super+plus: Halving Visualisation Workload Without Re-Rendering
How Ileana Balan refines and iterates client imagery inside Gendo instead of returning to the 3D scene, cutting overall workload time by 50% while presenting a wider range of options.
50%
Less overall workload time
40%
Resource rate on a fast-paced project
More
Revision rounds per project
super+plus
Location
International client base
Discipline
Architectural and interior visualisation
Focus
Offices, hotels and retail interiors
Deliverables
Stills, 360 degree walkthroughs, animation
super+plus is an independent visualisation studio founded by Ileana Balan, working mainly on interior imagery for offices, hotels and retail spaces, alongside the exterior and terrace views that set the scene, the environments where atmosphere and spatial feeling drive the design.
Alongside stills, the studio delivers 360 degree walkthroughs and animation for clients who want a more immersive way to experience a space before it is built. Clients are primarily international: architecture and design studios, developers, and hospitality and commercial brands.
"My clients need visuals that communicate not just how a space looks, but how it feels to be in it."
— Ileana Balan
Open the super+plus canvas
The working canvas behind this project, where variations sit side by side for review.
Meet Ileana Balan
Founder & CG Artist, super+plus
"Being able to iterate quickly has made exploration part of the decision itself."
Enhancement and iteration priced in re-render time
The main challenges were in enhancement and iteration. Any change to look or detail, however small, meant a return to the 3D scene and another render, so refinement cost far more time than the size of the change justified.
That cost shaped the work itself. Testing an alternative carried a real penalty, so a look could get committed to before it had been fully explored, and clients saw fewer options at exactly the stage where options are most useful.
Fine-tuned adjustments made directly on the image
Gendo entered the workflow on a recommendation from a friend, alongside Ileana's own exploration into AI for workflow and image enhancement. What stood out first was speed, image quality and the ability to iterate on an image rather than a scene.
"Gendo lets me refine and enhance images without going back into the 3D scene, so preparing client-facing visuals is far faster and more flexible."
Speed, quality of images and iterations were the first impressions that made it stick.
Atmosphere first, across hospitality and commercial interiors
Ileana's process runs brief and style direction first, then early previews for composition and mood, followed by structured revision rounds refining lighting and detail, and final delivery in agreed formats, with close and responsive communication throughout.
For hospitality and commercial work, the decision a client is making is rarely about geometry alone. It is about the feel of a room at a particular hour, which puts the weight of the job on refinement rather than modelling.
Refinement moved out of the 3D scene
The bottleneck was never the model. Polishing a render to its final quality and testing variations both meant going back into the 3D scene and re-rendering, which is slow and resource heavy, especially for small adjustments.
Gendo now sits at the refinement stage. Ileana pushes a render toward its final feel, tests variations on look and detail, and prepares client-facing imagery without reopening the scene. Some projects skip the re-render stage entirely.
"I now make more rounds of revisions, sometimes skip the re-render stage, as I can make fine-tuned adjustments in Gendo, and overall workload time shrank by 50%."
Presenting a range, not a single resolved direction
With iteration slow and costly, Ileana could show clients fewer options, often a single direction rather than a range. Early feedback was harder to gather and decisions took longer to converge, because clients were being asked to react to something they could not yet see.
Now presentations are closer to a conversation. Stakeholders see a refined range side by side, react to what is in front of them, and reach approval faster because they are choosing from what they can see rather than imagining alternatives.
"Rather than presenting a single resolved direction, I can bring stakeholders a refined range of options, and seeing variations side by side often shifts which way a decision goes."
The Impact: Half the workload, more options on the table
The gain is not only time. Cheaper iteration changed what gets shown to clients and how quickly a scheme converges on an agreed direction.
Key Outcomes
Overall time per project reduced by half
A recent fast-paced project delivered at 40% of the usual workload
Fine-tuned adjustments made in Gendo instead of the 3D scene
More options presented at the stage where clients want to see them
Surprised by the range, quicker to approve
Clients notice both the volume and the quality of what arrives. A richer set of variations reaches them earlier, and approval follows from a choice between visible options rather than a judgement made in the abstract.
For an independent studio serving international clients, that shift also protects the relationship: more can be explored inside a fixed fee, and fewer rounds are lost to describing something a client cannot picture.
"They are very surprised and quite happy with the overall deliverables and the amount of variations on images I am sending."
"I fully recommend it as a must-have tool to use internally for any studio working in the visual field."
Ileana Balan
Founder & CG Artist, super+plus
