3D scenes are a powerful tool that can help accelerate and simplify workflows for 3D designers. In automotive rendering, premade 3D scenes are especially powerful.
These scenes combine an HDRi Map for visuals and lighting with multiple objects and often a ground texture, cameras, background elements, and more, creating an immersive, ready-to-use environment into which designers can quickly place 3D models.
Here at CGI.Backgrounds, we supply hundreds of HDRi Maps and Backplates for automotive rendering, so we’ve worked with thousands of professional designers on their automotive renders.
Let’s take a look at some of the advantages 3D scenes can offer.
1. Faster Workflows
When most 3D designers start a new render, they have a particular vision in mind. Maybe they want to show a vehicle in a modern city environment or create a powerful render of a classic car on a track.
Most designers' visions don’t begin with tediously searching through object libraries to find the perfect tree or shrub from thousands of different options!
Because many 3D scenes include both backgrounds and objects that are perfectly paired together—as well as all the other elements of a scene—they allow designers to skip right to modeling vehicles, rather than wasting time on tedious setup.
Speed is important, both on the track and during the rendering process! Our CGI.B Connect app makes it easy to quickly import HDRi Maps into many DCCs. 3D scenes can simplify the process even further by providing a full environment from the start, rather than just a background.
2. A Blank Canvas
You might think that using the same 3D scene for multiple renders would result in a formulaic final output. In the hands of a skilled designer, though, that’s not the case.
A premade 3D scene is more of a blank canvas than a finished product. Experienced designers can tweak everything about the scene to create the perfect environment for their render.
For example, a designer might choose to keep lighting data from a scene and retain its textures and objects, while swapping out background visuals to change the look and feel of the final render.
Conversely, they might import a new HDRi Map for image-based lighting or even edit or create their own lighting HDRi Map, while keeping other elements of the scene intact.
Once they begin to work with a scene, skilled designers can take it in any number of directions. The scene itself is just a starting point, much as a painter might start with a blank canvas and end up with any final painting they can imagine.
3. Lower Costs
Purchasing each individual component of a scene can get expensive. That’s especially true if you’re modeling a complex environment that requires the purchase of multiple objects and textures.
Because 3D scenes package together all the components you need to create a final render (minus your vehicle digital twin, of course), you can get all the essential components for your render in a single purchase.
This can often lower the overall cost, which can be significant, especially if you’re creating multiple renders of a single vehicle.
4. Quick Prototypes
3D scenes are the perfect tool if you are creating an automotive render not for final production purposes, but to test different versions of a vehicle's digital twin, to mock up prototypes to show to stakeholders, etc.
In that case, it’s not always essential to carefully craft every tiny detail of a scene. Often, it’s more important to focus the viewer's attention on the vehicle that you’re demonstrating and to be able to quickly and easily make changes to the scene as the vehicle’s design evolves.
Because 3D scenes are ready to use immediately, they allow you to focus your attention on the vehicle model itself, quickly creating prototypes without having to worry about scene setup.
5. Great for Beginners
3D scenes are a professional tool that accelerates workflows even for the most talented designers. But for novices, they can often serve as a powerful teaching tool as well.
Professionally made 3D scenes are the work of skilled professional designers. The creators of 3D scenes often have extensive experience in the industry, and their scenes are the distillation of many years of experience in choosing backgrounds, textures, objects, lighting, and more.
Examining and working with a 3D scene created by a prominent designer is a great way for novice designers to learn about the ideal way to set up their own scenes.
Rather than having to experiment and learn every single aspect on their own, they can essentially look “over the shoulder” of an industry professional, honing their own rendering skills in an environment created by a talented peer.
This aspect of 3D scenes makes them excellent for student designers, or for intermediate designers who want to improve their skills by exploring the detailed work of others. They can also be a valuable tool for experienced designers who want to explore a new DCC.
Drawbacks of 3D Scenes
All that said, there can be some downsides to 3D scenes.
If all you’re looking to do is add background or lighting data to a scene you’ll otherwise build yourself, the extra objects or environmental details in a 3D scene may not be needed. In that case, you’re better off purchasing a single HDRi Map or backplate to add to your DCC of choice.
If you’re using a tool like NVIDIA’s Omniverse USD composer , for example, many of the basics of scene setup may already be handled for you. Again, that means you likely don’t need the complexity of a 3D scene.
Likewise, for some designers, crafting every aspect of a scene down to the rocks and puddles on the ground and each lighting source in the sky is part of their process. For these types of designers, a 3D scene may not be necessary, as they relish the opportunity to control every aspect of the render.
For designers who are more focused on the model and their scene, who are creating many prototypes, or who want a simpler process, though, 3D scenes are an extremely powerful and useful tool.
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