1. What it is

The Visualizer is a page of its own for every project with Design unlocked. It reads the design you already made — the zones and their placed components, the structures, the sector hints and the terrain — and asks an image model to draw the site the way it would look once built and grown. It is a generated picture, not a survey or a plan: it shows the intent, and it is meant for the person who does not read a map.

2. Where you find it

• In the project's Design menu, as Visualizer.
• On the Site Design map, from the Viewpoints control — capture a view there and you land in the Visualizer with it selected.
• From a floor plan whose building is placed in a zone: Visualize in its zone.
• From the Research site map, the Site portrait button (section 5).
• On the Farmer Home tile Your site, visualized, once a render exists.

3. Rendering a picture

The left column of the workspace is the map; the right column is the recipe for the next render. Work top to bottom:

1. Scope — the whole site or one zone. A zone render draws only that zone's components and is usually the clearer picture.
2. Viewpoints — move the map to the angle you want and capture it. The capture is a screenshot of the map with the terrain and your layers on it; the model uses it as the reference for where things are. Every capture is kept, so you can render the same viewpoint again in another season.
3. View — Eye level or Aerial, or both.
4. Season — spring, summer, autumn or winter, or all four as a bundle.
5. Quality — Standard 1K for a quick look, Standard 2K, Premium 2K and Premium 4K for a picture you will print or present. The price changes with the quality and is shown before you render.
6. Press Render. A render takes ten to twenty seconds; the finished image appears in the Gallery below the map and stays with the project.

4. Layouts for a zone

With a single zone in scope, the Layout panel offers three arrangements of that zone's components — A, B and C — drawn on the map as overlays. They come from the zone's shape, its slope (sampled from public elevation data) and the sector hints, not from a model. Pick one and press Use this layout: the placements are saved to the zone and the Placements list reloads from what was saved. Adjust lets you drag one placed item inside the zone; the drag stops at the zone's edge. Rendering afterwards draws the items where you put them.

A zone outline with an unusually large number of points cannot be laid out; the panel says so and asks you to simplify it on the Site Design map.

5. Buildings and the site portrait

Buildings — when a passive-solar floor plan is placed in a zone, its massing (footprint, storeys, roof shape, orientation) is handed to the model as a shape reference for exterior and aerial building renders, so the house in the picture is the house you planned. The floor plan dashboard shows the same massing as a small thumbnail.

Site portrait — on the Research site map, Site portrait tilts the map to a fixed oblique view of the whole site with terrain and contours on, and saves that shot to the project's pictures. It leads the map figure of the Research report. Once it exists you may also Render portrait for an image-model version of the same view, at the Standard 1K price.

6. The 3D view and the orbit video

Tick 3D under Layers to stand the placed buildings on the terrain at their size, orientation and roof. With 3D on, Record orbit turns the camera once around the site — a full circle at the current tilt, over 8 seconds — and keeps the result as a short video.

• It costs 0 credits. The video is recorded by your own browser from the map you see; no image model is called.
• One orbit per saved scene. Recording again replaces the old orbit, and Delete orbit removes it.
• Safari cannot record an orbit. It does not offer the video recording the Visualizer needs, so the Record orbit button does not appear there. Record in Chrome, Edge or Firefox; an orbit already recorded still plays in Safari where it can play WebM.
• Where it shows. The project's newest orbit appears at the top of the Visuals block on a share link, on the overview and in Present. It never plays by itself and nothing is downloaded until someone presses play.

7. Where the pictures go

8. Good to know

• Renders are kept with the project and can be deleted from the Gallery; deleting does not refund.
• The model never receives a picture from the web — only your own captures and the pictures already stored on the project.
• The older Garden visualiser on the Design Hub still exists and now uses the same prices; a finished garden image can be edited there for less than a new one.
• Rendering is rate-limited per account so a stuck button cannot run away with your credits.

9. Where to go next