All storiesBlurring Boundaries: When a 3D Artist Builds the Property Website
Most new-development websites are the same template: a hero render, a gallery, a PDF price list. As a 3D artist who also builds the websites, I made my own playground to show what more there could be: a residence selector, a price list, a 360 tour and the building's story in one place.
Why do most new-development websites look the same?
Because most are built from the same template: a hero render, a gallery, a PDF price list and a contact form. Swap the logo and the address, and you could not tell one project from the next. For a home that costs several hundred thousand euros, that is not enough. A buyer comparing five projects in an evening will not remember which one was yours.
Honestly, the buildings often look the same too: grey boxes with zero personality, copied from the last project. A website can't fix the architecture. But it can show what is special about a building, if there is something special to show, and it can make the search for a home feel like more than filling in a form.
I see this from both sides. I'm a 3D artist, so I make the renders and the 360 tours, and I'm also a web developer, so I build the website they live on. As the lead web developer at Grandpano, I've built several sites like this for developers, but those projects belong to the agency and its clients, not to me. So I built my own playground.
The Amery Residence demo
The Amery Residence is a building I designed myself, a contemporary corner building in Budapest inspired by the city's Art Nouveau. Its website is where I try out everything I'd like to offer developers: a residence selector, a price list, layouts, a 360 tour inside the site, a neighbourhood map, a CMS behind it all and, next, content in more than one language. It's a working MVP, not a finished product, and I keep changing it.
| A typical development website | What the Amery Residence demo does instead |
|---|---|
| A gallery of renders | Renders and a 360 tour placed next to the apartment they show |
| A PDF price list | A live price list that switches to a visual selector and back |
| One static floor plan per apartment | A layout carousel that switches between the plan and the visual |
| A pin on a map | A neighbourhood map filtered by culture, parks, transport and food |
| Updates by email to the agency | A CMS the sales team can update themselves |
What should a new-development website include?
Everything a buyer needs to decide whether to call you, in the order they need it: the building and why it is special, a way to find the right home, the layouts, the interiors, the location and an easy way to get in touch. Anything that sends them to a PDF or an email to find out a price is a reason to leave.
On the Amery Residence site that means:
- The concept and the architecture. What the building is and where its look comes from, before any numbers.
- The residences. All 20 homes, each named after a gemstone, across 5 floors plus a ground floor with a café, a restaurant and a gallery.
- The layouts. The 4 layout types, from 76 to 125 m², with plan and visual side by side.
- The 360 tour. A walk through the Jade apartment, room by room, without leaving the site.
- The location. A map of the neighbourhood with the places that matter to someone moving in.
- Contact. One click away from every page.
Image map, floor plan or price list: how should buyers choose an apartment?
Give them both a visual way and a list. A visual selector answers "where in the building is my home, and what does it look onto?" A price list answers "which one fits my budget and needs?" Most buyers switch between the two several times before they enquire.
On the demo the visual side is a floor-by-floor view of the building. Hover over a floor and its homes appear; click and the floor plan opens. One button turns the same data into a price list with layout, floor area and availability. I chose a floor stack over a classic image map on a façade render because it stays usable on a phone, where most people browse.
The 3D belongs right there. A render of the living room and a 360 tour do much more on the page of the apartment they show, next to its floor plan and price, than in a gallery at the bottom of the home page. That is where the buyer is deciding.
How do you keep a site full of renders and tours fast?
Treat every image as a performance problem. A site like this carries dozens of large renders and several 360 tours, and none of it may slow down the first screen. I build these sites in Next.js with Tailwind CSS, from designs in Figma, and the same rules apply as on this website:
- Every render in a modern format at the size the screen needs. A phone never downloads the 4K master.
- Tours and videos load only when you scroll to them. The first screen stays light.
- Pages are built in advance, so they open instantly instead of waiting for a server.
- A headless CMS for the content. With Sanity, the sales team can mark a home as reserved or change a price in a minute, without calling a developer.
Are you launching a new development in Vienna, Bratislava or Budapest and want more than a template? I can make the renders, the 360 tour and the website, so they're designed as one from the start. Tell me about your project, or see the web development and UI/UX design pages.
The short version
Most development websites are interchangeable
A hero render, a gallery, a PDF price list and a contact form. For a home that costs several hundred thousand euros, that is not enough, and buyers comparing five projects in an evening will not remember which one was yours.
Let buyers browse and compare
Offer a visual selector to find a home in the building and a price list to compare them. One serves the emotion, the other the spreadsheet, and buyers switch between the two.
Put the 3D where the decision happens
Renders and 360 tours belong on the page of the apartment they show, next to its floor plan and price, not in a separate gallery nobody opens.
Visuals and website work best designed together
When the same person makes the renders, the tour and the site, they are planned as one experience. The Amery Residence demo at demo.amerydigital.com is my working example.
