Pikcells 3D artist using substance painter to adjust textures on a 3D model

Large volume product capture.

We were recently tasked with creating thousands of digital assets [CG versions of our clients products] so they could start to build a web based product catalogue. The resulting digital assets would be used as additional marketing and sales tools that could be accessed and used in a variety of ways.

Photogrammetry, which we've featured in a previous lab post, was the obvious choice to accurately capture the fine surface geometry and high resolution texture detail.

Digital Asset Capture and Publishing

Automating the capture process.

With thousands of products to capture we wanted a way to speed up the photography process without compromising on quality so set about building our own portable rig designed around the specific product type.

All we have to do is place the product on the turntable, focus the cameras then start the software. The capture process is then automated resulting in specific data points that can be queued up for processing into a 3D mesh.

The rig captures each product [720 images] in around 5 minutes.

Processing reality.

Once captured, the data for each product is white balanced and colour corrected then fed through our processing pipeline which translates the photography into a very high resolution 3D mesh and textures.

A 3D artist using Reality Capture to create a stone in 3D

These raw models are practically unusable in most 3D software packages so have to be optimised into 3 levels of detail.

Now one of our CG Artists can spend time carefully setting up the material properties so they match exactly to the real life version.

A 3D artist amending a photogrammetry model in Substance 3D

Future proof.

Once the materials are recreated the digital assets can be packaged up for a range of uses from photo-realistic marketing images [below], configurators & design tools or interactive web based product viewers with Augmented Reality built in.

We produce high, medium and low quality versions of each digital asset to account for different use cases that may arise. We also retain all the original data in case we need it for some future tech that can handle the raw information.

image-8c22a28e926b45408af77a00e0baa606fbf1a190-3000x2000-jpg
image-54abc0cb774c0eb370eda9165de3d830dad22984-3000x2000-jpg
image-19c22a16c18662857f4293f9a9ff01f2e13e6b05-3000x2000-jpg

End to end.

The interactive digital assets can then be used by your organisations internal teams and embedded into web pages with no additional plugins or downloads. Each web based 3D model we provide will also function in Augmented Reality mode.

This end to end service allows us to capture products then deliver cutting edge interactive and marketing solutions to get the most out of the digital assets.

Get in touch to speak to us about your project.

Join our team!

Ready to start a project?

Please fill in the form below and a member of our team will be in touch to discuss your project.