We bet you have seen a rendered picture today online or offline. From jaw-dropping visual effects in blockbuster movies to hyper-realistic architectural visualizations, 3D rendering is a vital business process for most industries. As the demand for immersive and interactive experiences grows, understanding the ins and outs of the 3D rendering process has never been more crucial.
What is a 3D render? The experts from the Uni Agency star team will lead you through the details of how it works, its applications, and why it's an indispensable tool for professionals across various fields. Stay tuned, and let’s get started.
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What Is 3D Rendering?
Strictly speaking, 3D rendering is about converting 3D mesh models into fancy-textured and -lighted 2D images. The ending visualizations are smashingly lifelike and appealing. For customers, they are especially enticing, as they showcase the solution to their problems or desired product. Visualizations simulate photos in any aspect, including lighting, shadows, textures, and other real-life visual effects.
That’s why 3D renderings are crucial across industries from architecture to entertainment. Moreover, in light of the fact that 3D renderings encourage sales and customer engagement since with them, customers peak into the promised result far before it’s delivered.
How Does 3D Rendering Work?
Despite the complexity, the 3D rendering process can be described in several steps:
- Pre-Visualization (or shortly Previz) is about planning the scene and determining the necessary assets and shots.
- Modeling is creating the 3D geometry of objects in a mesh form.
- Texturing goes for applying surface textures to the 3D models. We described the texturing in detail in our previous blog post about 3D materials and mapping.
- Lighting is setting up light sources to simulate how light interacts with objects.
- Rendering is when the computer calculates the final image, factoring the previously installed data for lighting, shading, and textures.
- Post-processing or Refining is for enhancing the rendered images with visual effects like color correction and depth of field.
Each step is crucial, however, in terms of this article, we focus only on the 3D rendering stage only.
How Long Does 3D Rendering Take?
We all know that computer processing regardless of the format might take a while. The time of 3D rendering varies a lot, based on several factors:
- Complexity of the Scene. More detailed scenes with high polygon counts take longer to render.
- Rendering Quality. Higher quality settings, including better lighting and textures, increase rendering time significantly.
- Hardware. Faster CPUs and GPUs reduce rendering times a lot.
- Software Optimization. Efficiently written software and optimized settings improve render times.
In practice, rendering times range from a few minutes to several hours or even days for highly complex and detailed projects, especially for games, movie production, and multiverse. So investing in polygon optimization and hardware is a good choice.
Basics of the 3D Rendering Process
Although 3D rendering is quite complex, with proper tools, frameworks, and software, the task becomes achievable. For a good 3D render you might need sturdy software like:
- Blender is an open-source 3D software that is completely free, however, powerful. Blender comes with render engines — Cycles, Eevee, and Workbench — each one great for its use cases.
- Maya by Autodesk, is the industry's golden standard. Maya has been used in popular movies, including The Matrix, Avatar, and others.
- Cinema4D is very similar to Maya, being a paid option. However, it’s a powerful 3D rendering option used more among freelancers and movie-makers.
- 3dsMax is more specialized than other software, as it’s used for architecture engineering and product design. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that 3dsMax can’t be used for animation and movies. In practice, some blockbusters like Spider-Man 3 were done with its help.
So, let’s get a closer look at the spheres where 3D rendering can be especially profitable since the creation of 3D images and animations is costly in its turn.
What is 3D Rendering Used For?
Obviously, the price for 3D rendering varies with its complexity. The scope of the project influences the final cost enormously. However, in some areas, these expenses are easily covered by enhanced revenues that 3D renders provoke. Let’s consider some major examples of 3D rendering use cases.
Architecture
Architects, interior and exterior designers, and even landscape designers commonly use 3D rendering to visualize the outcomes of their work and present it to their customers before construction. In this case, 3D renders include all sorts of user experiences, including virtual walkthroughs and realistic previews. All of this aids a lot in design decisions and client presentations.
Product Design
Manufacturers and marketers create high-quality images of products before they are physically produced. This is useful for advertising, prototyping, and design validation. 3D renders prevent budget exhaustion and result in further higher revenues than in the case with traditional samples and blueprints.
Visualization
In film and gaming, 3D rendering brings characters and creatures to life with detailed textures, lifelike movements, and expressive animations. So now, creators are not restricted in their possibilities to present their ideas freely and budget-friendly.
Visual Effects
What is a 3D render without games and animation usage? It’s no less than essential in creating stunning visual effects. It allows filmmakers to produce scenes that would be impossible or impractical to shoot in real life.
Virtual Reality
3D rendering is key for developing immersive environments and realistic characters in virtual reality applications (read our material about VisionOS and Apple Vision Pro capabilities) and video games, enhancing the user experience with detailed visuals and interactive elements.
And if you think that games and virtual spaces are not for “serious” businesses, you’d prove wrong. With the advent of the metaverse and virtual reality gear, more and more conservative companies like banks, financial institutions, education, etc. refer to cutting-edge technologies to future-proof the brands. And they are right. The future is coming.
Conclusion
3D rendering definition is a comparatively new technology that already plays a critical role in many industries. Understanding the processes and applications behind 3D rendering helps companies create more engaging and realistic visual experiences than we used for 2D staying popular and loved.
Whether for visualizing future projects, creating compelling product images, or developing immersive games, 3D rendering is everywhere in the digital era. And Uni Agency team is ready to strike the viewers with new projects and clients. Not sure how a digital service benefits your business? Contact us for a brief presentation.
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