Show the client what happens between the empty site and handover
Clients and funders understand the empty site and the finished building. The eighteen months in between are what they ask about, and a phasing drawing does not answer it. This makes a short clip from two frames — a photograph of the site as it stands and a render of your Revit model from the same spot — and animates the build between them: ground works, structure rising, cladding going on.
Revit + pyRevit (free) -- no compiling
How the Revit plugin handles it
Photograph the site from a fixed spot
Take the site photo from a position you can reproduce in the model — a street corner, a known height. The clip moves between two frames, so the frames have to agree on where the camera is.
Match a Revit camera to that spot
Place a 3D camera in Revit at the photo’s position and height, then Send View and render the export in Renders. The render is the clip’s end frame.
Upload both frames in Construction Video
Attach the site photo as the start and the render as the end. The clip fills in the sequence between them; you do not animate phases in Revit.
What Revit hands over
Revit already knows the building’s phasing, but turning phases into an animation normally means a view per phase and a render per frame. Here Revit supplies only the finished end frame. The construction sequence is generated, which is why it suits communication and must not be read as your actual programme.
The thing that goes wrong
If the Revit camera does not match the site photo’s position and lens, the clip spends its length morphing the viewpoint instead of building the building. Match the camera height and field of view to the photograph before rendering the end frame.
Do you preserve geometry?
Yes. Every render pass is constrained to your source geometry and camera position, so walls, proportions, and perspective stay locked instead of being reimagined by the model.
Models available for this
Every model draws from the same credit balance, and a credit is only spent on a successful generation.
- Veo Construction Video5 cr / second
- Gemini Omni Flash 1.19 cr / second
Questions
- Does the video follow my Revit phasing or programme?
- No. The sequence between the two frames is generated, not read from the model’s phases or a programme. Treat it as an explanation of construction in general, not a schedule for this project.
- How is this different from a walkthrough?
- A walkthrough moves a camera through a finished scene. This keeps the camera still and animates the building changing from site to finished scheme — a different question, answered by a different tool.