My Journey for Product Visualization
I’ve been contemplating how to showcase our craft and multiple products to the public. We craft our products from raw materials, and we don’t rebrand or drop ship. We specialize in sand carving and some hand-guided CNC work on glass and wood. This article focuses on our journey to develop a workflow that includes 3-D animation videos for our products.
We mostly customize our small inventory.
Although we plan to make multiple copies of a single item, we follow a JIT (just in time) production approach. If your business model involves a large inventory, this approach may not make sense for you, and that’s okay. My journey has been about developing a unique understanding and workflow for our business.
We don’t want to build up a large inventory of products only to fall short of what people are looking for. We don’t want to spend the time and money creating a slew of free products to spread the word. OK, there is a range between ‘large’ and ‘a lot’ that we will need to resolve ourselves to make some products. But, as we progress and make more sales, we’re not going to keep making products just to have something to show and tell. We want to have a focused approach.
Goal
I want to explore some of the common elements of product promotion that I have encountered as a crafter and DIY’er. I’m not claiming that these are definitive or absolute workflow elements or known problems.
Craft and DIY businesses are getting more technical with using Pinterest pin creation, using Canva for creating content and learning about SEO. So why not explore how to create product 3-D visualization videos.? My goal is to craft a solution with free software and some additional skill sets to use the software.
Please follow along as we explore ways to funnel this approach to product 3-D animation on a budget.
Saving Consumables
Other than the 3-D animation videos that look cool, we can save on shop consumables by skipping the sandblasting steps. Some of the typical items are:
Since we use a dry-processing technique for our sandblasting, you may have different consumables.
Work Begins After Approval of Proof
What if the customer wants a custom design? When you browse through Etsy listings that permit customizing, you’ll find ‘pending approval of proof’ often. This can be the digital representation of the customer’s sketch or the actual digital product that the customer wants to be added to the product. Then the proof is back to the customer to be approved before we start work. We are now at the point of no return.
You could do a cut-out of the design and tape it onto the product (glass tray, trophy, cutting board, etc.) and send the customer a picture for approval. Perhaps providing an idea of the position of the design, how much space it takes, etc.
Certainly, a disclaimer statement about material tolerances and variations and actual color compared to the colors seen on the computer screen is necessary.
It would be nice to visualize the product variables that are potentially left up to the customer and seller’s mutual understanding.
What other production variations could be a concern when you customize a product? Leave your feedback below.
Product Visualization
What if we didn’t get that far in the transaction? You have seen my products on eCommerce and like them but can’t visualize them in your home. So you keep scrolling or searching for the perfect product.
True Story
We sold a glass tray that we were promoting as a spoon rest. They are deep etched sand carved with the design on the back of the glass tray. This tray is a dragonfly design. When she received the tray, she left feedback on the website that the tray was so beautiful that she did not have words to describe it, and it was going on her bedstand and not as a spoon rest.   Very nice feedback and affirmation of our work. Now I’m thinking, there is a marketing opportunity and I’m in this single lane when there are multiple lanes. Our spoon rest became a decorative item.
If my target audience wants to place my product in the kitchen, I need to have product placement videos and pictures with kitchen settings. What if someone comes up with an idea for product placement for the living room? Great, I’ll take my inventory and do a product placement shoot. Get some more product videos and pictures. Well, I need to stage the living room first. And I’ll need all my inventory, though it is limited at the moment considering all of the other products on my list that would look great in a living room setting. Oh well, when I get more product samples, I’ll stage another living room and get more videos and pictures (not going to happen).
For our business, the product starts as a digital representation, then we transfer that to the product. If we have time between the finished product and shipping, we’ll get some pictures. If you are doing laser work or Critcut designs for tumblers and other accessories, you know what I mean. Unless you are building up an inventory, staging a lot of products in a staged living room just does not happen every time.
Product Variations vs Visualization
Product visualization represents the idea of interaction. You can select a color and the product will change colors or features. An example is an eCommerce site that allows a new picture for each variation.
Do you include a short video like Etsy or Ebay allow? Do you have an on-screen personality wearing the product that changes color when the user clicks a button, or have a pitch person talking the view through the product (maybe I’ll include a YouTube video of an unboxing)?
How often would you update your product images and SHARE them on various social media sources if you could generate new videos or pictures to aid with visualizing your product?
What I want is a product video that provides some type of visualization, share that on social media and then change the video and share it again. There are ways to create these videos and they claim you don’t need any design or video editing knowledge. I’m interested.
Content Creation and Scroll Stoppers
There are a lot of services that offer video content creation. Some are like Canva. Others are more advanced with timeline editors and have offerings of premium video and image content. “Act now and you might be able to catch a deal for a lifetime subscription” (don’t do it). After reviewing a few of them, I would say you would want the next level up subscription before long because of the limited downloads or access to premium content. And I get a bit overwhelmed when looking through all potential services that are offered on social media or the web. Even when you check out Fiverr to outsource a project, there are a lot of.
