Recently, a company called EvolveLAB released an AI plugin for Revit called Veras. While AI rendering for architecture has already made its mark in the industry following the year 2022, Veras for Revit is unique in that it helps mitigate the “randomness” prevalent in popular AI software like MidJourney or Night Cafe.
After running a series of initial tests, I’ll say this.
Veras for Revit is seriously impressive.
I’ve written a handful of other posts on AI in architecture. Veras is the newest “kid on the block” for architects and designers to utilize for rapid design concept visualization.
It is a Revit plugin that offers prompt-based render augmentation using 3D views in Revit Architecture.
Like other prompt-based AI software for architecture, Veras requires a user to enter a prompt to describe the type of image to generate. However, the way it works is much more tailored to architects, designers, and urban planners.
1. How to Set Up Veras for Revit
2. Veras Settings for Revit
3. Exterior Perspective Examples
4. Interior Perspective Examples
5. Aerial View Examples
6.💡 Jon’s Take: Best Settings for Veras
I won’t get into the weeds in explaining how AI works — but if you want to learn more, check out this post, I wrote that breaks down the popular neural network, Stable Diffusion.
There are a lot of misconceptions on where and how AI collects its data for creating architectural visuals, but Veras
In just a few steps, you can get Veras up and running with any Revit version between 2019 to 2023 (as of Jan. 2023).
How to Set Up Veras for Revit
- Go to the EvolveLAB website and choose either “Buy” or “Download”, then Install it to your PC.
- Open a project in any version of Revit between 2019 and 2023.
- Upon opening Revit, be sure to select “Always Allow” when prompted by the Veras plugin window.
- Navigate to a 3D view that you would like to use with Veras for Revit.
- Open the EvolveLAB tab, and “Start” Veras for Revit.
- Adjust your 3D view if needed. The Trial version of Veras for Revit crops the images to a 1×1 aspect ratio.
- Write out a prompt describing the look and feel you envision, and select “Render.” Wait about 5-10 seconds, and that’s it!
I used Revit 2023 and the trial version of Veras for Revit in my testing. With the trial version, you’ll get access to create 30 renderings for free — so make sure to test out various scenarios!
Check out the images below if you’re curious to see some examples of what Veras generated. I tested Veras for exterior perspective renderings, interior perspective renderings, and 3D isometric aerial views.
Honestly, I’ve been pleasantly suprised with the results.
In my test below, I kept the prompts consistent and only focused on changing the options that Veras had to offer. The nature of prompt-based AI is still random; however, keeping the same prompt as a testing “control” group helps mitigate some of the ‘randomness.’
Veras Settings for Revit
Currently, the menu in Veras for Revit offers 8 “slider” options to choose from to alter the text-based AI rendering. Those options include the following:
This is how EvolveLAB explains each of the settings, and how they control the image that they produce.
[Value = 0 to 100]
Style Strength:“The amount the algorithm will respect the prompt. Low numbers will appear visually similar to Revit’s aesthetics, while high numbers can have a more photographic quality.”
[Value = 0 to 100]
Width:The overall width of the image. This option can only be adjusted with paid versions of Veras for Revit.
Number of Renderings:The amount of batch renderings produced. This number can only be adjusted with paid versions of Veras for Revit.
“Is Interior”:“Enable this if the view is an interior view.”
“Turbo Nature”:“Enable this to add as much vegetation as possible.”
“Atmospheric”:“Enabling this will add fog and mist to the scene. This can be used to add depth to exterior scenes.”
“Is Aerial View”:“Enable this is the view is an aerial view.” This could be useful for isometric views, top-down 3D views, or large scale site renderings.
Veras operates through a combination of text-based prompts and a button-controlled user interface — all while being constrained by the image of the 3D model in Revit. One thing I like about Veras for Revit is that the sliders are easy to adjust yet can significantly impact the resulting image.
For example, take a look at these images produced by adjusting the “Creativity Strength” slider with the “Style Strength” sliders.
The “Creativity Strength” slider controls how much the original 3D Revit model will appear in the AI image.
In my tests, Veras would automatically default to “Creativity Strength” set to 95 and the “Style Strength” set to 34. This is a default setting that EvolveLAB has found to be best for Veras renderings, but those values did seem to produce the most valuable images.
Veras for Revit: Exterior Perspective Examples
Architects will find Veras useful for generating exterior renderings of buildings.
Exterior Perspective (Base 3D View in Revit)
Veras Exterior Perspective Example 1:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 95
Style Strength: 34
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ✔️
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Wooden facade with white concrete accents and translucent channel glass”
This is the first image I created using Veras for Revit, and the results are certainly interesting. Leaving the default settings that Veras offered, it made an image completely different from the Revit model.
The primary 3D geometry has been captured, yet the materials and details have changed completely.
Veras Exterior Perspective Example 2:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 100
Style Strength: 100
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Stacked CMU walls with translucent channel glass and white concrete balconies”
Bumping the “Creativity Strength” and “Style Strength” to their max settings created an image closer to the original Revit model than the one above. It reinterprets architectural elements, like changing the sidewalk to a swimming pool or storefront windows to planters.
Veras Exterior Perspective Example 3:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 80
Style Strength: 30
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ✔️
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Stacked CMU walls with translucent channel glass and white concrete balconies”
Dropping the “Style Strength” slider makes the rendering less “photorealistic,” — and ticking on the “Atmospheric” toggle created a scene with a ton of fog… and as much as I love photographing foggy scenes as a photographer, this is just too much.
In the future, it would be useful for EvolveLAB to implement a slider for the “Atmospheric” option so that we can adjust the level of fog/smoke intensity in an image.
Veras Exterior Perspective Example 4:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 60
Style Strength: 100
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Stacked CMU facade with vertical wooden louvers between gray aluminum balconies”
Pulling the “Creativity Strength” slider down and maxing out the “Style Strength” creates an image closest to the original Revit model. For this shot, I did have shadows turned on in the Revit model and “consistent colors” in the view template settings.
However, I’ve found that maxing out the “Style Strength” slider creates AI renderings with a lot of weird artifacts — like splotchy materials, fringing, and chromatic aberration (color distortion at the edges of geometry).
Veras Exterior Perspective Example 5:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 60
Style Strength: 0
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Stacked CMU facade with vertical wooden louvers between gray aluminum balconies”
Setting it to zero on the other end of the “Style Strength” spectrum forces the AI to hold to the original Revit model. Interestingly, the AI picks up on the fact that there is text in this image and has attempted to re-create it.
From a more “artistic” standpoint, these settings produce more painting-like quality for architecture renderings. This could be extremely useful for early-on concept images or obtaining a hand-sketch quality from a Revit model without going into another graphic program like Photoshop or Lumion.
Veras Exterior Perspective Example 6:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 100
Style Strength: 0
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Stacked CMU facade with vertical wooden louvers between gray aluminum balconies”
And to have fun with it, here’s an image with only the “Creativity Strength” maxed out to 100. Similar to the sentiment in the image above, this produced a more abstract image that could be useful in a design’s ideation portion.
The primary geometry is maintained, and the AI basically renders a digitally painted image from the Revit model.
Veras for Revit: Interior Perspective Examples
Interior designers can find use in Veras ability to rapidly generate interior renderings.
Interior Perspective (Base 3D View in Revit)
Veras Interior Perspective Example 1:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 95
Style Strength: 34
“Is Interior”: ✔️
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Stacked CMU accent wall with translucent glass curtainwall, black anodized aluminum mullions, light hard wood flooring, marble table, red leather furniture”
For my first interior rendering an image using Veras for Revit, I left the settings on default and toggled “on” the “Is Interior” option. Compared to the original image, the AI could recognize the furniture families in Revit and added additional elements that fit within the scene — such as pillows on the couch.
As for integrating the prompt into the scene, the AI worked in elements like the “translucent curtain wall” and “black anodized aluminum.” My prompt input could improve for better results, but the possibilities for inputting prompts with Veras for Revit are endless.
Any weird artifacts could be adjusted using Photoshop, like eliminating some extra can light fixtures on the ceiling.
Veras Interior Perspective Example 2:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 50
Style Strength: 50
“Is Interior”: ✔️
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Stacked CMU accent wall with translucent glass curtainwall, black anodized aluminum mullions, light hard wood flooring, marble table, red leather furniture”
Evening out the “Creativity Strength” and “Style Strength” sliders to 50 / 50 produces images as you might expect — a good blend of half AI, and half Revit.
There’s a bit of distortion in the parallel lines in the flooring, but overall the scene certainly looks believable for a rendering. Even the elements on the ceiling (what we sometimes call “ceiling acne”) look believable.
Veras Interior Perspective Example 3:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 100
Style Strength: 50
“Is Interior”: ✔️
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Stacked CMU accent wall with translucent glass curtainwall, black anodized aluminum mullions, light hard wood flooring, marble table, red leather furniture”
Adjusting the “Creativity Strength” to 100 and the “Style Strength” to 50 creates an image that is also entirely believable for an interior rendering. Veras picked up the “translucent glass” in the prompt, and additional elements were added — like the curtains (perhaps, taken from “curtainwall” in the prompt).
Again, this could be a helpful image for testing material options — and having a paid version of Veras for Revit could allow an architect or interior designer to create a ton of material iterations quickly.
Veras Interior Perspective Example 4:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 95
Style Strength: 34
“Is Interior”: ✔️
“Turbo Nature”: ✔️
“Atmospheric”: ✔️
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“Stacked CMU accent wall with translucent glass curtainwall, black anodized aluminum mullions, light hard wood flooring, marble table, red leather furniture”
Turning on “Turbo Nature” for this interior rendering created a pleasant result with lots of greenery. However, the image starts to fall apart a bit with the windows, and it appears that “nature” was placed only outside the scene.
For interior renderings, it would be nice if “Turbo Nature” could integrate more interior plants or decorations into the actual space, and not just the exterior.
Veras for Revit: Aerial Views
Even urban planners can find use in what Veras has to offer.
Aerial View / Isometric (Base 3D View in Revit)
Aerial View / Isometric Example 1:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 95
Style Strength: 34
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ✔️
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ✔️
Veras Prompt:
“transit oriented community in the heart of city, surrounded by green parks, residential neighborhoods, bike trails and a river with a boardwalk”
Again, starting with the Veras for Revit default settings, I turned on “Is Aerial View” and “Turbo Nature” for the image above. Unfortunately, the AI pulled the data from a source image that clearly had text in it — possibly the cover of a magazine, if I were to speculate.
This added the text to the image, but it could be cropped out or removed in photoshop.
Aerial View / Isometric Example 2:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 75
Style Strength: 50
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ✔️
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ✔️
Veras Prompt:
“transit oriented community in the heart of city, surrounded by green parks, residential neighborhoods, bike trails and a river with a boardwalk”
I found it useful to keep the “Turbo Nature” setting on for aerial shots, as it integrates a lot of green spaces into the scene and follows the prompt input of “green parks”.
Interestingly, the AI integrated the “river with a boardwalk” into the scene and eliminated text artifacts like in the previous example image.
Aerial View / Isometric Example 3:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 75
Style Strength: 50
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ✔️
Veras Prompt:
“transit oriented community in the heart of city, surrounded by green parks, residential neighborhoods, bike trails and a river with a boardwalk”
Turning off “Turbo Nature” had minimal affects to the overall “greenery” within the scene — and in this case, it actually seemed to create a more photorealistic scene.
