3D Product Visualization: Real-Time vs Rendered

The short answer

Send a still render when the job is to impress: the hero image for a website, a brochure or a print. You choose the camera, the light and the moment, and you can spend as long as you like on that one frame.

Send a link when the job is to decide: when the client will ask to see the other side or a different finish, and when you need their yes written down. A link gives up some of the polish of a finished render. In return the client looks wherever they want, points at what bothers them, and approves it.

Most projects need both. The mistake is sending one to do the other’s job.

Two different things

A still render is a picture. The render engine takes its time over the light, so glass, polished stone and fabric can look as good as a photograph. But the client sees only what you framed.

A real-time link is the model itself, drawn by the client’s browser as they move. It has to keep up with them, so light and reflections are simpler than in a finished render, and it depends on the device that opens it. What it gives back is freedom: they turn it, walk in at eye height, switch the finish, and see it from where they will really stand.

Which one, for which moment

What changes cost

There are no prices here, because they depend on your studio. What changes is where the effort goes.

With stills, effort grows with every question. A new angle, a new finish, a new time of day: each is another render, another check, another send. Notes arrive as “the thing near the window”, and you guess. The yes lives in an email or a chat, and finding it later takes time.

With a link, most of the effort comes first: a clean file, a sensible size, materials that still look right up close, and a good view to open on. After that, the client answers most of their own questions by looking. A change they ask for is one edit and a new version, and the link they have keeps working while you get the next version ready.

Either way, effort follows four things: how many rooms or parts, how many options, how many review rounds, and how tidy the file was when it left your design program.

What goes wrong, and how to avoid it

1. Expecting render quality from a link.Put the link next to your hero image and the link loses. Send both, and say in one line what each is for: the pictures show how it will look; the link is for walking it and deciding.
2. A heavy file that fails on a phone.Huge textures and parts nobody will see are the usual reason. What a texture weighs once it is open is almost never what it weighs on disk. Start from a sensible file: the free viewer below shows what each texture weighs once it is open, so you can fix it before anyone else sees it.
3. A blank screen while it loads.A client who sees an empty box thinks the link is broken. A 3D Thing link opens on a waiting screen with the scene’s name and its download size, then the model. Choose the view it opens on as well, so they first see your best angle, not the inside of a wardrobe.
4. Nobody checked the file.A sofa the size of a doll’s house, a wall that shows dark from one side, a missing texture. Found before sending, each takes minutes. Found by the client, each costs a little trust.
5. No plan for the second project.The first link takes the longest. Keep one clean way of exporting, reuse the materials that worked, and keep each version’s link. 3D Thing has a Blender add-on that sends a scene straight in, and plugins for SketchUp and 3ds Max in preview.

Check your file before you send anything

One free step saves most of the trouble above. Open our free viewer and inspector and drop in your .glb, .gltf, .fbx or .obj file. It stays on your computer: nothing is uploaded, and there is no account.

It shows you:

• a 1.7 m person standing beside the model, so a wrong size is obvious at once;
• every part, material and texture, and what each texture weighs once it is open;
• in plain words, what is wrong with the shape, and where on the model.

What your client can do with a 3D Thing link

• Walk it. At eye height, stopped by walls and furniture, up stairs and ramps. The keyboard on a laptop, a thumb joystick on a touch screen.
• Pin a note on the exact spot. They click the spot, write the note and add up to 4 photos, with no account. You reply in a thread.
• Try what you allow. Finishes, colours, parts shown or hidden, a day look and a night look.
• Approve it. On a link that takes options and notes, they tick one sentence and type their name. You accept and lock it, or send it back with a note, and you both keep a dated record of who, when and what was chosen.

There is nothing to install for the person opening it. Notes and approvals come with a paid plan.

Questions

Will a link look as good as my render?

No, and nobody should promise it. A well-prepared link looks good enough to judge space, size, colour and finish, which is what a decision needs. Keep the render for the brochure.

Does my client need an app or an account?

No. The link opens in a web browser, and leaving a note needs no account.

Will it work on my client’s phone?

We have built it for that: the link opens in a web browser, and a thumb joystick appears on touch screens. We have checked the touch controls in phone-sized browser windows; a check on real phones is next. A heavy file is the most common reason a link struggles on a small device, so check yours first.

Should I stop sending renders?

No. Use a still for the picture that sells the idea and a link for the questions that follow it.

Does an approval on a link replace a signed contract?

No. It is a paper trail, not a legal signature: a dated record of who approved, when, and what they chose. Use your own contract for anything binding.

Which files can I bring?

GLB, glTF, FBX or OBJ, with their textures. From Revit, Rhino or Archicad, save one of those files first; AutoCAD 2019 and newer save none of them, so ask whoever made the drawing for one. There is a Blender add-on that sends a scene straight in, and plugins for SketchUp and 3ds Max in preview.