Flooring Samples Website Images

[Bwana Kahawa]

Hi all,

I've been approached to produce a series of images for a flooring supplier. They sell a range of products (wood, vinyl, carpet, etc) and would like a series of internal scenes to give a consistent preview of each of the products.

 

Their initial request was 5 or 6 scenes (I'm guessing a kitchen, a bedroom, a lounge, etc), Each product would only use one scene, but would need two or three viewpoints of that scene. They sell a lot of products, so we're talking hundreds of (similar) images in total.

 

I was hoping for a bit of advice from anyone who'd done this kind of thing before. Although I've been in visualisation for almost 15 years, I've never had to produce accurate textures from actual physical samples. It could be a good earner, but it's way outside my comfort zone!

 

So I guess the questions are:

* How best to photograph the samples? I won't be able to rely on textures provided by the manufacturers as they'll vary in quality, which suggests photographing them myself. Any advice on studio setup? Would it be worth hiring a professional photographer? What sort of size sample would I need as a minimum?

* I'd probably use Maxwell to render the scenes, which offers pretty realistic materials. Would I be able to assume that all manufacturers could provide me with appropriate light reflectance values etc, or would I get away with just doing things 'by eye'?

* Any other pitfalls or issues to worry about?

 

Any advice appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Derek

[kittyshean]

you will do it by yourself or outsource?

[John Dollus]

chaos group has their new custom material service. You might want to check with them if you are using vray

[CliveG]

Can I just take the opportunity to get you to suggest to the company involved that:

 

1/ They make these high res sample images available to us on their website. (which a lot of m'fers do already)

 

2/ That they make a full "pattern repeat" image available (few m'fers do) even if it has to be lower res due to size of pattern.

 

3/ That they then inform the actual dimensions of each sample that the images portray (no m'fers do).

 

I'm working all the time with image samples from vendor websites and often just have to guess what size an image I'm creating and then tiling. If it's a scan of 300mmx300mm of a carpet tile - then tell us! If the Pattern Repeat is 2mx2m - then tell us too!

 

And when it comes to a small high res image of a patterned fabric / carpet etc. with a huge pattern repeat, it's almost impossible to get anything usable.... I just move onto somebody else's product instead.

 

Oh and I set one of these "Scenes" up 20 years ago for a furniture m'fer (an easier gig I grant you) and it was a lot less difficult than I expected. You'll be fine.