Marketing and promoting a product have surely come a long way from where it used to stand a few decades back. This evolution of promotional strategies has been fueled mainly by breakthroughs in internet technology. And now it is again being revolutionized by photorealistic visualizations.
What are Photorealistic Visualizations?
What are they, really?
Nowadays, it is practically every day that you come across glossy, slick, and beautifully lit photographs. They appear like absolute masterpieces of supremely talented photographers. What most onlookers do not realize is that more often than not the said photographs are not even real.
These images are usually computer-generated, realistic-looking 3D renderings of the products being marketed. Mostly, these renderings are used in cases where the products do not even exist yet. One may think that these renderings would need huge teams of CG specialists to be impressive. But that is not the case. Mostly engineers and designers are the ones who are creating such renderings.
What is 3D rendering?
Simply put, it means creating a three-dimensional image with the help of software. From architecture to stimulators, movies to the visual effects in them, medicine to environment, this technique of image creation is used in every industry.
This ‘rendering’ provides the final appearance to a conceptual design. Various visual effects like texture mapping, reflection, motion blurs, shadows, shading, and others are used to acquire the desired look. 3D rendering was once the monopoly of specialists. However, with increasing importance of 3D rendering in varied sectors, more and more engineers and designers are gradually embracing the technology.
Why is Product Visualization Used by Companies?
Product visualization in 3D helps the product development process in a number of ways. These renderings, if put in layman’s terms, help to ‘sell’ ideas and/or ‘concepts’ long before they start existing in a concrete form.
In the product development sector, 3D renderings can:
- Enable engineers to identify potentially problematic areas of the end product. They can immediately get to correcting it and shorten the time to market.
- Enable manufacturers to save both time and money considerably. 3D renderings help to estimate the cost, experiment with design techniques, understand the pros and cons of a particular development process, etc.
- Clearly convey product information to the clients, starting from what it is about to how it can be assembled or used.
However, it is not just the development part where the influence of 3D image rendering stops. Product marketing is one area that has benefitted even more from 3D rendering than product development.
Multiple reasons can be sighted to explain why the use of 3D renderings makes a better marketing strategy:
- For starters, the virtual representations give an immaculate and crystal clear image of the very same. These make reaching out to the clients much easier. They can view the product from various angles and scrutinize the detailed features as closely as they wish to.
- 3D renderings have much flexible usability in a number of marketing platforms. Rendered models include visuals, walkthroughs, and snapshots. All these make presentations as well as marketing collaterals much interesting and a lot easier to understand.
- When one, be it an organization or an individual, is marketing a product, a factor that they must consider seriously is that of finance. Neither penny-pinching nor overspending is an option. However, well rendered 3D models achieve the intended targeted at an economical price. Besides being highly effective, 3D renderings help to cut down the cost of marketing to a bearable amount.
- Additionally, 3D renderings help to speed up client approvals and iterations. After the finalization of the project, the clients may ask to make some changes or alterations. These changes can be swiftly incorporated in the 3D models and presented back to the client at the earliest. This ensures that all the details of the design are updated in a minimal span of time.
Today’s overly competitive market has made it necessary for businesses to invest in constant innovation and effective implementation of worthy ideas. Competitive edge and individual success is achieved by the smart players. Three dimensional modeling and rendering enables a business to make its prototypes examinable even before production. These also make the development and marketing processes easier and cost-effective. In a nutshell, 3D modeling and rendering make businesses smarter.
