3D Product Animation for Hunter Stoves

Studio Mitchell produced this stylised 3D product animation for Hunter Stoves promoting their new range of wood burning stoves on the web. Studio Mitchell have worked closely with Hunter Stoves to produce detailed 3D visuals of their products in several major catalogues over a number of years.

This 3D animated product footage was created for web use. The hand drawn pencil sketch morphing into a photorealistic setting is achieved by using two render techniques.  These are Sketch and Toon and the Physical Render.

Using Sketch and Toon

Sketch and Toon is the C4D render technique that allows an artist to apply flat shading to 3D artwork and create 2D-style, cel-shaded motion graphics. Sketch and Toon allows 3D mograph artists to emulate a 2D style of hand drawn line art. Once the 3D Animated Product demo scene had been created we applied the Sketch and Toon effect as a separate render to be then composited at post production with the physical render.

Using Physical Render

The second part of the process still uses the original 3D model. This time however we utilise the Physical Render Engine in Cinema 4D.  This lets you render with ultimate realism using real camera settings such as focal length, shutter speed, aperture, etc. You can also add 3D depth of field, optical accurate motion blur, area shadows, ambient occlusion and more to your scene. The result is a photorealistic image or in this case,  3D Animated Product footage as you can see above.

Paul Grimes, Managing Director “Studio Mitchell have provided us with a solution to combine real photos with a 3D model of the stove, where the 3D model literally becomes part of the photo. This has solved the costly problem of shooting a stove on location. Now we can put any stove in any fireplace without leaving our office. This method has revolutionized our marketing and opened up the way of developing new product lines quickly and more cost effectively. The workflow couldn’t be better! I would recommend any manufacturer to utilise Studio Mitchells knowledge and experience. Due to budget constraints, some photographs of stoves from old catalogues were re-used in the new catalogues. When customers were asked “which of these images are photos and which are 3D illustrations?” the majority thought the photos were indistinguishable from the 3D illustrations. We now use 3D product illustrations in all our marketing material, preferring the level of control and detail that can be achieved in much shorter time scales.”

Another example of creating a photorealistic film footage of a wood burning stove through 3D product animation.