Sunlighten Saunas Product Visualization

This 3D product visualization project for a sauna manufacturer had many goals:

• a series of stills displaying individual white room “beauty shots”
• realistic still images depicting the saunas in a variety of popular settings
• exploded view animations which illustrate specific features built into different locations within the sauna
• a full presentation on the benefits of far infrared heat and other Sunlighten features.

The addition of a new, as-yet unmanufactured model called the mPulse complicated the project. Further, each Sauna line was offered in 5 sizes and 2 finishes. Photographing all this heavy equipment would be a major project requiring a great deal of expensive and fragile inventory. Scouting, reserving and shooting in each location would take months and a fortune just in moving and setup alone. Luckily, Trinity Animation was able to provide a neat and perfect 3D product visualization, producing the exact virtual settings needed for each sauna, and providing photo-real high-resolution art for every projected marketing need.

White Room 3D Product Visualization

The first step was to get some simple beauty shots at high resolution. The samples shown below are for the mPulse – the new design that was not yet built. In fact, the design changed a bit during production of these renderings, and Trinity was able to update the product visualizations each time.

Below are some of these renderings [click for full size image] including cedar and basswood finishes in various sizes for the mPulse line.       

Environment Renderings

For this project, the saunas needed to appear in a large variety of indoor and outdoor environments. Some were considered commercial applications (such as hotels and spas) and many were residential applications, such as the sundeck below. For this 3D product visualization shot, Trinity Animation built the ocean, imported from its stock palm tree 3D model library, and built the sundeck to order. This same setting is used for one of the animated exploded views shown below. This “perfect shot” would look fake if the trees and ocean were somehow photoshopped in, and the 3D animation below would be impossible.

The exploded view animations were built both as a feature zoom to show construction and also for an interactive module on the web site where a person could click on a spot and the camera would zoom in, the sauna would open up for a perfect view of that feature.

This exploded view animation is for the larger commercial swimming pool environment.

This animation is the sundeck animation mentioned above.

This animation has the sauna in a bedroom, near a balcony. Note that soft towels are nearby in most of the environments.

This animation shows a small swimming pool at a residence. The sun is streaming in on several potted plant props that Trinity provided from its stock model library.