3D-modeled product photos are used more and more, instead of traditional photography. Regular product photography has it's challenges/limitations. 3D brings into this equation a lot of features that you can't achieve with regular photography.
Your product range images looks consistent even if your labels change language locally depending on your market region. New market regions won't cause a problem, new images can be created. The lighting and angle stays the same, only label changes. Making new images are also cheaper, all the ground work has been already made (3D-modeling, texturing and lighting)
Most ideal product type for a 3D-product image is a product that has the same type of package on all of the products. Like multiple colors, qualities or features. You only have to model, texture and light a single product for which you just change what is needed labels, colors etc. Your costs stay low and your images look consistent.
Once the digital twin of the product is made, it can be utilized in many ways other than just a product image. The product can be placed in POS displays or shelfs to make marketing pictures of the available POS materials. Or use it in other scenarios. Time is saved when you don't have to collect all the products and assemble the displays, just so you could take a picture.
If you do a lot of product development, 3D-visualization is a fine tool for that too. Because product development is a process, it takes time before you have the final product in hand and in stock. would it be great if you could have product images in your sales materials before the product arrives in your warehouse?
As a solution for this we can use 3D-modeling or if you already have CAD model of the product from the factory or some place else. We can make a 3D-model from a similar product or use actual sample product that you have gotten from the factory (or use the CAD, if you have one) add the desired colors, materials and graphics to it. A quality mock up of sorts, which you can use to premarket your product. This way you can get orders waiting for your products to arrive. Any differences with the real product can be adjusted afterwards if needed to make the final product image, so it matches the real one.
Biggest problems with product photography is the changes that happens to the product after the pictures have been taken. Re-shooting the product images requires a lot of work also the angle of the image and the lighting is hard to match making the new images in consistent, unless you re-shoot all the products. In an virtual photography studio there is no such problem, because you don't have to put anything away. The camera angles and lighting always stays the same so re-shooting or taking a new product shot is simple and consistent.
Whats is hard with photography but easy with 3D:
One thing 3D makes possible that you can't to with photographs, that is increasing the resolution of the image. Depending of the megapixels in your camera, the max output is the size that the camera can produce. For example 8MP camera takas a picture that is 3456x2304px If you deduct from that tha empty space surrounding the product the pixel get even lower. Of cource you can stretch the image in programs like Photoshop but because you are stretching the quality of the image decreases. The image gets blurry and unclear.
With 3D you can render the image to the size that you need. If you need a version of the product image to use in a 180cm high roll up, you can just make a new render of the same image with larger pixel count. You can make a render over 10 000px wide or tall.