Aerial View / Isometric Example 4:
Veras Settings
Creativity Strength: 75
Style Strength: 50
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Veras Prompt:
“transit oriented community in the heart of city, surrounded by green parks, residential neighborhoods, bike trails and a river with a boardwalk”
Eliminating all of the “Toggle” settings in Veras for Revit — including the “Is Aerial View” option does appear to have distorted the image more than the others. What I’m about to suggest will be quite obvious… but for aerial or top-down scenes, leave the “Aerial View” option on for best results.
💡 Jon’s Take: Best Settings for Veras
There are a lot of factors that play into the results that Veras will produce for architectural renderings. On the Revit side, the primary factors are 3D model geometry, view perspective, and camera placement. For Veras, there are many options to use to manipulate the image of the model from Revit — and just the AI prompt alone will strongly influence the overall look of the final result.
Based on the images above, I’ve found that Veras for Revit operates with a familiar “randomness” that we’ve seen in other prompt-based AI. However, overlaying this type of AI on a 3D model is extremely helpful to rapidly produce iterations of the same “shapes” within a space.
For exterior architectural renderings, Veras performed better for highly detailed views. Moving the camera closer to the building in Revit produced better results, as the AI could detect more nuances in the geometry of the structure.
In my testing, these are the best Veras settings for exterior renderings:
Best Veras Settings for Exterior Renderings:
Creativity Strength: 100
Style Strength: 50
“Is Interior”: ❌
“Turbo Nature”: ❌
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
Keeping the “Creativity Strength” on the higher end (or maxed out), and the “Style Strength” on the medium level (between 30-60) seemed to produce the most useable results.
Although EvolveLAB states that maxing out the “Style Strength” will produce the most photorealistic image, I found that these images looked very over-processed.
My standpoint on AI is that it’s a tool for helping facilitate creative ideas — not become the design. When I use AI visualization in the design process, I’m not expecting accuracy.
It might be worthwhile to use Veras on low-detail 3D geometry to see how the AI fills in the gaps in terms of details.
As for interior perspectives, I think Veras has a ways to go to compete with other interior design AI software that is currently available.
Best Veras Settings for Interior Renderings:
Creativity Strength: 95
Style Strength: 34
“Is Interior”: ✔️
“Turbo Nature”: ✔️
“Atmospheric”: ❌
“Is Aerial View”: ❌
The “Atmospheric” option isn’t well-suited for interior views — or at least for smaller spaces. Unless you intend to show off a space that celebrates the existence of smoke… it’s best to save this option for exterior shots.
By toggling on the “Aerial” view switch in the Veras menu, the AI tailors top-down, bird-eye-view images from the 3D Revit model. The results are actually quite interesting.
Best Revit View Settings for Veras
If you’ve already exhausted using all of the image-adjusting options that Veras has to offer, you’ll notice that you’re left with two choices: adjust the prompt, or adjust the view in Revit.
From what I found, adjusting the view template in Revit does affect the way in which the Veras AI renders the image. For example, if you leave shadows on in the Revit view, Veras will pick up on that.
In this example, I left the model in Revit on “Hidden Lines” — which does not show color in the Revit view. As a result, Veras rendered an image without color. Take a look:
This could be very useful in the early stages of the design process when materials haven’t been chosen yet. Leaving “Hidden Lines” on while using Veras for Revit will create an AI image that focuses primarily on the architectural geometry rather than the “photorealism” that AI has to offer.
Overall, Veras is going to be an absolute game-changer for architecture visualization. As AI neural networks and deep learning rapidly evolve, we will inevitably find new use cases for it in the architectural design process.
As I continue to test Veras for Revit and any future programs it supports, I’ll share my findings here. If you’re still curious about AI and architecture, be sure to check out my other posts on AI.
Jon Henning
Hi, I'm Jon. I write about emerging technology in architecture, engineering and design, and I want to help you push boundaries with the latest tech trends in the AEC industry.
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