Visualisation

Stock, 3D, photos, or AI? Four ways to create mockups

by Frans Blok · Published 18. March 2026 · Updated 20. March 2026

A mockup is a representation of a digital product in a real-life situation, with the goal of enticing potential buyers to purchase. Or, to put it more customer-friendly, to show customers how a work of art fits into their lives. I have created hundreds of mockups over the past few years, some quite realistic, others completely absurd. In this blog post, I show a selection of those mockups, created in four different ways.

Abstract map of the Netherlands in a white frame on a wall in a living room in springtime — Living room in spring vibes (method 4: AI)

Print on demand

I have had a webshop at the print-on-demand platform Art Heroes since 2014. Over the years, I have added about twelve hundred photos, artist impressions, virtual reliefs, kaleidoscopics, world maps, and other work to that shop. If you’d want to exhibit all of those physically, you would need a museum the size of three times the Boymans in Rotterdam. It would be a substantial investment. But that is the big plus of print-on-demand: the only investment required is the time it takes to upload a work and add descriptions and tags.

Photo of the draught mark on the rusty hull of a ship, in a golden frame on a red wall in a museum — Rust in a gold frame (method 3: photo)

Mockups

But there is also a major downside: customers do not buy pixels. People are much more inclined to buy a work of art if they can view it in real life. If they can imagine what that work looks like on the wall in their home. If they get a feel for the atmosphere that work will evoke in their living room, bedroom, or office. To bridge that gap between a flat pixel file and a spatial experience, the mockup was invented: a visualization of the work in a realistic situation. Or perhaps rather in an unrealistic situation, because that could make the work stand out among all those millions of other uploads waiting for a buyer somewhere on the worldwide web.

Mockup of a colored paper cutting world map in a living room with matching colors — In a living room with matching colors (method 1: stock)

Sample rooms

There are four ways to create mockups. The first and easiest method is to use existing templates. Art Heroes, for example, has several dozen sample rooms in stock. A number of living rooms, a kitchen, a small hallway, an office, a few bedrooms. All fairly standard, no extravagant interiors but neutral spaces where just about everything can blend in. And there are many more such templates to be found on the internet, for example at Pexels, Unsplash or, what’s in a name, Mockup World. Some are free, others can be used for a reasonable price. And generally speaking, they look very slick.

Light hallway with the Rotterdam skyline in sepia hues as wallpaper — The Skyline as photo wallpaper (method 1: stock)

Standard

The major drawback of those standard situations is that everyone uses them. Anyone searching for “similar images” using Google Image Search will not so much find similar images as identical ones, with the only difference being the artwork on the wall. Furthermore, as mentioned, those sample rooms are quite ordinary. You won’t easily find an old water tower with a view of the Wadden Sea, or a tiny house in an Icelandic snow landscape. Let alone a Gaudi-esque city palace or a Corbusian Mars habitat.

Caleidoscopic artwork on a wall in a light and modern living room with a view of a beautiful landscape — Room with a view (method 2: 3D)

3Develop

That’s why I switched to method two a long time ago: modeling and rendering interiors myself. That is, after all, the core business of my company 3Develop: that’s where it all started in 2013, after I had mastered the art at various architectural firms in the decades prior.

Twee women do the downward facing dog in a yoga classroom with a buddha and a caleidoscopic wallpaper — The downward facing dog (method 2: 3D)

Laborious

The interiors I created with those techniques were somewhat more specific: a yoga studio, a wellness center, a wedding venue, a pub, a brutalist museum. But that method also has a major drawback: it is quite laborious. I spent weeks trying to make realistic materials, adding authentic details and perfecting the lighting. And after every adjustment, everything had to be re-rendered. My poor little laptop toiled away for many, many hours; I don’t want to know how much electricity those images have cost me. And even with all that effort, it remains difficult to make a picture look really real. As a result, I only made some fifteen mockups that way.

Photos

A weight was lifted from my shoulders when I switched to the third method: taking photos of existing interiors to virtually hang my own work on the wall there. In fact, any space qualifies, but in practice, it was mainly cafes and restaurants that yielded usable mockups. But also museums, entrance halls of apartment buildings, friends’ living rooms, metro stations, and billboards on the street provided good base material.

