186: Product Renderings for a New Invention

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from a 10-year product designer on what digital product renderings are and why they are so

00:00:05 Kevin Mako: valuable for both hardware startup fundraising and product sales.

00:00:36 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce David Brown to the show. David is a design engineer at MakoDesign.

00:00:42 Kevin Mako: He has both a product engineering and an industrial design background.

00:00:46 Kevin Mako: Today, David is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what photorealistic

00:00:50 Kevin Mako: product renderings are, how they are designed and produced for hardware products, and why they are so valuable for hardware start.

00:00:56 Kevin Mako: whether you're using them to raise money or using them to capture new hardware product sales. Now on to the episode.

00:01:03 Kevin Mako: Hey David, welcome to the show.

00:01:04 Kevin Mako: Hi, Kevin. Happy to be here. We're excited to talk to you today about rendering, both picture rendering, video rendering, what does rendering even mean?

00:01:12 Kevin Mako: But more importantly, what value is there to hardware startups and inventors with rendering?

00:01:17 Kevin Mako: It's an extremely powerful tool that really isn't talked a lot about too often in the space. So I'm excited to have you on. You are a very seasoned expert in, obviously, in

00:01:26 Kevin Mako: Gestural design, mechanical engineering, and also obviously as a derivative of those, rendering and

00:01:31 Kevin Mako: really amplifying the images of those products and some best practices around that. Before we get into all that, though, first of all, congratulations.

00:01:38 Kevin Mako: You just had a set of twins a few days ago.

00:01:41 David Brown: Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, very excited. Yeah, it's been a crazy time, but I couldn't miss out on this opportunity.

00:01:47 Kevin Mako: Well, I appreciate. I appreciate you throughout the lack of sleep and all the rest being here today on the podcast, David. So that's great. And obviously, big congratulations.

00:01:55 Kevin Mako: Not one but two in one shot. That's a big deal. So in terms of talking about rendering today, before we're jumping into the actual nuts and bolts and best

00:02:02 Kevin Mako: practices and descriptions, how did you get to where you are today?

00:02:05 David Brown: Yeah, for sure.

00:02:07 David Brown: So I started at University of Toronto. I did mechanical engineering there. I did specialization in sustainable energy and solid mechanics with

00:02:16 David Brown: a minor in sustainable energy. And during that time, I worked as a design engineer at Husky injection molding. So that was a great experience.

00:02:23 David Brown: I learned about manufacturing, injection molding. I was specifically working on mold designs.

00:02:28 David Brown: So learning about the draft angles, ejector pins, all the platins, how everything works together. A lot more complicated than someone might

00:02:34 David Brown: it's the spec. And then from there, I did some software development. It's a hybrid of software with

00:02:40 David Brown: mechanical engineering, and it's for software is called MasterC, and it's specifically for C&C machines,

00:02:46 David Brown: so it kind of still stayed in that manufacturing realm, but I've always enjoyed coding and tinkering with that. So I did that for a couple of years, and then I moved into

00:02:55 David Brown: industrial design, and I started off at a company in the retail industry, and they do pop-up displays, so things that you see in

00:03:03 David Brown: airports and malls, all those very extravagant displays for the luxury brands like Chanel, Hugo Boss, Dior.

00:03:09 David Brown: That was a really interesting time in my career because not only was it the industrial design, we had the full manufacturing facility in the office. So basically, we start off

00:03:19 David Brown: with that concept design and we go all the way until it's ready to ship out, learn a lot about design for manufacturing.

00:03:25 David Brown: Not only did we do retail design there, but we also did some other engineering projects. So I did some mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering and made some

00:03:34 David Brown: vacuum forms and worked with those machines. And I got really great experience. And then from there, I got into Mako. I've been following Mako for many years, as you know.

00:03:44 David Brown: I actually started listening to this podcast. I've been a big believer in, you know, educating different inventors and people starting startups.

00:03:53 David Brown: And I loved what Mako does. And I love consumer product design. That's actually why I made the move into industrial design. And I've always wanted to be an inventor myself.

