In association with Autodesk, AnimationXpress hosted a virtual round table titled 3D Commerce – Physical to Digital: The New Product Life Cycle. The round table shed more light on the evolution of e-commerce, visualization, the modern retail experience, and how the leading industry players have experienced exponential growth over the last few years with enhanced customer shopping experiences with the use of advanced 3D graphics and consistent visualization across different platforms.
The esteemed speaker panel included: Studio Creo founder and creative director Parushni Aggarwal, draWings Art Studio founder and creative director Kanickaraj S, Patanjali Ayurved Limited COO-media and communications Anita Nayyar, Bright River head of 3D Tommy Hulsbosch, Autodesk and SAARC technical solutions manager – M&E Samit Shetty. The session was moderated by AnimationXpress.com group founder, CEO and editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari.
Kick-starting the discussion, Shetty reinforced how Autodesk products like 3ds Max and AutoCad have always been the hero. He stated, “The same solutions that work for the film, television, gaming and design visualisation customers are now being used for our e-learning and e-commerce customers. Our 3D solutions have been there for years now; so what’s new about these technologies is that it is helping our customers drive this business faster and in the shortest time span with its ability to create photo-realistic output quickly.”
E-commerce brands around the globe are constantly looking for ways to improve their interaction with potential customers and increase sales. When it comes to 3D, it is a three-dimensional visualization that enables potential customers to see a product as it is in real life, instead of a 2D image. Currently, because of the pandemic, more and more brands are implementing this technology to improve the online shopping experience.
You only need to take a cursory glance around the internet to notice that more and more e-commerce brands are using 3D design to complement and enhance their product listings. 3D modelling can be used to show off the more subtle aspects of any given product and highlight special features in a way that photographs are rarely capable of doing. Commenting on this, Hulsbosch added, “3D gives you extra dimensions and it is especially useful in use-cases because it is always beneficial to get extra information about the product, for example, when you need to see if a 55-inch TV would fit into your space or not.”
The need for providing better and more competitive visual content has been persistently increasing in recent times. There are hundreds of brands marketing the same product to thousands of people, and logically the best way to stay in the game is to keep the customers invested in the brand. To achieve this, e-commerce websites resort to technological advancements to attract the target customers. Be it a daily use product, the large digital billboards of your favourite beverage or an e-learning software used in schools, 3D design and visualization is indeed a fundamental tool for representing ideas and solutions. “Once you render in 3D, it doesn’t stop there. When a product is created in 3D, the scope for the brand to use it is larger than what it was when we had only 2D designs,” voiced Kanickaraj S.
Quite similar to e-commerce, the interior design space too is riding high on 3D designs. When compared to the other methods of displaying interior design sketches and drawings, nothing can compare to the 3D rendered interior design. Clients can clearly see what the interior will look like, experience the textures, and explore the colors. If you decide to use 3D rendering in your operations, you will also be able to show them how the environment looks with natural and artificial lights. Speaking from experience, Aggarwal affirmed, “Clients who come to us these days want to see designs in 3D instead of 2D. They like to sit with us on the software because they don’t understand 2D. 2D is too flat for them. Also, 3D is time-saving.”
Buying from e-commerce portals is increasing manifold and 3D technology is aiding it. With the increase in online shopping as a result of Covid-19, the need for new innovation in ecommerce is booming. One of the most popular and exciting new ways of shopping online is using 3D and augmented reality. This new tech is a more natural and interactive experience for customers while shopping online. “The quality of what you see changes dramatically when we use 3D. From a brand perspective, giving that reassurance to my customers on an e-commerce platform increases the chances of converting it into sales,” added Nayyar.
The virtual round table discussed the benefits and associated workflows of transitioning to a digital asset creation pipeline, providing a more meaningful and delightful shopping experience to end-users. Leading industry players have experienced exponential growth over the last few quarters with enhanced customer shopping experiences with the use of advanced 3D graphics and consistent visualization across different platforms.
Autodesk’s variety of software applications, of course, helps to enhance workflows in modeling, texturing, asset publishing, and visualization for real-time 3D content production, with a specific focus on e-commerce applications. Right now, 3D content on the web is changing the way purchase decisions are made!