3D Product Rendering and Furniture CGI

White-background packshots for e-commerce and catalogues

A packshot has one job: show the product accurately, at a consistent size and angle, so somebody scrolling a listing page can compare it with the next item. We render on pure white or a soft studio grey, with a gentle contact shadow so the piece sits on the floor rather than floating, and we hold the camera height, lens and lighting rig fixed across the range. A side table and a wardrobe rendered months apart then look as though they came from the same afternoon in the same studio.

Because the image is generated rather than photographed, there is no background to mask out, and no dust, creasing or stray reflections of a photographer to retouch. Edges stay clean at any size, which matters on marketplaces that zoom on hover, and the same render can be exported as a transparent PNG for designers who want to drop the product into their own layouts.

• Front, three-quarter, side and back views from a fixed camera set.
• Pure white, studio grey or brand-colour backgrounds.
• Transparent cut-outs supplied alongside flattened JPEGs.
• Square, portrait and landscape crops prepared for each platform you sell on.

Lifestyle images and room sets that sell the setting

Packshots tell a buyer what the product is; lifestyle images tell them how it will feel at home. We design a room around the piece, choose the flooring, wall colour, props and daylight to suit the brand, and compose the view so the product is the clear subject rather than one object among many. A Scandinavian-style furniture range in our portfolio was shown this way: twelve visuals across a living room, a dining room and a bedroom, with the sofa, tables, chairs, bar stool and lighting each given a scene of their own.

Room sets are where furniture CGI saves the most money. A photographic set has to be built, dressed, lit and struck for every shoot, and a new colourway means doing it again. A rendered room set is built once and kept, so next season's armchair can be dropped into the same lounge under the same light, and it will sit beside last year's images in the catalogue without looking like the work of a different photographer.

In-situ images work in the same way for building products. A rooflight, door system or glazing unit can be shown on a convincing house or city rooftop, from outside and from inside looking up, long before a real installation exists to photograph.

Material, colour and finish variants from one model

Most ranges are sold in more finishes than any brand could afford to photograph. Once a product is modelled, each finish is a material change rather than a new shoot: oak, walnut and ash veneers; brushed brass, chrome and matt black hardware; a sofa in twelve fabrics on three leg options. The camera, lighting and composition stay locked, so the only thing that changes between images is the thing the customer is choosing.

We build each material from your swatches, physical samples or manufacturer codes and check it under neutral light before it goes into a scene. Weave, grain direction and the sheen of a lacquer are where product CGI is judged, so we would rather send a material test early than discover at final stage that a bouclé reads as felt. When one furniture client asked for a furry armchair to look less cartoon-like and a grey chair to be warmed to cream, both changes went out the same day, because the material was being edited rather than the scene.

Variant sets are quoted as a package, so the price reflects how much of the work is reused instead of counting every finish as a separate image.

Working from CAD, photographs or a dimensioned drawing

The quickest starting point is the engineering model your factory already uses. We accept STEP and IGES exports, native SolidWorks and Rhino files, and mesh formats such as OBJ and FBX. Engineering CAD is usually far heavier than a render needs, full of internal fixings, threads and tolerances nobody will ever see, so we strip those out, tidy the visible surfaces and rebuild soft parts such as cushions and upholstery, which CAD tends to draw as rigid shells.

Plenty of products, particularly older or hand-made lines, have no CAD at all. In that case we model from a dimensioned drawing and a set of photographs taken from the front, side, top and a three-quarter angle, ideally with a tape measure in frame. A physical sample helps with colour matching but is rarely essential.

• CAD (STEP, IGES, SolidWorks, Rhino, OBJ or FBX) or dimensioned drawings.
• Photographs of the product or a prototype from at least four angles.
• Swatches, finish codes or physical samples for each material.
• Reference images showing the look you want, including work by other brands you admire.

Exploded views, cutaways and detail shots

Some products need to explain themselves. A sofa-bed mechanism, a modular shelving joint, the layers of a glazing unit or the inner structure of a mattress are hard to show in a photograph and straightforward to show in a render, because the model can be pulled apart, sectioned or made partly transparent without damaging anything. Exploded views earn their place in installation guides, technical data sheets and trade presentations, where a specifier needs to see how the components fit together before committing to a product.

Detail shots sit at the other end of the scale: the stitching along an arm, the profile of a handle, the end grain of a table top. Close-ups expose any weakness in a model or a material, so hero pieces are built to a level of detail that survives a crop only a few centimetres across, and we tell you at quote stage if a particular close-up needs extra modelling time.

Turntable sequences and short product animations can be produced from the same model and are quoted separately when you need them.

Keeping a whole catalogue consistent

A catalogue assembled from several photoshoots over several years tends to drift. The white is slightly warmer one season and the shadows harder the next, and the camera sits a few degrees lower on the newer pieces. Customers notice, even when they cannot say what is wrong. For range work we agree a visual standard at the start and write it down: camera heights and focal lengths for each product type, the lighting rig, background colour values, shadow softness and the crop ratios each sales channel needs.

Every new product is then rendered against that standard, so a lamp added next spring matches the sofa delivered this autumn. Models and materials are kept on file, which makes a new colourway or a small design change an update rather than a rebuild. Retailers who stock several manufacturers use the same approach to bring supplier files of uneven quality into one house style before they reach the website, and a new member of the marketing team can brief an image by pointing to the standard instead of starting from scratch.

When the product is a fitted room

Some products are only understood once they are installed. A door front, a basin or a fitted wardrobe can be rendered as a packshot like anything else, but most kitchen, bathroom and bedroom marketing needs a complete room in which the range is fitted, with worktops, appliances, tiling and lighting all specified. That work runs through our kitchen CGIs service, which is set up for brochure room sets, door-range variants and imagery for retailers.

The two services share models, so a handle or tap rendered as a packshot here can be placed into a fitted room set without being rebuilt, and the materials match exactly between the catalogue page and the lifestyle spread. If your range includes both stand-alone products and fitted furniture, mention it at quote stage and we will plan the two sets together so cameras, lighting and finishes line up from the start. Brassware, radiators and lighting often move between the two, appearing as packshots in the catalogue and installed in the brochure.

What photography still does better

Rendering is not the answer to every product image, and it is worth being plain about where a camera still wins. If the product already exists, is in stock and needs a single shot on white by Friday, a good packshot photographer will often be quicker and less expensive than building a model. Images of people using a product, from someone sinking into a sofa to a hand adjusting a lamp, are more convincing photographed than rendered. Very fine, irregular textures such as long-pile rugs, sheepskin and some velvets can be rendered well, but they take more work to get right than they take to photograph.

Where CGI pulls ahead is ranges with many finishes, products that do not exist yet, room sets that would be expensive to build, and anything that has to stay consistent for years. Many brands use both: photography for hero campaign shots with people in them, renders for the catalogue and every variant behind it. Looking for prices? Our page on 3D rendering cost in the UK explains how image sets are priced.