00:04:03 David Brown: So I know how much this podcast means to fellow inventors.

00:04:06 Kevin Mako: And I'm really excited to get into the topic of rendering. We're excited to have you on board and part of the show today. You've been doing product development for over 10 years.

00:04:14 Kevin Mako: And obviously a big part of that is the rendering. So start with just a basic description.

00:04:19 David Brown: What are digital renderings? Yeah, for sure. So there's a couple different types of digital renderings. I think the one that most people are familiar with are the

00:04:28 David Brown: photorealistic renders, the ones that it looks like a completely real product, even though it may not be actually made in our hands.

00:04:35 David Brown: But there are actually a few different types of renders. A lot of the time when we

00:04:39 David Brown: work with our clients, we start off with, you can call it like a sketch render, maybe a low fidelity render, just something that it gives you an idea of what this product, what

00:04:48 David Brown: your invention's actually going to look like. So I usually start off with just sketching it out and color it in, give you a general idea what it's going to look like.

00:04:55 David Brown: But the real renders, the things that people love and that people people get excited about. Those are the ones that we use with a 3D CAD model. You need a very good 3D

00:05:04 David Brown: CAD model to start. That's the foundation for everything. And then from there, you take that into a rendering software and then that brings it to life.

00:05:12 David Brown: It's something that everyone just gets so excited about and it's so valuable for inventors, startups, small businesses, because this is basically the best way

00:05:20 David Brown: to communicate what your product is in one image, right? You know, they say image is a thousand words and

00:05:25 Kevin Mako: And that's what the render is for. There's a couple of really great things you said there. First of all, the foundation of the CAD, that is so important.

00:05:32 Kevin Mako: Keep in mind that renders are beautiful images of the underlying CAD model, but of course, in order for it to really resonate for it to pop, whether it's to an investor or whether

00:05:41 Kevin Mako: it's for engineering or whether it's for your own internal review or various other stakeholders that are a part of the process of development, the core is the actual foundation.

00:05:50 Kevin Mako: The foundation is the cat. So step one, which is arguably the much harder part, is step one is researching, designing,

00:05:57 Kevin Mako: developing, sketching out, getting to the point where you're catting up the product, doing great CAD design, both external and internal, so that you have an really

00:06:04 Kevin Mako: incredible product designed in 3D and 3D CAD software. From there, you can start manipulating it for visualizations.

00:06:13 Kevin Mako: Now, describe a bit about the process of creating those visualizations because there's actually a process that goes in behind the scenes.

00:06:21 Kevin Mako: You can't just say put it into something and it just spits out some beautiful image. There's a whole bunch that actually goes in behind the scenes on what it takes

00:06:28 Kevin Mako: to take that CAD model and then turn it into a photorealistic rendering. So break out some of those just basic parts and components to the rendering process.

00:06:37 David Brown: Definitely. Yeah. So like you said, this is not a drag and drop kind of process here. That was actually something that I didn't expect

00:06:43 David Brown: getting into the industry, into industrial design is, you know, I used to be mechanical engineer, make beautiful CAD.

00:06:50 David Brown: And then when you, when you get into the actual rendering, it's a whole another world, a whole another art. To keep it on a basic level, you have a CAD model.

00:06:57 David Brown: And it's basically it's the 3D model of what your product looks like, but it's all one color, let's say. It's all one finish.

00:07:04 David Brown: So this is when you want to start to show what materials this might be made of and what surface finishes you might have. So maybe it's consumer electronics.

00:07:12 David Brown: And with that, it's very common to have a lot of plastic components. Do you want that to have a really shiny, popping gloss?

00:07:18 David Brown: look. Do you want it to have a very dull kind of matte look? Do you want to have the two

00:07:24 David Brown: contrasts together, which is very common to make that glossy part even pop more? What about the lighting? How do you want the lighting to look?

00:07:30 David Brown: Because again, you have to make this entire virtual environment that this product is sitting in. It's not even the product that you're

00:07:37 David Brown: working on rendering, but it's the whole surrounding, the whole room, the lighting, the focus of the camera angles. There's a lot that goes into it.