Botanical artwork on photographic wallpaper in a Berlin stairwell — Photo wallpaper in a Berlin stairwell (method 3: photo)

Phone

Sometimes I used my professional camera, but actually, a phone works just as well. After all, such a mockup is not meant to be printed on a few square metres of canvas; you want to view it on Pinterest, Facebook, or other social media. And that is where a Samsung touch provides just that extra bit of realism.

Framed photo of a tree in a dune landscape in he Netherlands on a wall in an unspecified room — Samsung realism (Method 3: Photo)

Limits

I have created more than a hundred of those kinds of photo edits. But as was to be expected: there, too, I ran into the limits. At a certain point, you get the feeling that you have seen all the variations. Moreover: you still don’t get into truly special spaces that easily. On the bridge of a starship, for example, or in a dilapidated Victorian library.

Post-apocalyptic post office with on the wall a large photo of a magnolia — Post-apocalyptic post office (Method 4: AI)

AI

Fortunately, around that time, AI image creators emerged: Firefly, Leonardo, Ideogram, and many others. And so I discovered a fourth method. Once again, a world opened up for me. Now the possibilities were literally endless. An interior in matching or contrasting colors? Done in thirty seconds. Two aliens studying one of my world maps? No problem. A post-apocalyptic post office? Coming right up! A museum for dolphins or the living room of a mole family? You ask, we deliver. A cow in the living room? Sure!

Living room with a cow underneath a framed photograph of a cow — Pedigree mockup (method 4: AI)

Drawn

Of course, mockups don’t always have to be photorealistic. On the contrary, it can actually be very funny and/or surprising to place a work in a drawn, sketched, or painted context. Surrealism, impressionism, cartoon, anime, or steampunk—AI handles it with ease. I must say that I have mixed feelings about that, too. After all, art really becomes mass-production this way. I wouldn’t put an AI-generated artwork itself in my webshop. But as a vehicle to mockup my own work, I can live with it just fine.

Color map of Rotterdam, framed on a wall in a bedroom — The color map of Rotterdam in a sketched bedroom (method 4: AI)

Framed black and white drawing of the old Bijenkorf department store by architect Dudok in Rotterdam in a black and white living room — Drawn Bijenkorf in a drawn living room (method 4: AI)

Real people

With the help of those image generators, it has also become much easier to populate mockups with real people, or well, real-looking people. Any resemblance to existing persons is purely coincidental. A woman on the couch reading a book with a work of the same title on the wall behind her, a hunk holding up a painting on a tropical beach under a starry sky, or an LGBTIQ+ couple posing by the rainbow planet? Done in half a minute. Although it is still advisable to check the number of fingers, because AI sometimes struggles with those kinds of details.

Woman on a couch, reading a book entitled Ad Astra, with behind her a framed print of a digital artwork with the same name — To the stars (method 4: AI)

Queer couple, just married, posing in front of a Jupiter-like gas giant in rainbow colors — Just married (method 4: AI)

Free

The AI market is constantly evolving. Initially, you can often do quite a lot with a free account at such an image generator. But over time, the possibilities become increasingly restricted. Logical, of course; they want you to take a paid subscription because, after all, they have to pay all those photographers and artists whose work they use to train their models. Or, well, that is what they actually should be doing.

Spaceship with two aliens studying a screen with a pixelated world map — We have been watching your planet (method 4: AI)

Retro futuristic living room with a fabulous view and on a wall a composition with the names of all bodies in the solar system — Retro futuristic living room (method 4: AI)

Imagination

But new free image generators are constantly entering the market. Consequently, I have by now generated thousands of fictional spaces. And in nearly seven hundred of them (and counting), I have hung my own work on the wall. The only limit I still run up against is that of my own imagination. By now, I have seen almost every conceivable space, from cozy houseboats to alien spaceships and from industrial lofts to Indian restaurants. From New York hotel rooms to Icelandic mountain huts and from tropical beaches to autumnal forests. Virtually, my work has been everywhere; now let’s make it real…