Is there much business in doing only Product Visualisation, ie renderings for advertising? If so, what would be a good way of getting this type of work, and who are the clients?
Alternatively, is there business in taking someone’s design and producing the CAD model for production and visualisation? Again, who would you approach for this type of work?
Thanks
There is, but it’s hard to make those connections directly. Most of the time you will work as a contractor or freelancer for the marketing/ad agency that is handling the contracts. Most big corporations that farm out this kind of work have a few specific companies they work with so it’ll be very hard to just get your foot in the door.
You might be able to find some smaller companies that are looking for this but theres a lot of viz firms out there and only so much business to go around.
Hi Cyberdemon. Looking around, there seems to be a few companies that deal with Product and Arch Vis but very few that solely do Product Vis. I’d have thought, with the likes of Keyshot etc. that many companies would be doing stills in-house now, and outsourcing for animations? Is an external visualiser likely to be used only for advertising purposes?
Its a tough market to get into. I recently had a pretty big contract fall into my lap, but it was purely a random side job. They were previously outsourcing work to India/china, but they needed someone local. There is almost no way that I could compete on the wages that they wanted overseas. I believe most people will farm their work out to those countries. Here is a similar topic on asgvis with some good advice: http://forum.asgvis.com/index.php?topic=9359.0
We do most of our internal renderings in house. The stuff that gets shipped out is almost always animation either collateral for web (3d to be used in flash animations), or internal animations for movies etc. Most of our product stuff isn’t done in 3D simply because it’s easier to photograph the real product once it exists. Before it exists, it’s easier for us to render it out in Showcase/Keyshot internally because we’re less concerned about the quality but need to communicate a new product concept.
I do recall seeing something on Coroflot for a 3D Vis guy recently though. Maybe keep your eyes open.
In NY most of the ad agencies have a few in house people doing ID. Like POP, bar mats, drink stirrers, ashtrays, etc…who model and render for client review. I did some work like this out of school.
I personally know of more well established alumni from my college that specialize in 3D Vis, and two of them have made more or less a full time business out of it. That is largely based on tackling projects that are hard to photograph. For example, rendering complete office systems groups vs. a single product. Like it has been said already in this thread, most companies with in house design groups would rather photograph and prototype the real thing vs. paying someone to model it in 3D and then do renderings. The ROI is pretty low unless a customer demands a 3D rendering before a project can be moved forward. I would imagine that consultant firms, etc. would be more apt to do full blown 3D renderings as a tool to sell the client on developing the design, but manufacturers can probably just have it prototyped and photographed in most situations. Ultimately if you have a natural skill for it and you really excel in it maybe you could market yourself for it, but I think the demand might be low.