00:07:44 David Brown: But essentially, what you're going to do apply some materials. You're going to try and finesse that into what you just want to get something

00:07:50 David Brown: that looks exactly like what you're envisioning, that final product. And what I think a lot of people don't know is a lot of product images that you see online.

00:07:58 David Brown: Those are the renders. Those aren't actually the final products. I see it all the time. Amazon is very common. It's mostly renders. They don't actually

00:08:05 David Brown: do the product. So you just need to have it look as real as possible. And that's through a few of those steps of getting some materials, the lighting, the focus.

00:08:12 David Brown: But again, that's just scratching the surface of

00:08:15 Kevin Mako: the whole rendering process. It really is both a combination of science and art to really have something

00:08:21 Kevin Mako: pop and to capture the imagination, the dreams of somebody else as well to the points that they can understand it.

00:08:27 Kevin Mako: Keep in mind that, especially if you're developing a new proprietary product. Part of the rendering process is explaining via these renderings what your product does.

00:08:35 Kevin Mako: And that's whether it's to an investor or an buyer or to other stakeholders, including the

00:08:39 Kevin Mako: development team as they're going through the process of design, engineering, prototyping, etc. etc. Rendering can be used at every level of development to make sure

00:08:48 Kevin Mako: that the vision of the inventor and the startup is matched in the engineering. And those are reflected in the rendering.

00:08:54 Kevin Mako: So that rendering is almost like a communication point to ensure that the product really meets the standard and the vision that the original inventor or

00:09:03 Kevin Mako: hardware startup wants to have. And this is something that's so powerful, especially for early stages of product development before you're into

00:09:08 Kevin Mako: the big bucks of like hardcore engineering and prototyping and all that sort of stuff, you can actually get a lot of clarity on the product via the rendering process.

00:09:17 Kevin Mako: What you can also do, and I've mentioned it a couple times through this podcast today, is you can use that as a very powerful investor pitch. So much of the

00:09:24 Kevin Mako: point I hope, David, that you brought up that so much that we see is just renderings and not the actual

00:09:28 Kevin Mako: products themselves, because renderings really pop out so well that that can be used almost better than

00:09:33 Kevin Mako: the real product to actually sell what you've got going on, at least selling to an investor. So

00:09:38 Kevin Mako: if you're in the early stages of development, at a minimum, before you even rents it, before you even

00:09:42 Kevin Mako: raising friends or family money, you should at least, well, first of all, have a great product design. That's step one. We talk about that, the foundation.

00:09:49 Kevin Mako: Secondarily, if you can amplify that great product via the renderings, then that's what you can put in front of these early stage

00:09:56 Kevin Mako: investors as your hero shot so that that captures their attention. And then, of course, you'll need all the backing, engineering, and documentation below it to convince them to

00:10:04 Kevin Mako: invest into the product. But even if it's friends and family, you want to be able to showcase it in its best light. And that's where renderings come in. I want to take it one step.

00:10:12 Kevin Mako: further, something that can really make renderings pop that obviously we do a lot of in terms of showcasing, especially early stage products.

00:10:20 David Brown: And that's the video rendering. Talk a bit about that, David. Oh, man. Well, videos, that's the, that's what everybody wants nowadays. And I don't

00:10:28 David Brown: blame them because, you know, the photo is great. That single image is awesome. It communicates a lot.

00:10:34 David Brown: But when you see an actual video, it tells you a lot more because first of all, it's a lot more exciting. You're seeing this thing moving around.

00:10:43 David Brown: You're getting different camera angles. And, you know, when we see all these awesome car commercials, all the Apple product release videos, and you see this

00:10:51 David Brown: crazy close-ups with the light shining off of it, fading in and out, revolving around, that is all 3D rendered videos.

00:10:58 David Brown: And again, it's essentially just CGI of what we're seeing, you know, with all these different movies and stuff. And there's a lot that goes into it.

00:11:06 David Brown: It's kind of taking that first, just that snapshot image, taking it to the next level. You're going to have that thing.

