Does anyone know if companies/agencies have a specialized person in 3d-visualization?
I mean fast, high-end and photo realistic image creation for pitches, presentations, flyers, sites etc with v-ray or i-ray. For example: after modelling in CAD this person could save the team a lot of hours to make everything perfectly ready for the clients and send the files over ready to be merged or printed.
It could be a real challenge according to my teacher, but I should find out more what`s possible, maybe do more internships etc.
We have interviewed for this position a few times, with mixed results. Our designers tend to end up doing their own Keyshot, typically just enough to communicate the main form. Our agency has a good sized production staff that deals almost exclusively with print production, and there’s been some thought about setting up one of them with the rendering software. We typically need imagery for a variety of things, from packaging concepts, to products, to retail/POP/environments. Being able to quickly build and visualize 3D environments would be an asset as well; not like fully fleshed out architectural renderings, but sketchy stuff.
So - yes I’d say its a real position, but more likely with larger (20+) firms. There are also vendors for outsourcing this work, so you could consider positions there.
Similar. Here designers do their own CAD and do in house renderings. When we need more high level renderings for packaging and marketing we collaborate with outside firms like Pylot and 15four
Being able to quickly build and visualize 3D environments would be an asset as well; not like fully fleshed out architectural renderings, but sketchy stuff.
Yes, I have been looking into this; ofcourse a real life mockup/model is worth a lot, but what if you have three production ready concepts and you quickly want to check their proportions, material properties and reflections in a room, next to a laptop, on a table or clothe? I think an engineer or id will probably never start something like that, or it would take too long. But if in four hours all the work is done, that could be of value.
Well, before I got into ID I wanted to be a 3D-artist myself and did a lot of rendering, visualization, SDS modelling, VFX and stuff like that. But the thing that drove me away is, that at least here in Germany and from what I heard also in the rest of Europe, the working conditions are just horrible. You have to be crazily good to stand a chance and work a lot… that wouldn’t be the worst thing but the payment is so-so and the promotion prospects are very little. You have to realize that as a 3D-Artist in the end you are a craftsman in front of a computer. And you get treated and paid like that.
Apart from that - I think in-house-3D-artist in the field of ID is just not a good career choice since solutions like Keyshot are appearing. Well… something like 5 or 6 years ago it was not that easy to do an okay rendering of something. You really needed to know your shit and to know all the buttons and all the terminology. But that has changed. Today there are solutions like Keyshot. Keyshot is the canned instant food of rendering. It is not perfect but it does the job. And to be honest it does the job in 98% of the cases when it comes to mock up renderings. In fact sometimes you even have to be careful not to let it look too polished too early in the concept stage because people will get the wrong idea about it.
Personally I would advice you to rather pursue a career where you are paid for the way you can think and not for how good you are at operating a certain tool. Tools just tend to outdate too quickly, so to speak
I had an interest in this when I was in school and the reality is yes, there is work available - but expect it to be more freelance/consultancy based and don’t expect it to be very glamorous.
Keyshot and similar tools have raised the bar for what amateurs can do, and the time required to do it in. When I was in school setting up a Maya rendering meant building all of your lighting, setting a billion settings, and waiting 8 hours to hope your single core machine could crunch the numbers before your presentation at 8am.
There is still demand, though you’d need to up your skills in animations, video editing, and whatever else may get thrown at you, along with being prepared to learn how to re-model and clean up CAD data that didn’t import correctly and that’s all the customer will get you.
All and all it’s not a very glamorous or satisfying life style but if you can find some consistent customers you can probably pay the bills, but as a freelancer it’s a very feast or famine kind of industry. Even as a huge company we only send a few products out per year for renderings for product launches, everything else is done with real products that are photographed or used in videos.
There are a ton of firms out there that specifically do 3d vis. I work for one, but dont want to shamelessly promote the company (although, if any of you are looking for a good rendering partner, hit me up). Most of our work revolves around companies that have ordered objects and do not have a workable sample to photograph. We do work with a well known furniture company that will order a single couch, and we have to render it out in all the other color variations. It is cheaper to hire us than to custom order/ship/photograph all 30 couches.
One of the other reasons companies use photorealistic rendering is because it can just be cheaper. Most of our work with task furniture companies is done because the cost of renting a space, building all the equipment up (shipping it in, building entire cubicle scenes, tear down) bringing in the photographer, and developing everything can cost around $70k. We can get you 95% close to the actual image for closer to $15-20k (same number of images). Also, when the company updates their product line or wants to add to it, they dont want to have to re-rent the space (or it may not be available) that they used in the previous photos. That’s part of the glory behind doing it artificially. We just have to open the file and put the new product in.
Getting in the field can be fairly tough. Just like any other field, you need to prove your worth. The field is fairly narrow, so your chances of getting a position will be that much smaller. I do know that there are some larger companies that have their own in-house vis department, and they handle all the brochure work and animations. Most people that I know in the field have started out doing freelance gigs, building a portfolio to show your chops, and leveraging the work to get into a larger firm.
Some days the work isnt the most fun. I have sat and retoppled cad for hours, which is not any fun. But those are outweighed by the other project in which I have to learn new things or experiment to get it right. The position may not be for everyone, but to each his (her) own. I always gravitated towards the 3D work in school so I knew this is what I wanted to do. I am called in for creative work and ideation/sketch sessions with clients a lot, so i get to exercise my ID skills pretty frequently.
As Mrog stated, for client proposals and critiques most people just bust out something quick in Keyshot. It will get you the idea behind the proportions and material selections. Im not even about to get started on the different rendering engines, and why one is better than the other. In the end, there are several options that you can choose from to best suit your own needs.
j2cervin, please shamelessly promote. would love to see! We are always looking for this type of thing and I think some work examples would be helpful to the OP as well.
Thanks everyone for the good points, all very interesting to read! I have some comments on it.
@ yo:
At what stage in the design process was the presentation video you put in your previous post made? Because it does give a sense of how its going to look like in terms of size and colour, but it does not represent the finished product when it comes to its appearance.
What I mean is, how stable can design concessions be made, on the basis of non-photo-realistic visualizations?
As Mrog stated, for client proposals and critiques most people just bust out something quick in Keyshot. It will get you the idea behind the proportions and material selections. Im not even about to get started on the different rendering engines, and why one is better than the other. In the end, there are several options that you can choose from to best suit your own needs.
This is also what I mean, if you work really hard, do a lot of research, sketch-sketch-sketch, finally come up with 3 concepts to present, why not showing it as you actually intended it to be: as realistic as possible → as you probably imagined? Is using limited tools because they can do the job, but not showing the product for say as you fully imagined, selling yourself short?
And yes, there are a lot of render engines. I think so far Keyshot gives the a very good workflow (e.g. live-linking) and is easy to use.
No, you are not selling yourself short. Generally you are converging on a design solution, and after the design solution, colors and materials are converged upon. The solutions need the flexibility to be interpreted by other parties and honed. Rendering with photo real defined surfaces locks out possibility.
Michael’s video is likely purposely ambiguous in the finishes so as not to have the whole concept reduced to one viewer saying, “I am not a big fan of walnut veneer”. Getting stuck on a finish instead of being able to contribute to the design process.
Or, more importantly as mention above, you don’t want to convince a client that the project is finished and there is no more work to be done, just because you rendered a CAD husk into a environment. Viewers tend to think that if there is a photo of something that all the work is done.
but it does not represent the finished product when it comes to it`s appearance.
What I mean is, how stable can design concessions be made, on the basis of non-photo-realistic visualizations?
Actually you don’t need a lot to make very precise assumptions about the final outcome. The human brain is very flexible in that term. Put a Keyshot rendering of that hifi-system on the wall, put some cardboard boxes in correct dimensions in front of it and everybody will know exactely what the outcome will look like. Pretty pictures and actual photo realism are overrated when it comes to communicating an idea.
Look at Apple. They are selling millions of phones just by showing you super clean CAD-renderings of their products that are far away from the actual appearance of the thing when you put it on your desk… because it doesn’t really matter. It is just the idea you need to communicate right. And leaving things a little open can actually be very productive in some cases.
And the harsh truth is: even in those cases where it would actually be useful to have the “gimmick” of photorealism… nobody is paying for that unless it is absolutely necessary.
I think one thing to understand when using rendering is where it falls into the process. I have found that there are two types of rendering methods in the industry. The first is during the conceptual, quick stage. This is where Keyshot shines. It helps to convey the idea quickly at a low cost. The second side of rendering (the area I think you OP is looking into) is where the more costly and higher quality renderings are created. These are used for promotional materials and in the mass market. Usually this is going to be at the tail end of the design process and not used in creative crit sessions. The time and cost just isnt worth it when you are still making changes.
Here is a link to work that we had done for Crate and Barrel so that you can see where this type of work is used: L-Shaped Sectionals and Corner Sofas | Crate & Barrel This couch was not production ready when they needed the images for their catalog/web page. Also, it was in several colors, and it is a lot easier to change the material on the computer than ship a ton of them.
One of our other large clients that always has work coming is Steelcase. One of the big problems that we help them with is matching a scene that they have previously photographed but cannot get back into (currently occupied/too far geographically/etc). I cannot find the full brochure right now, but basically they had a photoshoot in a medical building as it was being built up. It is now fully occupied by a medical college so they cannot get back in there. They updated a chair line and we had to build up the scene so that the viewer would not realize it was a different location.
We have also had some clients that just simply could not afford to rent out the spaces they want. They have a wide range of furnishings that could work in anything from a hospital waiting room to a high profile exec. They wanted different environments for almost every line. You can imagine the cost would get very high when you try to photograph all of these different locations. We can do it in one day for what it would cost just to scout the location.
Image created after very specific details on the space:
We have also begun working with a major medical manufacturer (cant really say, but think yellow stretchers ) to show how tools are used in surgeries. Try to do that with photography!
5 stars! It`s about the details huh? Really like the sunlight and suitcase.
But yes, brochures, sites and portfolios. In those cases it can really be a big timesaver if done well.
) to show how tools are used in surgeries. Try to do that with photography!