What is virtual photography?
Virtual photography describes the process of producing images of a product (or set of products) using computer-generated assets. It is complementary and not intended to replace traditional photography. It can benefit companies that create product photo shoots with a high volume of image variations, such as camera angle and zoom, and product variations, such as color and style. Virtual photography can be done entirely in 3D (assets and environments), or it can combine 3D (main assets) and 2D (environments and other assets).
Why Substance 3D for virtual photography?
Substance 3D apps are easy to use compared to many traditional 3D applications, and as a result, they lower the barrier to entry for new users aspiring to create 3D content. These aspiring users are often already on staff in certain industries, so companies don't need to hire specialized 3D teams to begin creating. Creative Cloud power users such as graphic designers, digital producers, and photographers can now use their existing skills to create virtual photography.
Focus on customers in industries such as e-commerce and retail, consumer-packaged goods (CPG), home/furniture, electronics/appliances, and footwear. These industries often have 3D aspiring users, who already do product shoots, product design, catalog creation, and merchandising. Creative agencies are also well positioned to begin adopting virtual photography because of their existing Creative Cloud skills and the nature of their work, which typically involves creating content that requires frequent client reviews and iterations.
How can virtual photography help businesses?
Businesses with physical products such as retail and e-commerce, consumer-packaged goods, home/furniture, electronics/appliances, and footwear are often required to provide current, fresh content used for multiple channels, including social media, product web pages, and print. Creating these images often involves traditional photography methods, which have limited customization and costly operations and logistics.
Virtual photography enables businesses to produce photorealistic images, at scale, while preserving a high level of quality and unlocking new creative possibilities. Companies that have invested in virtual photography have reported up to a ten-fold cost reduction versus traditional photography.
(Note: Do not target 3D expert industries like VFX and animation studios, video game studios, and so forth. Virtual photography won’t be relevant to them at this time.)
Key benefits
- Drive revenue—3D and virtual photography enable faster time to market and more flexibility in marketing. Faster time to market enables businesses to realize revenue faster from new products. And more flexible marketing means changes can be made to product representations much faster to capture new and emerging markets.
- Save money—Incorporating 3D into the content production process can reduce the amount businesses spend on repetition and iterations for traditional product photo shoots. According to Wayfair, “3D is 10x cheaper than the cost of traditional imagery and drives key next-generation merchandising experiences." (Source: Wayfair public presentation at the National Retail Federation 2020)
- Save time and increase content velocity—3D components used in virtual photographs, such as product models and scenes, can be quickly edited and reused to provide unlimited variations. Exporting different file formats and camera angles can be automated. Ease-of-use apps lower barrier to entry for aspiring 3D users and reduce the time needed to ramp up.
Real-world results
- "Coca-Cola created dozens of 3D designs created in days instead of weeks, and saved $200K in photography costs using virtual photography."—Benny Lee, Global Manager of Experiential Design, Coca-Cola
- "3D is 10x cheaper than the cost of traditional imagery and drives key next-generation merchandising experiences."—Wayfair, NRF 2020 Annual Convention, 2020
- "We saw a 20–30% increase in conversion rate for items with 3D models and imagery."—Wayfair, NRF 2020 Annual Convention, 2020
- “3D has provided us many benefits: A key aspect of 3D is that the imagery can help teams make important decisions in their meetings.... An area where 3D provides additional benefit is that it can help hasten the decisions not only by being faster but also earlier in a company’s development cycle.... Visual merchandising now uses 3D assets to design key looks within the floor plans of our stores. 3D in this space really allows us speed, flexibility, and scale.“—Target, Target’s 3D Journey from Product Design to Photography, Adobe MAX 2021
- Ben and Jerry's has saved hundreds of hours of labor and thousands of dollars per month by making the move to virtual photography. (Source: How Ben & Jerry’s is leading the virtual photography revolution)
- "Virtual photography can reduce up to 60–70% the number of photos."—INDG, Discover Why the Best Product Shots Are Often Made in 3D, Adobe MAX, October 2021
- “We like that we can iterate quickly with Substance Source/Player to get a strong base and then add the finishing touches in Substance Painter.”—TJ Mitchell, 3D Artist, Bose
- By experimenting with photo-realistic 3D models to create 2D images, companies such as Wayfair have found that they are able to reduce the overhead associated with traditional catalog development methods, while creating the models they need to deliver augmented shopping experiences for their customers. Using similar processes, Coca-Cola transformed its traditional prototyping process for package design, reportedly saving 33% of the cost of a project’s visualization phase. (Source: Deloitte Insights, Augmented shopping: The quiet revolution. Uncovering value for retailers and customers through 3D technology, January 2020)
- Shoppers have high expectations for retailers’ image and video content on an online product page, and a lack thereof is a consumer deal breaker. According to a January 2019 survey from product experience management platform Salsify, US digital shoppers expect an average of about six images and three videos when looking at a product on Amazon or another retailer. (Source: eMarketer, Online Shoppers’ Expectations for Visual Merchandising Rise Dramatically, April 2019)
- Amazon uses these 3D assets as the foundation for a variety of customer experiences. Customers can spin a product 360 degrees to inspect it from every angle. They can use Amazon’s View in Your Room feature to see what furniture will look like in their homes, or the Showroom feature to create virtual showrooms by mixing and matching products online.
- “Adobe Substance 3D is an integral part of our 3D production workflow. The nondestructive workflow offers many advantages that helps us create 3D assets that transform passive imagery and video into active experiences that customers can tailor to their own needs." —Durai Murugan Veerasamy, Senior Operations Manager of 3D, Amazon
Helpful links
Resources
For inspiration on virtual photography, consult the following Substance Magazine stories: