If you’ve explored our site or browsed our social media profiles, you most likely know what our renderings look like. You know the quality, the level of customization, and the variety of industries we serve. But what you might not know is what creating those renderings looks like behind the scenes. This blog post will give you a better idea of what goes into creating each individual rendering and what it looks like step by step using a real project as an example.
The Initial Idea
The first step of creating a rendering starts with the client when they reach out to us with a need for one. In this project, our client is a manufacturer of hospital furniture that wants to expand into the wider furniture industry. They sent us a brief description explaining that they wanted to show a cluster of different end tables and coffee tables all in one image. They also sent us some photographs of the tables they wanted us to model and some inspiration photos for the environment they wanted to show them in.
Building the Basics
This is where the true rendering process begins. Our team begins to build the architecture that will create the 3D scene. This includes building walls, placing floors, adding windows and architectural detail.
Often, clients provide 3D files or symbols of the product, which we would then begin placing in the scene. For this project, we were only given photographs of the product, so our team had to build the tables from scratch to create 3D models of the furniture.Once finished, we could begin placing the tables in the architectural space we built.
At this stage in the game, none of the architecture or furniture has finishes. This is what we call the “Grayscale” phase where we’re really just looking at the accuracy of the shape, size, and placement of the furniture. For most projects, we send a preliminary version of the rendering during the grayscale phase to our clients so they can check that accuracy. Here’s the grayscale preliminary for this project:
Adding Some Flavor
Once the grayscale has been approved or edits have been made, we can start adding a little color and personality to the scene. If finishes are provided, we can jump right into applying them to the correct surfaces (for example: light oak wood grain applied the surface of the table and chrome metal applied to the legs and supports). If the finishes aren’t provided, we can usually locate them on the manufacturer’s website or choose the finishes we think work best.
Applying the finishes sounds simple enough, but it requires a lot of preparation to make sure the finishes are made to the correct scale and “wrap” around the furniture correctly without making edges or seams look strange. Once all of the finishes are applied, we send another preliminary version to the clients to get final comments on the scene and make sure the finishes are correct.
Here’s the second preliminary:
Try, Try Again
Nine times out of ten, the clients are more than satisfied with the preliminary and we can move onto rendering out a final version. However, we’re not always so lucky. Sometimes the finishes we pull from manufacturer sites don’t look like the actual finish and they need corrected. And sometimes the scene just doesn’t exude the feeling that our clients wanted. When this happens, we work really closely with our clients to make sure we find a solution that meets their needs.
In this case, creating the perfect image meant starting over and rethinking the representation of the furniture. We came to the mutual decision that the renderings above looked aimless and unsettling and we wanted something that looked more realistic and purposeful. As we had worked with this client a lot in the past, they felt comfortable passing the ball to us to create a more flavorful and realistic setting for the new rendering.
And so we started again. We narrowed down the table selection by half because we felt that the sheer number of tables made it not only look cluttered and unappealing, but also made it difficult to focus on any one table. Then we began building new architecture based on some of our own personal style favorites. We decided to include some non-table furniture pieces to make the space look more realistic and then sent a new preliminary in grayscale:
Our clients loved the new setup, but had some small edits they wanted us to make. We switched out the couch and chair for two of their furniture pieces, added more foliage, and used hanging lights instead of standing floor lamps. Then we chose finishes from their site and sent a second preliminary with all of the finishes applied:
Finalize
Once this preliminary was approved, we could add the final touches and render out a higher quality version of the rendering, marking this project completed!
Take a look at the final version:
Our goal is to make sure that our renderings exceed our clients’ expectations. That’s why we try our best to make sure our clients feel included every step of the way. We believe it’s important to collaborate with our clients and make them feel comfortable letting us know if there’s something they don’t like. Because, in the end, our clients’ success is our success.
Do you need beautiful renderings and don’t want to be in the dark throughout the process? You’ve come to the right place! Upload your files to our Hightail site for a free quote or send us a message on our Contact page!