Speckle Brings Gendo AI Renders to Your Viewer

If you’ve ever needed to turn your 3D models into pro-level images quickly and accurately, Gendo is the solution, and it’s here for you inside the Speckle viewer!

Gendo: Don’t Surrender To Endlessly Rendering

Gendo, a London-based start-up founded in 2022 by architectural designer George Proud and software engineer Will Jones, turns sketches, 2D drawings, or text descriptions into hyperreal building designs.

Here’s what makes Gendo shine:

• Design-to-Image: Upload your designs and boom—you get stunning visuals with realistic materials, lighting, and details that match your original vision.
• Generative Editing: Need to tweak something? Change materials, swap colours, or even turn a pine tree into a palm tree in just a few clicks.
• Style Transfer: Do you want your render to look like a sketch, a watercolour, or something else? Gendo can do that while staying true to your design.
• Text-to-Image: Got a wild idea? Just type it out, and Gendo will turn it into an image to kickstart your creativity.

And now, Gendo, in beta, is a part of Speckle! This allows you to experiment with 20 free AI renders per month!

“The AEC innovation community is small, with many challenges to solve. Our ambitions just clicked, and this partnership felt like a natural fit. It’s like an AEC love story!” says George Proud, Gendo’s co-founder and CEO.

The catch is in transforming your Speckle 3D viewer’s perspective into awesome AI renders by clicking the Gendo button and entering a simple prompt.

How Gendo Works Inside Speckle

First, we need to break something down: AI rendering tools are improving, but text-to-image isn’t a complete design solution.

Writing the perfect prompt to get precisely what you envision is nearly impossible. On top of that, architecture has its niche terminology, and any helpful tool needs to understand these nuances.

Luckily, Gendo is built with architects and designers in mind. It gets the nitty-gritty architectural jargon, and now that it “sees” your 3D model in the Speckle viewer, you’ll be making even faster and more precise visualisation!

Here’s what to have in mind while rendering in Speckle:

1. Gendo is built to complement your creativity, not replace it. It thrives on detailed descriptions of the 3D model you’re working with and what you’d like to render—the more specific, the better.

2. It’s not only about the prompt: the “Speckle Viewer-to-Image” approach ensures your 3D models are turned into 2D renders with details that match your intent. That’s why, positioning your model in the viewer plays a major role. Closer, camera-focused angles work best, and if your point of view has a lot of empty space, be sure to describe how you want Gendo to populate it.

3. Gendo can't remove elements: If you want to remove something from your render, you can select the object and hide it in your Speckle viewer! Use your favourite design tool for more significant changes and try rendering again when the change is reflected in the viewer.

Gendo is ready for you to explore, experiment, and push its limits inside of Speckle. With its current "beta" label, we know it’s still rough around the edges, but that’s part of the process—we’re keen to improve based on your feedback. So, use it and have fun! This is our first step into AI rendering, and we’re excited to learn from you as we go.

AI Renders in Architecture

Traditional rendering is a grind. It takes weeks, costs a fortune, and often means dedicating entire teams just to churn out visuals. That’s why AI-powered rendering is quickly changing the game.

AI-powered rendering transforms the process by being faster, cheaper, and more adaptable to mid-project design changes. While architects appreciate the time savings and creative freedom, precision and respect for their design intent are non-negotiable.

Midjourney gave millions a glimpse of how advanced AI visualisation has become, catching many by surprise. It’s no wonder the demand for AI rendering tools tailored to architecture is growing fast. However, the architectural domain is a tricky one, to say the least, and many AI renders have notoriously only been helpful for quick bid and competition visuals.

The AEC industry needs AI renders that are true to the designer's vision, and that’s not an easy task with so much at stake. One thing’s for sure: the Gendo team is working hard to get us there:

“Image production has always been expensive, and rendering is brutal—some big studios have entire teams dedicated to it. Bids require renders that take weeks to produce, and no one really wins. With AI, it’s crucial to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. That’s why Gendo focuses on being targeted, functional, and meeting architects where they are, helping them overcome unnecessary hurdles,” explains George Proud, Gendo’s co-founder and CEO.

Use Gendo and Report Back!

We invite you to try out Gendo in beta and help us shape its future while it makes your workflow present much easier!

Play around, see how Gendo fits your Speckle workflows, and share your thoughts in the Speckle Community Forum and on socials. This is just the beginning of something amazing, and your feedback is crucial at this stage.

Stay tuned for updates (and possible giveaways), and let’s make some render magic happen!