Inside Kingdom & Co.

Hosted by Zion Lovingier and Lincon Rogers, we started this podcast to pull back the curtain on the design-build world. This podcast was born from a desire to bring clarity and confidence to a process that often feels overwhelming. Whether you're renovating, building from the ground up, or simply exploring your options, we're here to offer refined insight and trusted guidance. From navigating timelines and budgets to understanding design choices and construction challenges, this podcast is your guide to a smoother, smarter experience from concept to completion.

The Role of 3D Renderings

Today, we’re talking about 3D renderings and how it impacts when you’re designing either a remodel or a new build.

You know, John, tell me a little bit about when you take on a new project and how impactful, how do you use 3D renderings?

You know, how soon are you starting to look at them and how does that help the customer and how does that help the builder?

Yeah, it’s a game changer, honestly.

Really, it’s evolved so much in the past five years.

You used to be able to just look at architectural plans.

You wouldn’t get any 3D, you would just get elevations.

One-dimensional.

Yes.

Now, when you put these things into a 3D model, you can literally fly around the whole house, see every angle, change the angles that you’re looking at the picture.

We’ve caught so many problems in design by using this 3D model because you can see when things don’t work out.

And on a one-dimensional white and black floor plan, you can’t sometimes, it’s hard to see.

So when you start adding the textures, the colors, all the elements that make this home what it is, you really get to get the full picture of how this project’s gonna get out.

In fact, lately, the software has become so good that it’s sometimes hard to tell if it’s not a picture of the home.

Yeah, it gets that good.

Yeah, I mean, you’re shocked.

Like, the stone looks really like the stone, the windows and doors and every element looks just like it is.

So it looks like a photograph.

When you’re dealing with different materials, how they join and the transitions, and that’s so helpful to know what types of problems you’re gonna encounter and what types of preparations you need to make in order for everything to come together in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible.

Yeah, really good.

Really good point is, you know, when it’s in the one-dimensional format, you can’t see how corners are gonna look.

You can’t see how the stone’s gonna wrap back in around a corner and tie into the other stucco or element.

So you’re able to see that all now by slowly spinning around the model in so many different directions that you can really get a good visual of how this thing’s gonna turn out.

Yeah, it’s so imperative what we’ve noticed, even when we’re designing this, and we’re going through this ourselves as we design a new project in Ascaya.

When you’re working in the two-dimensional view, the floor plan view, I think a lot of your focus is making things functional.

But when you get it in a 3D view, you can do things very functional, but you don’t like how it looks when you put a roof on it.

And we ran into this on this project in Ascaya.

We have a kind of an odd-shaped lot.

It’s forcing us to have to get really creative with how we pull together the roof lines.

You know, our initial design, initial phases of design, our floor plan came together really well.

Like, we just loved this floor plan, but we hated how the roof was coming together.

So once we got it in that 3D view, we could really begin to nip and tuck things and pull it all together to where we weren’t sacrificing our functionality.

And at the same time, we were getting something really aesthetically well-executed.

Really good point.

Like, working on this project together, you know, we got that floor plan to where I think is phenomenal.

Really well-designed.

And then we saw it in elevation in plan view.

We saw the different elevations, and they looked good.

We all thought they looked pretty good.

And then we put it into not even the ultimate 3D model, just a basic 3D model, and we couldn’t believe how much we didn’t like the back of the house.

We just hated it.

What a difference that would be if you had looked at that in the old days, you know, 10 years ago, you would build off of that set of plans, and then all of a sudden, you’re out in the field framing this thing, and now you got a problem.

A huge problem.

You’re spending so much money on this, and you finally start walking through it, and you’re like, I hate it.

Right.

So it’s been really fun to see how much we’ve been able to change the elevation of this based on that model.

And now we’ve got it to a point where I think we love it.

Yeah, it’s really come together well.

And so then the same goes with remodels.

Like hypothetically, if you’re an out-of-state client especially, this is such an empowering tool.

Once you get it in the virtual model, being able to put the goggles on and walk through it, that’s a game changer too.

Absolutely.

Remodels, it’s a complete game changer, because when you’re doing a new house, you have the opportunity, even on a one-dimensional plan to see the whole thing.

Remodels, we haven’t really had that opportunity.

