The design review is in full swing. The client studies the proposal, pauses, and suddenly wants to see a mood shift. "Can we see the courtyard at dusk?" they ask. "What does it feel like when the sun goes down?"
You don't open another render. In D5 3.1, the Interactive Presentation feature turns client reviews into live walkthroughs—you move the sun behind the colonnade in real time. The shadows stretch long across the stone, and the pool catches the changing sky—the reflection moves because it's not a recording.
D5 3.1 deepens how you present your work.
D5 3.1 at a Glance
Three updates, one core goal: present, connect, and control—so your design stays a space people can enter.
- Present in Full Dimension. Walk clients through the space in a live presentation—move the sun, swap materials, answer questions before they become revisions.
- The Connected Workflow. Visualize directly where you model. D5 Lite for Rhino and Revit (beta) extends D5 Lite beyond SketchUp—visualization stays inside your modeling environment. With Cloud Collaboration, distributed teams work on one shared project from anywhere.
- Production-Grade Control. ACEScg Working Color Space keeps your colors intact from viewport to final frame. Seasonal Vegetation shifts across the year—place vegetation once, see it in spring, summer, autumn, winter.
Also read: D5 3.1 Is Here: Designed to Elevate the Design Presentation Workflow
Present in Full Dimension
With D5 3.1, the design presentation becomes the deliverable.
In a client meeting, Interactive Presentation lets you walk through the space—not a pre-rendered sequence. Move the sun from morning to midnight with one gesture. Swap the floor from oak to travertine while your client watches. You don't wait for a new render to answer the next question—the space holds the conversation. Move freely, jump between saved views: slides carry the agenda, and the 3D scene does the persuading.
In D5 3.1, what you hand over remains open too—not just as a file, but as a scene the client can re-enter. Deliver a Stereoscopic Panorama with real depth, or a VR walkthrough they can explore—not just a video they can only watch. An animation plays once; a space can be entered again and again.
The Connected Workflow
Two things break a designer's flow: switching between software, and working in isolated files.
D5 3.1 addresses both.
D5 Lite: Visualize Where You Model
D5 Lite is no longer SketchUp-exclusive. D5 Lite for Rhino and Revit (beta) brings the same live viewport into Rhino and Revit—the environments where most large-scale architectural projects are modeled. Stay inside your preferred 3D software with a live viewport—seeing accurate lights and materials as you design. Adjust a facade, and watch the interior lighting update. Change a texture, and see the environment react instantly—no need to wait for an export.
D5 Lite is built for a different stage than D5 Render—it's a lightweight companion for the phase when the design is still fluid: sketching, testing, exploring, refining. Need animation? Send it to D5 Render in one click.
Cloud Collaboration: Work on the Same Scene, Together
Working on a shared D5 project used to mean sharing an office network. The file sat on a local NAS, and collaboration ended at the building's walls.
D5 3.1 moves collaboration storage to the cloud. A teammate in Berlin refines a stone material while someone in Melbourne adjusts the lighting—each in their own part of the project, on their own schedule. When they save, their changes upload to the cloud, and teammates see the latest version when they reopen the scene. Shanghai, London, New York—one project, many places, no shared office network required.
This is cross-geography collaboration, not live co-editing. It removes geographical barriers without altering your version control process. Asynchronous review works the same way: pin a note to a specific object, view, or lighting condition, and the next person to open the scene lands exactly where you stand.
Production-Grade Control
For visualization teams, color fidelity and environmental realism are the baseline for trust. Get these right, and the 3D presentation speaks for itself.
ACEScg Working Color Space
D5 3.1 adopts the Academy Color Encoding System—the same color science used in film and high-end VFX. What you see in the viewport is what lands in the final frame, across different applications, export formats, and post-production tools.
For teams that hand off to post: the night render matches what you saw while presenting—not because you guessed, but because the color pipeline is unified. That's the certainty ACEScg brings: consistent color from your first viewport preview to the final output.
Seasonal Vegetation: Plants That Change with the Season
A design is not frozen in time. The trees outside your glazing look different in July than in November. The D5 3.1 Seasonal Vegetation library lets you place vegetation once, and then cycle through spring bloom, summer fullness, autumn foliage, and winter structure—no asset swap, no scene rebuild. You plant one birch in June. In the Inspector, slide the timeline to October—and see the tree drop its leaves. Watch the sunlight filter differently through bare branches, because the scene treats the vegetation as a living, seasonal entity.
The point is not to decorate a render. It's about seeing how the space lives across the year.
Closing Thoughts
You didn't get into architecture to describe a space.
You got into it so people can stand in a space that doesn't exist yet—to feel whether the light in the stairwell is right, and see the concrete texture catch the morning sun the way you imagined it in your early sketches.
D5 3.1 removes the steps between your design and the client standing in it—so when the client asks what the courtyard feels like at six in the evening, you don't describe it and you don't send a different render. You simply adjust the sun and let them see for themselves.
We can't wait to see how you present your next project with D5 3.1.
Continue Reading the D5 3.1 Feature Guide
D5 3.1 Is Here: Designed to Elevate the Design Presentation Workflow
D5 Lite for Rhino Is Here: Real-Time Rhino Rendering Without Export
FAQ on D5 3.1
Several major updates: Present in Full Dimension (walk clients through your scene live in 3D); D5 Lite for Rhino and Revit (beta), extending real-time visualization inside your modeling software; and Cloud Collaboration (enabling teams to work on the same project regardless of location). The release also adds ACEScg Working Color Space and Seasonal Vegetation, which allows plants to cycle through all four seasons.
SketchUp, Rhino, and Revit. As a lightweight real-time viewport powered by the D5 Engine, D5 Lite is built for rapid iteration during early-stage schematic design and development.
D5 Lite runs inside your modeling software and is optimized for speed and iteration during the design phase. D5 Render is the full standalone application for final production—video sequences, VR, advanced material editing, and diverse presentation formats. You can bring D5 Lite results into D5 Render anytime for polished presentation—no need to start from scratch.
It's asynchronous, not real-time co-editing. Multiple people can work in parallel, each in their own part of the project. When someone saves, the updated project syncs to the cloud, and teammates see the latest version when they reopen the scene. Each project retains a full version history. Cloud Collaboration is available with the D5 for Teams plan.
Yes. D5 3.1 is available to all users, and the D5 Community version remains free for individual use. Pro and Team plans add the full asset library, AI features, Cloud Collaboration, and more.
Yes. D5 is an industry-grade visualization ecosystem trusted by leading architecture, interior design, and landscape firms globally. With features like ACEScg color management, ray-traced lighting, and ultra-high-resolution rendering, it easily meets the rigorous standards of professional pipelines.
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