3D for product marketing

3D for product marketing:

A brief study

3D 3dmodel c4d CGI cosmetics marketing modo Packshot product vray render

3D is starting to play a bigger role in various industries and I wanted to try a few renders and summarize

some thoughts about the role of 3D in product marketing as well as some predictions for the future.

All images and videos where created for this presentation only.

Now is a good time for thinking 3D

For the professional photographer who has its business around products or even the casual shooter for social media may not seem an enourmous advantage to start making 3D, as you have to learn more softwares and deal with a whole world of technical aspects untill you feel at home to start creating. Even though sometimes mixing or producing a whole scene in 3D can come in handy for any creative, or even be the only way you could produce something out of this world, where I think it can make a huge impact is on industries that have a big product lineup with the need to design and market on a fast pace. A traditional problem with 3D renders use to be render time and this is why I think that now is the time that 3D is becoming very appealing.

Processing Power

With the latest generation of graphic cards by Nvidia the leap in raw processing is so substantial that it makes one wonder where are we gonna be in the next couple of years in terms of speed. Not only game engines like Unreal are taking advantage of this processing power but maybe we are not far to see final frame rendering software like V-ray or Octane come close to “real time rendering’’.

Whats the advantages of a 3D workflow?

Visualize design in context • Eliminate material imperfections • Library of models
Flexibility to create backgrounds and scenarios • Create stills, animations, AR/VR • Reuse ready to render scenes
Create marketing content before production • Create and collaborate in a remote environment

Design in Context

Change lights, material colors, opacity, metalnes and get a feel of the product on the early stages of design.
To save time, use ready to render scenes of a model to update labels and pack shots to the online store.

A digital woodwork and paintshop

for backgrounds and scenarios

With 3D is easy to create, reuse an edit props to compose scenes that support the products. Drag and drop from a library of ready to go assets or create specific models with the exact shape and textures you want without the need for physical storage or a woodwork and paint shop (not so cool though, but very practical).

Animation

With social media booming and screens getting better, video is already playing a bigger role for marketing.
I hope our cities don't get crowded with too much information but its certain that we are going to see a lot more screens around and so more videos. For some products, 3D animation can have a good advantage with controlling reflections and material imperfections or simply to create surreal worlds with objects bigger than life.

Some thoughts and predictions

With more ready to go assets and better photogrammetry, the technical aspect of 3D could be less steep in the future and to create a 3D scene would be almost as a simple drag and drop set dressing where one with good lighting and compositing skills could jump in to create new images without too much technical hassle. I imagine we'll work with an Oculus and gloves, more like a virtual photography studio. Grab models from a library, place and arrange the scene with your hands, set the lights with hundreds of modifiers at your disposal and see it all change in real-time rendering.

To be prepared for this near future and identify where a company can benefit from 3D technology can make a big impact on production time and costs.