So for the client to come in and see how that room’s gonna change, or see how that opening looks different, or the bookshelves were added, or on and on and on, they virtually can see this room, how it’s gonna look when it’s finished.

It saves on change orders.

It saves on material costs, because clients aren’t changing their mind after they see it installed.

It’s such a benefit to the builder and to the client.

It really is a game changer.

Yeah, everybody wins, but it’s important to have the right team and the right tools to pull that all together.

And if you were doing this outside of a design-build company, you would have to be orchestrating so many different teams.

It would really become cumbersome and really drag out your timeline.

Yeah, really hard, because then the interior designer has her renderings, the architect has their renderings, you have your build sheets.

So you’re trying to incorporate all of this together, plumbing, mechanical, everything, and now you can bring it all into one.

And it really is, it just helps in every aspect.

Yeah, because we’re all in the same office, and we’re looking at this at the same time.

We have a same-page meeting, is what we call it, and we don’t have to go to four different companies, three different companies, and try to match a schedule and drag that timeline out just in order to get an appointment where everybody can be on the phone looking at the same thing at the same time.

That’s so true, and it just, it’s so hard to coordinate with all the different entities to try and, okay, you need to revise this and get it back to us, well, it takes them a week, and you need to revise this, well, now we can do it all in-house.

Yes.

Which is really, it just helps the timeframe, it helps everything.

Okay, another application that’s really helpful with the 3D modeling, we’ve talked about transitions, we’ve talked about textures, we’ve talked about materials, even things as simple as roof overhangs.

You know, that can really change the look and feel of a building and the style of it, and so being able to get that in a model, because on some overhangs, you want to accentuate them, right, you want to add in wood, or you want to add in something to the lid to really tie that whole space together.

Other times, you want to mute it, all of that stuff you can work with in the model.

Yeah, absolutely, we just saw that on the house where you’re talking about.

We set an overhang distance, and we looked at it, and we were still a little undetermined, like, oh, that might look too deep, it might not look, well, the thing about the model is you can move it pretty relatively easily, and then you can say, wow, do I want it 24 inches, do I want it 12, what do I want?

Before, you would kind of have to stand out there and visually hold a tape measure up and look at it.

Now, it’s just a press of a couple buttons, and you’re making that change.

So it’s really fun that way, because you can change the look of a project by changing little elements like this, details.

And when it comes to view lots, we can impose the horizon view that you would have in that lot.

So as it comes to spacing out windows, you can put the digital camera in the space and look through your model and see actually what you would see.

And that’s huge as well.

Huge, huge.

And they have the capability now to actually have this, they put a, I can’t remember the name of it, but it takes the sun as it goes over, and as you visually look at that, it’ll show you in that room, looking out the window, the different shades going on when the sun is at different times.

So if you have a west-facing house and you’re worried about the sun coming in those windows, by the model now, you can actually see how much sun is coming in that window.

Yeah, all of the shadow play that’s gonna occur or that’s not gonna occur that maybe you do want something like that.

If your engineer has put some sort of structural support that made sense on the plan view, but doesn’t make sense because it obstructs a view of the Las Vegas Strip, you’re gonna wanna see that and not spend those millions of dollars doing something that you just paid millions of dollars for to have on your lot.

We had that happen, a house we did a while ago, and the back patio was very tall and it was a west-facing lot.

And we extended the patio like 18 feet.

So it was a very big overhang.

But because it was so high, when the sun about three in the afternoon came, that overhang didn’t work.

It was still hitting the big family room slider.

So if you would have done that in a model and seen this, you would have been able to see that when the sun would have hit at that time of the day.

Exactly.

So there’s so many advantages to being able to get ahead of those items and solve those issues long before they get expensive.

Very much so.

It really, like I said before, it’s a game changer.

It really affects, the client gets what they want.

We know what we’re building better.

We’ve had it where we’ve seen that a beam is not where it’s supposed to be.

When you go inside with the virtual model, you can see something hanging in the ceiling.

Hey, what is that?

We wouldn’t have caught that until framing.

So it really, it’s a huge impact to everybody involved.

Yeah, everybody wins.

Yeah.

So if you’re looking forward to a new project, whether it’s a new build or remodel, reach out to us and we can give you a consultation.

And so you can know what to expect when you’re about to take on a big project like this.