How Lotoarchilab Reclaimed Creative Time

Before Pulze, Miguel and the team at Lotoarchilab were spending a big chunk of their day on things that had nothing to do with creativity. Turning layers on and off, checking save paths, babysitting renders, remembering which lights belonged to which camera. It was repetitive, error-prone, and it ate into the work they actually cared about.

"30% of the day was organizing the file, turning layers on and off, and checking paths," Miguel says. "Now we dedicate that time to the creative part: testing more materials, detailing the model, doing more sketches, testing lighting and refining the narrative."

The old way: manual everything

Lotoarchilab's workflow before Pulze was 100% manual in 3ds Max and V-Ray, without a 3ds max render manager to coordinate tasks or prevent mistakes. Every time they needed to propose cameras to a client, they'd send simple screenshots. Every render meant going camera by camera, activating layers, swapping lights, and manually setting output paths. Hours disappeared into file management, and visibility mistakes were a constant headache.

For still images it was manageable, if tedious. But for animations, it became a real problem. On a recent tower project in Dubai, the team had more than 20 camera sequences, each with three lighting states: day, sunset, and night. That meant 60 manual render launches, with the constant risk of leaving a wrong layer on or saving to the wrong path.

"Before, managing that without errors was unfeasible," Miguel explains. "With so many sequences at the same time there was always a layer or object we forgot to hide, or a sequence that came out with the wrong light."

The Lotoarchilab Studio Team

Scene Manager: the brain

For Miguel, the standout feature in Scene Manager is simple but transformative: being able to set per camera which lights and objects are visible or hidden, and assign an automatic save path for each one. No more remembering which furniture, vegetation, or light setup belongs to which view. No more juggling 50 layers with confusing names.

"The file is always clean. Everything lives in Pulze, not in layers with confusing names. Anyone on the team opens the scene and knows exactly what each camera will render."

That consistency has been a big deal for the studio. It's helped them unify how everyone works across files, so any team member can jump into a project and immediately understand the setup. The features they lean on most are the basics done right: Camera Sets, States for object and light visibility, and Render Output channels to keep file names and folders organized.

"All these simple things eliminate human error when saving," Miguel says. "And the ability to duplicate a camera state to test a lighting variation in seconds."

RenderFlow: the muscle

RenderFlow solved a gap Lotoarchilab didn't have a good answer for: a real render manager. Before, everything was launched manually. Render one camera, wait, change lights, render again. For animations, it just didn't scale. They weren't using any render farm management software, so coordination across machines was limited.

Now, the team sets up their full queue in RenderFlow and leaves it running overnight. If something fails, the whole queue doesn't stop. Each job comes out with the right name, the right folder, and the right Scene Manager state, without anyone needing to double-check.

What surprised the team was how much more RenderFlow offered beyond the render button.

• Node monitoring lets them see in one panel which workstation is rendering, which versions of V-Ray and Corona are installed, and whether any plugin is missing.

• Pre-launch checks flag missing textures or broken paths before they become 8 AM surprises.

These are the kinds of safeguards they expected from capable render farm management software. Statistics and usage rankings have also been a practical win.

"We have real usage metrics," Miguel says. "It has helped us prove we don't need to buy more machines, just use the ones we have better." Workstations used for modeling during the day automatically become render nodes when idle, giving the studio roughly 30% more rendering power with no extra investment.

The numbers

• The time savings are concrete. Preparing and checking 10 cameras used to take half a morning. Now it's about 20 minutes with Scene Manager.

• Setting up an overnight batch of 10 cameras used to take 45 minutes, and something would still fail. Now it's 2 minutes to review and launch.

• But the biggest shift is in iteration speed. Before Pulze, the team managed 1 or 2 lighting iterations per day because it meant babysitting the whole process. Now they launch 5 or 6 variations of a camera before lunch, choose in the afternoon, and render the final overnight.

Better client conversations from day one

One of the less obvious but most impactful changes has been in how Lotoarchilab presents work to clients. Before, camera proposals went out as simple screenshots. Now they send proper renders with real materials and lighting in the same timeframe, giving clients a much more resolved initial image.

"The client understands the result and intent of the image from day one," Miguel says. "And we can reach a much higher level of detail without surprises at the end."

That higher quality at the proposal stage has cut out entire feedback rounds, because clients can actually see what they're approving early on. It's also opened up the kind of work the studio takes on. With the technical side under control, Lotoarchilab can confidently handle more complex animations and international projects.

Two tools, one workflow

For Miguel, Scene Manager and RenderFlow aren't separate products. They're two halves of the same system.

"Scene Manager is the brain: it organizes. RenderFlow is the muscle: it executes. One prepares, the other renders. It doesn't make sense to use them separately in our workflow."

Together, they operate like a studio-grade render manager workflow, from setup to execution, so the team spends less time on logistics and more on creative decisions.

And the philosophy behind the tools is what made Pulze the right fit in the first place.

"The real time savings and the philosophy that matches ours of 'less is more.' Pulze takes away the repetitive part and lets us focus on the creative."

Think your team could use a few extra hours in the day? Start your free trial of Scene Manager and RenderFlow and find out.