Product Lifestyle Rendering

Lifestyle and Hero Imagery

The use of 3D to showcase products in usage and in digital needs for web sites, online sales and print media gives the maximum flexibility to provide many options that traditional photography only would be too limiting as well as cost prohibitive to produce. In most cases, packaging imagery and imaging needs coincide with the production schedules of manufacturing which leads to using 3D printed materials and prototypes in photography in order to hit production schedule deadlines.

In Lifestyle photo shoot preparation, it is usually known as to how far along a prototype element can be used for on-set reference of the product to be used for the photo shoot. This prior planning allows for the use of stand in items which will be digitally replaced later, or to best gather clean plate images as well as HDRI and on-set survey images. The use of color charts and grey cards help to get accurate color reference. The images and plates will be used as lighting references and texture projection to ground the rendered imagery into the scenes to match reality.

The rendering styles can vary as needed, as CG rendering can be as clean as needed for a great looking product shot. The issues faced with this ability to clean items beyond what occurs in the real world can make the images appear fake or stylized. This is resolved with the usage of grunge maps, and compositing tricks to introduce some imperfections to the images to better ground them. Client preference and branding guidelines will always take priority when making decisions and are at the discretion of the decision makers in the marketing group.

Clean Plate

3D Lineup and Projection for Rendering

Composite and Final Render

Compositing the final CG into the photo plates will be prepared for delivery with color grading and any additional cleanup work for the best integration in the photography. These images can be used in all of the digital asset needs for web site imagery as well as print and packaging needs. Saving in various formats and keeping the highest resolution possible allows for cropping and adjustments later.

Photoshop and Nuke were used for the best compositing results. The multi-pass EXR files from the CG renders will be composited in to the plates and then sent into Photoshop for final grading and adjustments as well as layering elements such as branded elements and logos giving flexibility for any future changes or branding updates.

Keeping a master PSD layered file is the key to going back later for additional needs. This format also allows for TIF, JPG, PNG, etc. to be exported for the various destinations of these assets.