Why is there few 3D catalogs of furniture manufacturers?

[davidallen]

I do not understand why furniture manufactures do not make free catalogs of 3D models of their products. After all, most of them use 3D software to design the model. So they do have the 3d model of the furniture they are going to produce. It's also can be an additional advertising.

[salvador]

I've always said the same. They could also encourage artists to credit the pieces they use whenever possible. It's free ad for a rather low cost.

And not only furniture, but bathroom and kitchen fixtures, lamps, door hardware, etc.

[Scott Schroeder]

Who said giving things away for free is a good business model? Funny, we as artists hit the fan when a client asks for our models for free (go read any of the threads on the subject here at CGA). Yet, we expect others to do the very same thing we take a very hardline stance on.

 

Plus, they as a company have to provide support for those models. You have to have web hosting space, extra bandwidth to support large numbers of downloading, etc. Even if they say "MODELS ARE AS IS! NO TECH SUPPORT!" They would be flooded with emails each and every day with morons who can't read and follow simple directions and send emails like "Help me plz!" or "C4D file plz!". It's a headache they probably don't want to deal with.

 

If you need furniture for free, and are not overly picky, check out the SketchUp warehouse. Many times manufactures put their models in the SketchUp warehouse rather than host them on their own websites. If you want good furniture, take some downtime and learn to model really well. You can bang out most pieces in a few hours once you learn the basics.

[matthewspencer]

After all, most of them use 3D software to design the model.

Says who?

 

What type of furniture are you referring to? Many classic furniture designs were created pre-CAD. There may not even exist official CAD files for those models. I remember reading that when Coca-Cola teamed up with Emeco to do the recycled plastic Navy chair, they ran into a conundrum because no CAD existed for the chair. They had to 3D scan an existing Navy chair to get the CAD process started.

 

Otherwise, many other furniture designs are crafted by hand, and iterated through various prototypes.

 

So I wouldn't necessarily assume there's a CAD model of every piece of furniture secretly hiding in the vaults of furniture makers.

[salvador]

Ok. Certainly this idea will not apply to just every piece of work and I certainly agree that it is advisable to for one to model their own pieces, but I still stand my opinion, since I was thinking more like in faucet collections, sinks, toilets, etc.; maybe some office furniture collection from some manufacturer, new stuff. . .

 

I don't intend it to be a "give me more for free" situation, since anyone in the archviz field would ever use, e.g., a whole collection of faucets, but in good measure, it could speed up work and enhance realism, and I for one would mention the brand(s) included in my design everywhere possible.

 

We do model stuff when it is specifically required by the client in order for them to see how exactly things would look, right? so, what if you had those (or part of those) models pre-made?

 

Wherever this applies, why not? Scott has a point, but it would still be nice.

[Nic H]

design connected is pretty much this

high quality real furniture ready to use

b+b italia have a lot of 3d models but they look like they were modelled in 1998

[Justin Hunt]

My father manufactures office furniture, they often get requests for Cad files of their desks, mainly to get office layouts correct.

 

Many of the designs are cut on cnc machines so there is cad info available. They have looked into putting a catalogue together of both 2d and 3d models. It just isn't cost effective, especially for those designs that dont have Cad info already.

[davidallen]

Thanks to everyone.

Thanks to your replies I understand better now

Matthew, I even did not thought about classic furniture designs. They were crafted by hand indeed.

Nevertheless, I do not understand why manufactures do not want to advertise their products spreading free models in the Internet. They do not require money for their paper catlogs after all. "b+b italia have a lot of 3d models but they look like they were modelled in 1998" - Does anybody know who is the author? Where this catalog was officially spread? I have found a lot of links, but have not yet found the main one.

[matthewspencer]

Yeah, sorry I misinterpreted which type of furniture you were after

[John Dollus]

>>>Nevertheless, I do not understand why manufactures do not want to advertise their products spreading free models

 

Because catalogues are branded direct marketing to people who recommend/purchase products and the manufacturer has control over the appearance/presentation of their product.

 

Unless you are producing images for the faucet manufacturer, nobody cares which faucet was used in a rendering and, more to the point, there's no way to tell which manufacturers product was used for those 50 pixels so it isn't advertising at all. In most cases, the designer is telling you which manufacturer to use in the images so the product is already sold.

 

It goes back to what Scott listed in his post. There's no tangible benefit to the manufacturers.

Perhaps if you model great representations of a few manufacturers items, you can submit them to the companies and get a contract to create the model collections for them to distribute.

[salvador]

... Perhaps if you model great representations of a few manufacturers items, you can submit them to the companies and get a contract to create the model collections for them to distribute.

 

I tried that once over here and I never got an answer. . .

[Scott Schroeder]

To add to this. The manufacture (especially in the case of appliances and faucets) is already are getting advertising in the sales office of the project. Of course, assuming this is for residential. In the sales office, Kohler or Kitchen Aid etc, is plastered all over the place. So your rendering isn't the sole location of what that type of furniture/appliance it is. Plus by the time you get contracted to do the rendering, the developer/builder has already signed a contract with the furniture/appliance company to buy their product. Your render doesn't get this business in. It is already established at this point. Your render is to sell the space, not the furniture/faucets/etc.

 

Catalogs versus 3d models is comparing apples to hand grenades.

[Justin Hunt]

This is a proof of concept render I did for dad to convince him that 3D is a good route to go for their next web site. Was quite successful and we are looking to do more this year.

 

They want to see if there will be any advantage in making the 3D model available for download, and if they can recoup any of the costs to do so.

 

jhv