00:11:11 David Brown: moving around, you'll have zooming in, zooming out, fading out. You're going to have it exploding so that you get that nice exploded view. People love that right now.

00:11:19 David Brown: When you get that exploded and you show all the different components and then you collapse it and shut it all back together, it shows a couple different things.

00:11:26 David Brown: First of all, it gets you excited. It shows how much engineering and design went into it because anyone, well, not anyone, but someone can kind of make

00:11:33 David Brown: a simple design on the outside that's completely hollow. There's nothing inside. That's not really much of a product.

00:11:39 David Brown: But when you see the actual internals of that, you realize like this, this thing is fully designed. This thing's ready to prototype.

00:11:45 David Brown: And one thing that you're mentioning, Kevin, is that you have the great CAD work and we need that. And if you don't have these renders, you can put so much

00:11:54 David Brown: work, time, energy, money into making a great design. And you have to do that as the first step. But to investors, sometimes they don't appreciate that.

00:12:04 David Brown: And they just don't really have the understanding of what went into it. But when you have that final product, that rendering, that picture, that video showing

00:12:11 David Brown: this product as if it's something that I could actually be clicking and saying, I want to buy this right now, that is what investors want to see.

00:12:17 David Brown: And you're going to increase the chances of somebody

00:12:19 Kevin Mako: investing just from a really great 3D visualization product rendering. And you're seeing this a lot, too, on the sales side.

00:12:26 Kevin Mako: More and more places are utilizing video in order to sell the product. So Amazon's released a bit ago, obviously the video feature that more and more people

00:12:34 Kevin Mako: are now using more routinely, video really tells a story. So even if you're able to raise investment round or self-funding it for the development side, and it's good enough for you

00:12:43 Kevin Mako: with images,

00:12:44 Kevin Mako: think about the sales side. That's where video can be very powerful, especially these video

00:12:48 Kevin Mako: renderings to highlight the best of the best of the product and really have it pop off the screen.

00:12:52 Kevin Mako: That's the reason why the best companies in the world are using on a regular basis videos in order to highlight the story. Watch manufacturers have been doing this for a long time.

00:13:02 Kevin Mako: Some of those detailed mechanics that go into the watch get highlighted through these renders

00:13:06 Kevin Mako: where you can, as you mentioned, the exploded view, many different types of views where you can

00:13:10 Kevin Mako: actually look in depth at all these different pieces and parts of the project. Look at some of the

00:13:14 Kevin Mako: proprietary technology that you created in video format to see how it actually functions and works in this beautiful rendered format. So think about it from the sales side.

00:13:24 Kevin Mako: I would highly suggest anybody that's putting their product out to the market. When you actually get to that marketability

00:13:30 Kevin Mako: perspective, you must have video rendering as part of your process because it looks so snappy in the

00:13:37 Kevin Mako: images. Now, you can have the real product, which is also very important. People do want to see the physical product.

00:13:42 Kevin Mako: They want to trust that a real human is using it and liking it and put themselves in those shoes. And that really helps with buyer intent as well. But when you start to look at the

00:13:50 Kevin Mako: underlying engineering or start to just get those hero shots that are presented on to catch a first glance

00:13:55 Kevin Mako: in the first three seconds, renderings are going to do a better job than the real photo. So that's where if you have a nice blended video with some human interaction of the real

00:14:02 Kevin Mako: prototypes, in addition to some beautiful renderings, that will really pop your sales initiatives

00:14:07 David Brown: and get that return on ad spend increasing as you're selling the product to market. Exactly. I would use an analogy. You have an article written, you know, it's that title.

00:14:16 David Brown: It's that catch line that that title is going to be what you see that gets me interested in reading the rest of the article. If there's no title and I just see a big block of text,

00:14:25 David Brown: which is all that hard work. That was all the work that went into it. If you don't have that title,

00:14:29 David Brown: you're just not going to know what you're getting into and you may not have the interest.

00:14:32 David Brown: But when the, like I said, the investors see this, you know, when you have Kickstarter videos, everyone wants these 3D videos because it's snappy, it's exciting.

