Does it work on photographs of existing buildings?

Yes, but the cleaner the source the better. Photographs of finished buildings with very strong existing texture (heavy brick, deeply carved stone) can confuse the model. 3D viewport screenshots produce the most predictable results.

TPL —AI Template · Architecture

Material Swap

Test a different facade material (concrete, charred wood, brick, stone) on your modelled facade.

Free to try
~3s per render
No credit card

About this model

Tests a different facade material on the same modelled building. Concrete, charred wood (shou-sugi-ban), brick, cut stone, fluted metal, terracotta cladding — any material that can be expressed as a flat swatch is fair game. The new material is laid across the facade with realistic application logic: joint module aligned to architectural rhythm, course alignment to floor lines, surface relief tactile at scale, weathering subtly varied across the elevation. Building massing, openings, balconies, parapets and copings stay exactly where they are. The swatch's lighting and color cast are not imported — only its surface grammar and material character. Useful when the design is locked but the facade material is still in discussion with the client or the planning authority. Generating four material variants takes seconds; re-rendering them in the BIM workflow takes the rest of the day.

When to use it

An architecture studio is deciding the cladding for a 6-storey residential block. Three options on the table: zinc standing seam, charred Siberian larch, brick. The 3D model is built and the cameras are set. The studio takes one viewport screenshot, runs Material Swap three times with each swatch, drops the three variants in the planning meeting. Decision made in twenty minutes, full re-rendering avoided.

What to feed it

Facade: a 3D viewport screenshot or photograph where the building's main elevation is clearly visible (not heavily backlit, not extremely oblique). Material swatch: a clean close-up of the target material — a wood plank, a concrete sample, a brick course, a stone block. Avoid swatches with strong directional shadows or extreme color casts; the model can try to import them. Single-pixel UV-tile swatches read as procedural and produce poor output.

What you'll get back

Same building, same openings, same camera — with the new facade material applied. Joint module follows the architectural rhythm (courses align to floor lines, panel widths follow window modules). Material reveals wrap into window frames coherently. Surface texture is tactile at the visible scale, with subtle weathering rather than uniform stamping. Specular response matches the material category (matte concrete vs. satin metal vs. polished stone).

Frequently asked

One material per pass — the model treats the entire facade as a single material zone. To get a two-material composition, run the swap on a partial mask first, then a second pass for the remaining zone. Or generate two variants and composite manually.

RELATED —