After my initial zeal of creating a video, I feel buyer beware after all my research. Certainly, commercial products are successful for a reason. Many of you are more capable of analyzing and researching those products than I am. My problem-solving tends toward how to do it myself when I get to this stage.
Is there software (let’s make it free without an up-sale potential) that will allow you to create your own 3-D production animation? We use Inkscape and Gimp for our graphic work. Perhaps you use Photoshop and Illustrator; free vs paid. Both will work for this application. And though I have been out of touch with Adobe CS since the first couple of years they started the bundle, I’m going to go with another free program for 3-D animation. Blender is a well-known and well-documented program for this application.
So we have it, we’re going to use Inkscape and Blender to make product 3-D animation videos and images.
Software for 3-D Animation
Blender was selected as the animation program to generate the animation videos (read more). The product variations element of the video would be created with an SVG file (Inkscape). I wanted the product variation part of the project to be easily applied to the Blender video and we already use the SVG file for the sand carving part of the workflow.
Once the product model is created in Blender it will be used over and over again with each variation of the product.
Check out our documents for more details on the 3D animation process we use For this article, I just want to concentrate on the effect and quality of the 3D image and its application for product visualization videos.
concentrate on 3-D Animation applications for product visualization videos.
What Is the Goal?
The idea is to make the animation look like the glass tray is etched with the artwork (check our Youtube playlist). I know there are many ways to accomplish this in Blender. For now, we will use a background scene that is supportive of the design used on the glass tray. As we advance in the workflow and technical knowledge to create more interactive scenes you will see how this process will be great for product visualizations.
Supplies
Skills
What I want to accomplish is the proof of concept of making your own 3-D product animation video. So I’m going to skip some technical steps and some details that can be found in our list of documents. Keep watching our documents list as more articles are added to the list.
If you think this may be a bit outside of your present skill set, please at least continue to read, and see if this process is workable in your view or should I just go ahead and purchase one of those commercial services? Your feedback will be appreciated.
OK, let’s start!
Get Started with the Artwork
hummingbird model for Blender
Hummingbird two-tone negative image
In order to show our product variations in the 3D video we need to start with the 2D artwork that we already have. We wanted to make the 3D part of the workflow compatible with our existing workflow for sand carving.
Our technique is to import our 2D SVG artwork into Blender to create a 3D model as shown in the pictures above.
The artwork will be applied in two places in our workflow.
Import Artwork into Blender Template
This artwork file represents the product variations, in this case, the etched glass design. If I wanted a video of three different product variations in this same staged scene, say a kitchen scene, I would use the same Blender file for all three videos. I would just change the variations (SVG file) for each video.
We’ll need to make a couple of changes such that the file is compatible with Blender. You can follow the steps as described in our FAQ section, Modify SVG file for Blender. Now we have an SVG file that we will import into Blender.
So, with this Blender file (the staged kitchen scene and glass tray) and the artwork (SVG file of etched design), this would be our launching point. Inserting the product variation file is the next step.
Import Product Variation
From here we will import the SVG file and place it on the glass tray model to represent the etched glass portion of the design. Â The artwork is scaled to fit into the glass tray and positioned (rotated) to the top of the artwork to the top of the screen. More detailed steps are provided at the Product Variation file Import into Blender document.
Light, Camera, Action. Now What?
Since the Blender scene file was preconfigured and designed to create animation for the glass tray model, you are ready to switch to camera mode and check out the etched glass model with the artwork as it would be etched in the middle.
Using the timeline controls you can move the camera such that you can view the glass tray in different positions. Â The camera moves in 3-D space so the effects are realistic with the lighting, focal length of the camera lens, and the staged items in the scene.
Once you are satisfied with the video you can render the animation and complete the video. A reminder, there are many steps in between and through this process. But I want to make an animated product video and show you that it is possible without the commercial services and fees.
Conclusion
This process was to show you how a production 3D animation video could be produced without the commercial services that are all over social media and the internet. You can see the videos produced by this process at our product You Tube play list. There are two playlists, one for the current video and another for the older videos as we update and improve the process.
There are technical steps and knowledge needed for this workflow I have shown in the article. You will need similar knowledge to use commercial services too while producing your product video. So if this something you may be interested in, check which processes will be best for your products.
Let me know if you think is worth the effort, is it a good idea for product visualization or a value-added service to the customer?
What I Discovered Afterwards
While researching this idea of product 3D animation, I was looking for the ability to create a video I have described in this article. I could visualize what I wanted to accomplish. Then I came across Savvy while scrolling through Facebook. Check out their videos, this is exactly where I want to be with my 3D animation. I haven’t located their pricing information other than the CONTACT US button.
I’m going to stay on my journey to create these product 3-D videos. Who knows I might be able to create something that looks good at Savvy.
Please leave me some feedback. I’m going to expand on this topic and your feedback will help direct me.