00:14:40 David Brown: It shows so much more of the product. But it's also becoming a standard now. It's, you got to keep up with the industry and with,

00:14:47 Kevin Mako: with your competitors. And it's just something that adds so much value. Even the tools of the trade now are better than ever before. Every year, they get so much more advanced.

00:14:55 Kevin Mako: We've got multiple different pieces of software that we can put into video rendering technology. And it just allows it to make it pop more, look more realistic, crazy effects.

00:15:04 Kevin Mako: Like some of the stuff we've done for sunglasses in the pack, remember one of them for Voka Eye where we had basically mist and steam coming around the side of the sunglasses.

00:15:11 Kevin Mako: Like this is pretty advanced CGI rendering technology. More and more of this can get packed into the rendering tools that can go into making these videos

00:15:19 Kevin Mako: cheaper, quicker, easier than ever before every year. So you can use the latest and greatest in technology.

00:15:25 Kevin Mako: you're going to get some really eye-popping stuff that most people haven't seen yet. And that's the beauty about renderings right now.

00:15:32 Kevin Mako: It really does give an edge to those folks who are early adopters and who are continuing to be on the leading edge of this technology because for the most part

00:15:40 Kevin Mako: in the mass market, the adoption is still trailing. And that's the way things go. Every year there's going to be newer technology and it's going to take a year or two for

00:15:48 Kevin Mako: people to catch up. So if you're kind of on the leading edge of those things, you've immediately got that edge.

00:15:53 Kevin Mako: You may even have that edge over some big corporations, not necessarily direct head to head with you, but competing in some way that they look at these two products side by side.

00:16:01 Kevin Mako: If you've got a better rendering, if you've got a cool, progressive, well-designed modern product, somebody

00:16:06 David Brown: may lean towards yours than even a big branded competitor on the other side. Exactly. They say don't judge a book by its cover, but obviously with the product,

00:16:15 David Brown: you're judging it right away with how it looks. And like you said, it doesn't matter who your competitor is. If it's a big company, a small company, if you have an amazing picture.

00:16:23 David Brown: and mainly amazing video, that's going to catch somebody's attention right away. And it instills a couple different things. You see the work technology went into it.

00:16:32 David Brown: You see the value. You see what the potential could possibly be just from seeing it. And there's even some great things that

00:16:38 David Brown: you can do, whether it's a photo, but even with the videos, it's even better, is you can do things that you can't actually have with a physical product in your hand.

00:16:47 David Brown: Like you said, it's really great to have that physical product in your hand. But, you know, like we've seen in these commercial

00:16:53 David Brown: trailers, trailers, teasers, you can have, like say, a watch and then half of it goes transparent and you see the internals and then it fades back out.

00:17:03 David Brown: That's just something. And then again, how we talked about exploded view, it's just something you can't do in person. Yeah,

00:17:09 David Brown: maybe you could do some of the fog and the smoke, but even that is complicated. But it comes at a cost. It's extremely high computing power.

00:17:17 David Brown: I think everyone underestimates how much these renderings take. Our machines are very high power that we have.

00:17:23 David Brown: even still, they are fighting these rendering softwares, especially when we get into 3D videos. And if you look into the details of Hollywood, the CGI computers that they

00:17:32 Kevin Mako: have, it is computers that people wouldn't even understand the spec. Much appreciated for having you on the show and giving an overview of rendering for new hardware

00:17:41 Kevin Mako: products. Thanks again. And we'll talk soon. Awesome. Great being here. Thank you, Kevin.

00:17:45 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and leave us a quick five-star review.

00:17:52 Narrator: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. That's podcast at MakoDesign.com.

00:18:02 Narrator: This show is hosted by Kevin Mako. North America's leading expert on product development for physical product startups. Huge thanks to our sponsors, PTC,

00:18:09 Narrator: and their two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions Onshape and Creo, and Mako Design + Invent.

00:18:16 Narrator: The original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers and inventors.

00:18:23 Narrator: Thanks for joining and see you next time.