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What to send your visualiser: free brief template

November 4, 2026

Courtyard CGI of a university extension at dusk, with a glazed pavilion behind a timber screen, a green roof, stepped seating and café tables between brick buildings. By Vaars Studio.

Most delays on a visualisation job happen before anyone opens the model: a missing landscape plan, materials that are "still being decided", a view nobody agreed with the planning officer. This free brief template lists what a visualiser needs from you, in the order they will ask for it.

Download the template: Word (.docx) or PDF. Fill in what you can. Blank answers are fine; they become questions on the first call.

What the template covers

1. Project basics

Name, site address, who the main contact is and, just as important, who signs off the images. Also say whether the images can be shown publicly, from when, and how the practice should be credited. It is much easier to agree this at the start than after launch.

2. What the images are for

Design review, planning, consultation, marketing or a competition each need a different brief. For planning images, the template asks for the things a council will care about:

which council, and whether pre-application advice has covered views;
photomontage or verified view for each viewpoint, and the Landscape Institute TGN 06/19 type and AVR level if they have been agreed (our CGI vs 3D rendering guide explains both);
whether the council wants a 3D model, for example for VU.CITY, and in what format;
whether a townscape or heritage consultant is numbering the viewpoints, so the visuals match their report.

If you are working in central London, our London planning visuals checklist shows what seven councils ask for in their local lists.

3. Views

How many stills, any animation or panorama, rough camera positions marked on a plan, and the output size. An A3 planning board, a 16:9 screen and a 4:5 social crop each frame the same view differently, so it helps to know up front.

4. Look and feel

Time of day, season, weather, how busy the scene should be, and what people should be doing. Reference images are useful, but say what you like about each one: the light, the planting, the camera height. Say what to avoid too.

5. Design status

The RIBA stage, how likely the design is to change, which materials are fixed, and who is designing the landscape and interiors. Images can be built while a design is still moving, but it changes how the model is set up.

6. Files to send

the 3D model (Revit, Rhino, SketchUp, 3ds Max, IFC or FBX), with units stated;
plans, sections and elevations as PDF and DWG;
site survey and site photographs, with camera positions if they were taken for montages;
landscape plan and planting schedule;
material schedule, samples or product links;
any context model or OS data you already have;
brand guidelines, for marketing images only.

7. Review rounds

Who comments, and whether comments will come back as one consolidated set. One marked-up PDF from one person is the fastest way through a review.

Why this matters for planning images

For a planning set, the brief is also the record of what was agreed. The Mayor of London's London View Management Framework guidance says assessors should only request AVRs that show the properties that need to be assessed from each location, and councils such as Westminster, Tower Hamlets and the City of London ask for the views and level of detail to be agreed with them before the images are prepared. Writing those decisions into the brief keeps the model, the camera positions and the townscape report in step.