November 15, 2022

3D Rendering: Optimizing Product Photography for Cost-Effectiveness

3D Rendering: Optimizing Product Photography for Cost-Effectiveness
Preet Singh, CEO & Founder of imagine.io

Preet Singh, CEO & Founder of imagine.io

Getting Started With 3D Furniture Rendering

Furniture rendering can be an extremely affordable and easy alternative to traditional photography. A product is created with 3D modelling software and then visually illustrated with materials and lighting. Models are produced using sketches, photos, drawings specifications and other CAD software.

By using 3D rendering, a product can be customized to the desired specifications, before it even exists, and at an optimal level with optimum accuracy. This means that you can bring products to life and create visuals for them even before manufacturing, and costly design errors can be caught quickly. In the same sense you can quickly change colors, materials, finishes and more depending on your requirements. 

In addition to producing imagery prior to manufacturing, 3D rendering gives you the flexibility to create stunning photorealistic visuals to help you market your products accurately, and in a more cost effective and efficient way, both before and after manufacturing.

The Benefits Of 3D Rendering With imagine.io

The need for content across eCommerce, social media and sales has put the furniture industry under strain. It seems there’s never enough images and videos to satisfy the demand, and the amount of time, creative direction, and human resources required to get countless images out to the market is nearly impossible to keep up with. Never mind trying to coordinate the studio space, rentals, and on-location shoots to create beautiful content.

Home furnishing manufacturers and retailers can benefit greatly from 3D rendering, especially as competition within the home furnishings space becomes more fierce. By improving the quality of your content with 3D visualizations not only increases efficiency but also reduces overhead costs and greater sustainability to this sector. Namely, 3D rendering with imagine.io makes it possible to eliminate the long timelines and the unknown costs (often more than originally quoted) of traditional photography.

To explain what we mean, we went directly to the source: pro photographers, and narrowed down all of the costs and time involved in traditional photography versus using a DIY, low-skill 3D rendering platform like imagine.io to produce content. 

Let’s explore…

Cost And Time Savings: Photography vs. imagine.io 3D 

In order to drill into how imagine.io 3D saves you both time and money, we’ve sourced pro photographers to provide us with quotes on the average cost of creating content for 20 products with 4 silos, 2 lifestyle shots, and 1 video for each product. That's a total of 80 silos, 40 images, and 20 videos.

 

Silo Photography

In order to successfully showcase your products on eCommerce channels and on your own website, silhouettes or "silos" are integral to the content you produce. You must create multiple silos from every angle of your product, resulting in a number of photos for each product. The breakdown in cost and time for 20 products with 4 silos each (80 silos total), is as follows:

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Your total cost for simple silo photography will run you around $10,520 and 3 weeks in photography.

This does not include booking a photographer or studio time depending on where you plan to shoot the silos.

In addition to your silhouettes, you'll need to create lifestyle imagery to support each product. In order to create lifestyle photos, you will either need to choose between studio photography and on-location photography (typically by renting an AirBnb or luxury resort). Below you'll find the costs and time related to selecting studio or on-location photography for your lifestyle images.

Studio Photography For Lifestyle Shots

If you decide to hire a studio, you’ll have to wait an average of two weeks for studio time, and you’ll spend an average of $4,500/day with an average of 10 days of photography before you even have raw files, which doesn’t include post-production edits and retouching, which can cost thousands of dollars on top of your original fee. Additionally, you are limited on how much content you can create in the studio with less flexibility and image customization.

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Your combined total so far is $60,160 for 80 silos and 40 lifestyle images. Your timeline is anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks.

You’ll still need to review the files and determine the shots you like. Sometimes, this can result in retouching or worse, a reshoot, which can cost you thousands more and extend your timeline even further.

On-Location Photography For Lifestyle Shots

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So, for an on-location shoot, plus silos, you’re now spending $60,890. You’ll then need at least 2-3 months before your images are delivered for review.

As mentioned above, you may need to spend more time on editing, retouching or worse, reshooting.

Now, we need to add video to the mix. 

Video Production

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Your total costs for 20 products with silos, lifestyle photography and video is going to land you somewhere around $140,000!

Your timeline for all of your images and videos is going to take an average of 6-8 months to produce.

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There has to be a better way. And there is.

3D Rendering with imagine.io

While traditional photography still has its defenders, more businesses than ever are realizing the exorbitant costs and weeks of wasted time it takes to get attractive product images. And since 3D rendering technology has advanced to a place where digital artists can create photo-realistic images, the possibility of putting together attractive product images at a minimal cost has become very real.

You must first understand there are up front costs with 3D rendering to create your product models, but once models have been created, your time, money and ability to create stunning visuals becomes easier than ever before.

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Therefore, your total cost for 20 products that require 4 silos, 2 lifestyle scenes, and 1 video each is $14,000. Your expected time of delivery for all of your product imagery and video is under 4 weeks.

Plus, once you have all of your models created in imagine.io, you can create over and over again without the time limitations of traditional photography and reshoots.

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Thus, saving you a whopping 90% in costs and 80% in time compared to traditional photography.

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3D Rendering: Better Than Photography

The benefits of 3D rendering for furniture and home furnishings is widely beneficial in comparison to traditional photography. Your ability to reuse and repurpose all of your 3D content over and over again will save you time, money, and reduce waste in the short and long-term. Just think, you may spend $140,000 on lifestyle photography for a specific season or collection. You are then stuck with the same set of images for every product unless you go through the process again and spend another $140,000. 

If you’re concerned about the quality of 3D rendering and imagery, you shouldn’t. The imagery created on the imagine.io platform is better than anything you’ll see from studio photography.

See for yourself...

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See imagine.io 3D In Action

With imagine.io you can continuously adapt your imagery regardless of season or collection once your models are created. Your only fee is $50 per render. This cuts costs by at least 90%, while speeding up your time to market by an average of 80%. The point is that 3D scales with you and your business, setting you up for continued growth and sustainability. 

See how simple it really is: