Model Guidelines
General 3D model requirements
- To achieve a high degree of realism, the models must be made very precisely - imperfections and slight scratches are welcome!
- Opacity maps can be used for cut-outs (e.g. leaves), but not for creating structure/details (e.g. fabrics, perforations)
- Do not use displacement maps or bake them into geometry if necessary
- Mesh has to be optimized, but smooth, with smooth curves to avoid faceted geometry
- All models need to have real thickness, with closed geometry (no holes, double vertices)
- Try to stay between 10k and 100k polys if possible (or even less for really simple objects)
Sub-Objects
Assign different materials to different parts of the object and name them accordingly. E.g. a shampoo bottle could have three sub-objects that are named “Body”, “Cap”, and “Label”, and should have a material each that is called the same way: “Body”, “Cap”, and “Label”. One sub-object should only use exactly one material. If one part/element is made of 2+ different materials, it should be divided into 2+ objects.
Special Cases
Double-Sided Materials & Volumes
Our software treats every surface as double-sided. If you have e.g. a label that should be visible from both sides, and the backside looks flipped, create a label with a small thickness and apply two different materials to it. Concave objects should have a real volume (no missing faces).
Transparent Parts & Intersections
- Ensure that models that are under a transparent surface are modeled
- For surfaces where two transparent materials touch (e.g. glass or plastic with liquid inside), please make sure that there is a tiny spacing between them. This prevents artifacts during rendering. Please model all liquids and glasses where they are in real life.
- Opacity maps and values should not be used to create transparent materials
- Glass always should have a real thickness
Manual UV-Unwrapping
Customers must receive the models with the correct UV allocation for the entire model.
- The entire model must be unwrapped (not implicitly projected, as this information will get lost in the process). Everywhere.
- The object shouldn’t have UV overlays (UV coordinates are unique)
- Do not use UDIMs
- UVs should be packed efficiently and have reasonable seams
- Especially, in areas where labels will or could be applied, the UVs need to be uniform and should not be stretched
- Explicit parts of the model that represent a label should use the entire UV space as sub-objects with their own placeholder material
It is not necessary to put everything into a single texture/UV layout, and the method of dividing your model by splitting between elements/materials is up to you.
💡Tip: you can assign different materials to different parts of the object and name them accordingly with descriptive names. E.g. a shampoo bottle could be divided into three sub-objects that are named: “Body”, “Cap”, and “Label”, with materials named respectively: “Body”, “Cap”, and “Label”. If a material is used by one element, it improves the user’s experience and allows the use of all the features in the studio (e.g. color exchange).
Materials & Maps
Materials
Materials are one of the most important components for photorealistic assets and images. Have an eye on details, and use imperfections/scratches. You can find a good standard of quality here. See also examples at the end of this document.
- Use highly detailed materials that look real from very close
- Use the PBR Metalness-Roughness Workflow as defined in the GLTF/GLB standard
- Do not use opacity maps as a replacement for geometry
- Allow the labels to be easily exchangeable, so no distortion within the maps
- Do not bake lighting
Maps
- Provide at least 4K resolution textures (lower res only for very small parts of the object)
- Always provide at least the following maps:
- diffuse (color)
- normal
- roughness
- Exceptions can be made for super homogeneous surfaces, but these cases are usually really rare
- You can create normal maps with a software called Materialize if you do not have the original normal map of a material
- We currently support these maps:
- Base Color
- Metallic
- Roughness
- Normal
- Ambient Occlusion
- Emission (coming soon)
- For transmission use the Khronos Extension
- For subsurface materials please get in touch with us - well show you how to do it
- If one surface contains two materials (e.g. paper with a golden print on it), bake these properties into the maps but provide the masks that you used.
Labels
- If a label file is provided (e.g. as .ai or .png), please do not cut the label into multiple patches or textures. It should be possible to exchange the label by a new one with the same aspect ratio by just one click for us.
Lighting
- Do not override any lighting information in the final file.
File structure
- The 3D model needs to be at XYZ = (0,0,0) and has its pivot in its center of mass
- Sub-Objects also should have their pivot in the center of mass
- The 3D model scale has to match the real-world scale in size (1 unit = cm)
- Use descriptive American English names, e.g. “label” or “cap” for each sub-object and their respective placeholder materials
Output
Please export the model as a .glb file
with no compression.