From bare dirt to finished design — before anyone breaks ground
The hardest part of a backyard project is not the build. It is standing on bare dirt trying to see the finished space — and writing a check on imagination alone. This is how we closed that gap on a real project, in one day.
TNC now designs outdoor spaces visually before breaking ground: a photo of the actual site becomes photoreal renderings of the finished design — every option priced against a real scope — plus cinematic film of the space and a 3D model the owner can walk in augmented reality. The pictures below are design visualizations built on one real project at Smith Creek Reserve, from raw pad to finished concept.
It starts as dirt
This is the site the way every project actually starts: a graded pad between two cabins, drainage roughed in, not one stone laid. The owner knew roughly what the space should do — gather people, feed them, give the kids something to burn energy on — but nobody can picture a finished courtyard while standing on subgrade.
The design brief was a pen sketch
No CAD file, no survey, no mood board. The whole brief was a few minutes with a legal pad: a loop for the green, a circle for fire, a box for the kitchen, a note about which fence line needed privacy. That is a normal starting point — most owners think in sketches, and a design process that demands more than that from a client is solving the wrong problem.
Same day: the finished space, photoreal, on the real site
Hours later the owner was looking at this: the same pad, same cabins, same tree line — with the design finished. Stone seat wall along the woods, outdoor kitchen tucked under the overhang, gas fire pit, a bubbling boulder on river rock, and a putting green set flush into the pavers. Because the rendering is built on a photograph of the actual site, every judgment an owner needs to make — does the kitchen crowd the stairs, does the green fit the space, is the fence too tall — gets made while the design is still free to change.
Every option, side by side, priced against a real scope
The same process produced the whole decision space: the identical yard finished in broom concrete, pavers, a splash pad for families, and surface options from our published rate card — stamped concrete, ACE resin, even a concrete-and-turf grid laid out for cornhole. Each version is the same photograph with one decision changed, so choosing between them is finally an apples-to-apples call instead of a leap of faith.
Then it moves, and then you walk in it
Stills close most of the gap; motion and scale close the rest. Each concept became a short cinematic film — water moving, fire lit, dusk light — and a 3D model the owner opens on a phone in augmented reality, at true size, standing on the site. Walking a design at full scale on the ground where it will be built is the closest thing to time travel this trade has.
What this means if you are planning a build
You do not have to commit six figures on faith. Bring us a photo of your space — or let us fly it — and the first thing you will see is the finished design on your own property, with every option shown before a contract is signed. The sketch can be on a napkin. That part has not changed in thirty years.
What does a pool actually cost here?
Almost nobody in this trade will answer that in public. We built a tool that does — pick your size, shape, depth and finishes and it returns a planning range for your build, with no phone call first.
Build yours and see the range