingle. If you don't say, it guesses, and guesses differently each time. This is the main reason exteriors vary between attempts.

Or attach the material. If you have a picture of the roofing you want (a shingle, a tile, a standing seam profile) attach it and the render works from that instead of guessing.

You can still override it in words. Attach the material for its texture and profile, then change the colour in the prompt: "the attached roofing, in charcoal." You get the material you picked in the colour you want, without hunting for a reference photo that happens to be both.

Name the cladding — cedar siding, red brick, white render, board and batten.

Ask for the surroundings — driveway, lawn, mature trees, planting along the foundation. None of this exists in your plan, so if you don't ask for it you'll get a house floating on nothing.

Set the sky and time of day — overcast, clear blue, dusk with the windows lit.

Attach a picture of a specific material (roofing, cladding, a stone, a tile, a wood grain) and the render uses it.

Attachments and prompts split the work nicely here: the image carries the texture, grain and profile, the prompt carries the colour and extra detail. "The attached brick, in a warmer red." That way one reference photo covers a whole family of options.

Here's an example:

The attached material is in the top left corner. The prompt (created using chat gpt to emphasize details and realism)

"Single-family home, wide exterior three-quarter front view, using the attached house massing for the architecture and the attached profiled panel for the roof material.

Match the distance and framing of the house massing image. Camera pulled back, showing the entire house with generous space on both sides, visible lawn and driveway in the foreground, and open sky above. The house occupies approximately two-thirds of the image width. Keep every roof edge and building corner inside the frame. Wide landscape composition, no tight crop.

Preserve the single-storey scale, two projecting wings, recessed central entrance, and exact positions and sizes of all windows and doors. Fit a closed charcoal hinged front door within the existing narrow central opening. Preserve raised window sills and solid walls beneath the windows.

Prominent 40-degree pitched roof with symmetrical hipped sections over the projecting wings, a connecting main roof, coherent ridges and valleys, consistent eaves, and simple charcoal fascia.

Match the attached roofing sample closely: long, narrow metal panels with raised seams along their long edges and much finer, shallow parallel ribs within each panel face. Run the panels continuously down each roof slope, from ridge or hip to eave, with consistent spacing across the slope. Follow the sample’s relative proportions and distinguish the pronounced panel-edge seams from the delicate internal ribbing. Trim panels naturally at hips and valleys.

Use matte deep charcoal coated metal with restrained highlights along the seams and subtle shading across the finely ribbed faces. Continuous linear roofing pattern without horizontal tile courses, stepped overlaps, crossbars, or checkerboard grids. Apply this material exclusively to the roof, with matching charcoal ridge caps, flashings, and gutters.

Warm-white fine-textured stucco walls, slim window frames, and mostly closed ivory linen curtains behind the glazing. Natural curtain folds, realistic glass reflections, and subtle warm interior illumination that obscures clear views through the house.

Sited on an otherwise empty plot: neatly graded lawn, low foundation plantings, a young tree or two, a plain concrete driveway to one side, and a narrower walkway leading to the recessed entrance. Keep landscaping below the windows. No neighboring houses, fences, power lines, vehicles, signage, debris, or people.

Shot in the style of Dwell magazine architectural photography. Wide establishing shot, ultra-wide 20mm lens, camera positioned far enough back to retain generous surroundings. Corrected vertical lines, natural building proportions, two-point perspective, f/9, ISO 100, deep depth of field.

Bright high-key exposure, lifted open shadows, clean neutral whites, controlled highlights, and rich charcoal roof detail. Directional afternoon daylight reveals the raised seams and subtle internal ribs. Gentle warm 2700K interior light against neutral-to-cool daylight, natural saturation, and restrained contrast. Photorealistic, refined luxury, editorial magazine quality, crisp material detail."