Product Design: Leveraging 3D Workflows Across the Entire Creation Pipeline

Let’s outline the resulting benefits of creating a digital material library.

Having designers access extensive libraries of digital twins will drastically reduce the CMF and concept phases. The procedural nature of the Substance 3D tools allows for quick changes of parameters and rapid viewing, collaborating, and deciding on design intent.

Creatives and decision-makers alike are able to align much faster by visualizing the dozens (or even hundreds) of variations allowed by 3D assets. Changing color, patterns or finish is as easy as dragging a parameter slider!

Here’s a fun example of how two designers quickly went from sketches to creating multiple variations of a sushi-inspired computer mouse. The parametric nature of Substance 3D materials allowed them to create a simple 3D model and create variations of their design within Substance 3D Painter. They even made their assets a reality by 3D printing them and are now looking to launch production in the near future.

3D allows designers to visualize photoreal assets, change them in real time, and make sure everyone is aligned before that first prototype is made. No more time is wasted on manufacturing and shipping many samples; no more back and forth with prototypes that are time-consuming and costly to produce. The need for physical prototypes can be heavily reduced, and eventually even be bypassed, thus reducing needless environmental costs.

Furthermore, the physically-based nature of Substance materials, based on the physical values of light and matter interacting, assures consistency between different apps and rendering engines. There are plugins and integrations for all major DCC and rendering apps out there, such as Rhinoceros 3D, CLO, Blender, Corona Renderer, and Unreal Engine.

A telling example is that of designer Hussain Almossawi, who worked for brands such as Adidas and Nike, and created a simple model of a shoe. All the design efforts were contained within the material. See for yourself how much the initial 2D sketch, 3D asset, and final 3D print are identical.

The procedural nature of the Substance 3D tools allows for quick changes of parameters and rapid viewing and deciding on design intent. The flexibility of this workflow not only saves time and money, but also boosts the creative potential of designers. Play around with varied materials, whether created from scratch or from existing material libraries, such as our own curated Substance 3D Assets library. The potential variations are limitless.

Jean-François Bozec is known for his work with Apple and Bose, and with this “Obsidian Watch” concept, he pushed the boundaries of 3D creation to embrace its full potential. Would you be able to tell if these images are 3D renders or real photographs?

Bose

We can see a first example here with Bose, who created an internal team of 3D visualizers. They modeled and textured the new Bose gaming headset, which was used to create beautiful renders and a cool clip for its launch.

Some brands need to contextualize their products within specific settings. Creating these on real sets is very time-consuming, costs a lot of money, and once the shoot is over, there’s no going back. Virtual sets allow brands to stage 3D assets of their products as if for a real photoshoot. Except that the process is much quicker, less costly, and allows for changes anytime.

The top two barriers to online shopping are the impossibility of testing the product and poor customer experience. Connecting with customers, helping them to have a better understanding of the products, and allowing them to make better informed online buying decisions should be a top priority of brands with online shops.

The advantage of 3D assets is that they are future-proof resources that open the possibility of augmented and virtual shopping experiences, which brings us to our next topic.