How to Get Realistic Product Images Using Rendering

You can design the greatest product this world has ever seen, and it won’t matter if nobody wants it. Creating appealing product images is essential for the marketing of your product. Let’s face it, sometimes a screenshot of the CAD model just doesn’t cut it. Traditionally, prototypes would be manufactured and real photos would be taken in a studio. This is time consuming, expensive, and not adaptive to change. That’s where renderings come in. Read on to learn a bit more about some of your options to create realistic product images with rendering.

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Topics covered in this post:

1. What Are Renderings?

2. SOLIDWORKS Visualize

3. 3D Render

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What Are Renderings?

In the sense of this blog, renderings are the result of generating an image or video of your 3D models. With the right tools, you can create photorealistic images that can be used in place of studio photography for marketing purposes, catalogs, and more! As renderings can be tied directly to your CAD models, any changes made to the designs can easily be rendered again. Not only does this save money and time by not having to produce a prototype and carry out a photography session in a studio, it also allows for better design verification by rapidly exploring different appearance options.

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SOLIDWORKS Visualize

SOLIDWORKS Visualize is a software that will allow you to import your CAD models, apply and tweak appearances, add scenes, both HDR environments or backplates, add realistic lighting, and more. With SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional, you can also create realistically rendered animations of your product.

This software is installed locally and utilizes local hardware resources. This is worth considering, as rendering is typically graphics intensive and can require higher end machines.

While it can be purchased by itself, SOLIDWORKS Visualize Standard comes with SOLIDWORKS Professional and Premium at no additional cost. SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional comes with 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS Professional and Premium offers at no additional cost.

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3D Render

3D Render is another option available to create renderings directly from your 3D CAD models. This is a 3DEXPERIENCE exclusive solution and is entirely cloud based. This is great news for those who don’t want to invest in the intensive hardware needed for local rendering.

Just as with SOLIDWORKS Visualize, you can create stunning product images. In fact, the image below is rendered with 3D Render. As you can see, the results are quite competitive with SOLIDWORKS Visualize.

With 3D Render, you can also apply and tweak material appearances, add scenes with lighting, and adjust camera properties, such as camera position, target, focal length, etc.

Currently, 3D Render is not capable of rendering animations, however, you can render a 360 sequence in which you can choose a number of frames to render as your product rotates 360 degrees. This can be used to automate a batch of individual images that take a look around your product, or they can be stitched together to create an interactive 360 degree image.

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Conclusion

Renderings can be a very useful tool, especially when working in product development. Instead of having to produce a prototype and find a studio to take product images, you can rapidly iterate different appearances, saving you time and money. This also helps you get ahead of the game with your marketing material before production has even started. Two available solutions that work seamlessly with your CAD data are SOLIDWORKS Visualize and 3D Render. SOLIDWORKS Visualize is installed locally and uses your local hardware resources. With SOLIDWORKS Visualize you can create still images and, if you have the Professional package, animations as well. 3D Render is a cloud-based role on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform and does not require any local installation. This means you can use it on any device with a web browser, including mobile devices such as tablets. 3D Render does not have the capability to create animations but can create 360 turntable sequences to provide an interactive rendering experience.

Contact us to learn which of these rendering solutions is best for your organization!